Commentary: Musings on 'National Punctuation Day'
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Today is National Punctuation Day. Or should that read, “Today is National Punctuation Day!”?
Regardless, today marks the 10th anniversary of the day founder Jeff Rubin, a former copy editor who lives in the San Francisco area, chose to remind us not only of the importance of punctuation but the importance of using it correctly.
Why Rubin chose September is unclear but 24 was the number on the uniform San Francisco Giants great Willie Mays wore; Rubin is almost as great a fan of Mays as he is a proponent of the correct use of punctuation.
Americans’ ignorance of punctuation is not peculiar to our times or this nation. The graffiti the Greek and Roman soldiers left on the walls of the towns and cities they occupied attest to that.
Using punctuation correctly, just as spelling correctly and being able to write a grammatical and coherent sentence, is a topic of growing concern to business executives and teachers alike. Whether students texting their friends has made matters worse could provide the material for any number of doctoral dissertations in colleges of education.
There’s no question, however, that entirely too many college freshmen are directed to remedial English classes (for which they receive no credit).
Of equal concern is the equally large number of college freshman directed to remedial mathematics classes.
The upshot is that many of these students received A’s in English and math in high school. As Mark Goldblatt wrote earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, “Welcome Back My Ungrammatical Students”:
“How can this be?” you’re asking yourself. “I got straight As [sic] in high school! I love writing stories and poems! I’m good in English!”
The culprit is your grammar -- and just to be clear, I’m using the word “grammar” in a general way to refer to the overall mechanics of your writing, including punctuation, syntax and usage. Students in remedial English classes are always smart enough to write college-level prose, but don’t know how to put sentences together in ways that clarify, rather than cloud, what they’re trying to say.”
Much of our K-12 education system seems to lie in a shambles. How much is open to debate. When confronted about the dropout rate and complaints of substandard teaching, American educators are fond of pointing out that this nation makes an effort to educate everyone, not just the elite, when our students are ranked against those in other countries.
Regardless, the Program for International Assessment reports that in 2011, only 35% of eighth graders performed at that level or above in mathematics and all U.S. students ranked 14th in the world in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.
While the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957 seems to be the catalyst that also launched efforts to reform education in this country, these efforts have headed in several -- and often conflicting -- directions.
We have bemoaned the shortage of American students taking the rigorous STEM courses – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – of foreign students filling so many seats in engineering and computer classes in our universities and earning the majority of doctorates awarded in these disciplines.
The liberal arts, including English, are no less rigorous. But, they lack the respect accorded STEM.
The situation seems so bleak that we learn the U.S. military has no choice but to turn away so many of those who want to enlist because they can’t pass the Armed Forces entrance exam. One reform brought about by the all-volunteer Army was a requirement that the soldier, sailor, Marine or member of the Air Force be a high school graduate. And 30% can’t pass the exam.
No Child Left Behind, a well-intended effort agreed to by former President George W. Bush and the late senator from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy, has been a bust. States were given more time to meet standards not that rigorous to begin with. And even then complained the bar was too high and sought even more time.
Exacerbating the situation are cheating scandals of teachers who “corrected” their students tests and caught red-handed because the progress their systems seemed to achieve was too good to be true.
Good teachers have complained the standardized tests stifle creativity, theirs and their students, and point out students are not one-size-fits-all as the standardized test posit.
The bright spot in all this is that we remain committed to education, about how and what students learn, and improving the curricula college students must take to become licensed as teachers.
That should give us pause, give us reason step back and re-examine what’s worked and what hasn’t before we resume our efforts at reform.
Editor's Note:
The author, Dennis LaRue, is copy editor of The Business Journal.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our free daily email headlines and to our twice-monthly print edition.