I'm no psychologist, but there must be something about language that inspires myths among the disgruntled about a golden past. The fantasy of a "perfectly literate country" before compulsory public education is the latest offshoot. Usually the myths are variations on the following themes:

"Students spoke and wrote English beautifully a generation ago, but today they are ignorant and illiterate."
"The English Language is deteriorating and was far superior in the past."
"Today's immigrants don't want to learn English the way previous immigrants did."

The wonderful thing about these myths is that they are timeless. Twenty years ago, fifty years ago, two hundred, a thousand--the same disgruntled people were uttering the very same sentiments about a supposed golden age departed. Harvey Daniels, in his book Famous Lost Words: The American Language Crisis Reconsidered, cites dozens of "language crisis" quotations from antiquity to the present.

All of the myths are untrue. Students have always had problems acquiring standard conventions, languages always change, and immigrant communities always acquire English at a near-identical rate. Many need their myths, however, and prefer them over reality, so a generation from now we can be certain to hear laments for the glorious golden age of 2000.

Dick Veit
UNCW

Discovering English Grammar <http://www.uncwil.edu/people/veit/DEG/>