18 January 2005
Maybe I'm Amazed
One of the truly unique things about working in a call centre is the first hand view of exactly how far our society is declining.
Of course people have been saying that western society as a whole has been in a steady decline for decades. In fact this sentiment is most often expressed by dirty old men pining for the Good Old Days. Those of us from different generations like to look down our noses at these people and laugh at them behind their backs in front of them, but the simple fact of the matter is that they're not wrong. Western society is declining and has been for some time. Doubt me? Take a look at the statistics for literacy and tell me I'm wrong.
I am fascinated by the idea that someone can go to school for twelve years or more, and when they come out be unable to read. Of course reading isn't the only problem. If you can't read the language then you sure as hell don't know how to properly speak the language. Sure, you can fake it to a certain extent, but the only thing that you accomplish is to make yourself look like an idiot.
The thing of it is that reading really isn't all that tough. The alphabet has twenty six letters, and when you learn how to identify those letters and the sounds that they make then you learn how to recognize and sound out words. When you learn how to recognize and sound out words you not only learn how to read but also how to speak. The more you read the better you get at it. That's the way it was with me and my peers when I was growing up. We were all encouraged to learn how, and we all had access to a reasonably well stocked library to help us reinforce what we had learned.
Now I know for a fact that phonetic reading is still taught in schools and I also know for a fact that school libraries are just as well stocked as they ever were, so now I have to wonder where the system is failing and why. Is it because the teachers either don't care or are simply incapable of teaching? Is it the fault of the student, who simply has better things to do with his time than learn? What is the educational system doing to solve these problems, or can they even be solved? If these problems can be solved and nothing is being done to solve them, then why?
My problem with this whole issue lies in the fact that I think my opinion on this matter may be somewhat coloured, because I believe that modern pop culture, in combination with a great deal of modern technology, lies at the very heart of this problem. The technology side of the argument is really easy to see. Why would people want to sit down and actually take the trouble to read a book when they can go to Blockbuster and rent the movie? Why take the time to read when you can get instant gratification by watching television?
Modern pop culture certainly isn't helping matters any. The lyrics of most of the songs that the younger generation is listening to these days are written in Ebonics, not English. So, since their popular musical heroes aren't speaking English then they see no reason why they should have to, and then they look down their noses at you when you don't understand them. Everyone else is talking this way, Old Man. Why aren't you?
Pop culture and technology have conspired to create an environment of instant gratification. If I can't see a concrete result to what I'm doing and see it now, then what's the point of doing it? Having to work for something and earn something is just too much of a pain in the ass. This is the mindset that our younger generation is buying into, but what they don't realize is that there is a price for that kind of thinking. Not only are they sacrificing any real chance they have at literacy, but they're also sacrificing all of the social niceties that make a civilized society function, such as common manners.
Then again, these are also the same people who don't really care because they think that the consequences of their actions have absolutely no bearing on them. After all, they're just living their lives the way they want to and we're the ones who are getting bent out of shape about it, so who is it that really has the problem?
In the end this whole mindset is just a cop out, an excuse for not having the intestinal fortitude to accept responsibility for their own actions.
Of course all this really is is just a description of the problem. None of this provides us with any answers, and to be perfectly honest I don't think that there are any. In order for there to be answers we have to be able to identify one specific root cause of the problem, and if we can't identify one specific root cause then we have to be able to identify a limited set of unique causes. There are simply too many possible causes of rampant illiteracy, and the possible solutions that a simple man like me would suggest to answer those causes would probably cause the enlightened socially conscious politically correct new wave yuppies among us to die of heart failure.
There are just too many things that are wrong with western society for me to be able to buy into the fallacy that all of our problems can be solved if we just take the time to try. A lot of people are taking the time to try on a limited scale, but limited efforts against this kind of mounting crisis are doomed to failure. About the only possible solution that I can come up with that would stand even a remote chance of solving the decline of our society is a complete and utter re-imagining of what it means to live in our society.
But that will never happen because pop culture and modern technology are just too damn appealing. And people wonder why our society is as much of a mess as it is.