GORDON RIVES CARMICHAEL writes:

>A few years before I retired, I began to
> detect a noticeable deterioration in the quality of writing my young
> officers were capable of producing. To be kind, their grammar was
> deplorable. Now, I am also finding that the newer/younger students are
> arriving with those poor grammar skills, and I find fewer and fewer
> students devote much time at all to reading (in my opinion, perhaps THE
> key to good grammar) - any reading, from newspapers to books. They are
> basically non-readers who feel reading is a waste of time, and, even
> worse, boring! They can sometimes just about make me weep with their
> indifference to reading ...

Alas, but this is so true of today's students.  I teach high school English
(in an inner city charter school) and face an uphill battle with reading
and writing (and, consequently, grammar - which I am untypically strong
with).  They complain about every reading assignment - even when THEY
select the books.  Getting them to revise any piece of writing is next to
impossible (my journalism students have written so little that I've
postponed the publication of the school paper indefinitely).  If I work on
reading or writing they complain that it's "boring" and that English is
supposed to be about "adjectives and stuff like that;"  but if I teach
grammar, they turn off completely.

I think the problem is that their lives outside school are so stressful and
full of stimuli (mostly negative ones) that everything we do in school is
terribly anti-climactic.  Also, in the wake of television, video games, and
rap music, there isn't enough stimulus in silent reading to keep them
interested for more than two minutes.

I guess what I'm doing here is asking if any of you have similar
experiences, or if you've used some strategies that work to get past this
reluctancy.  I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks,

Paul D.