This via the Associated Press
Report: State employees’ lack of writing skills cost nearly $250M
States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.
The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at least as important in the public sector as in private industry. Poor writing not only befuddles citizens but also slows down the government as bureaucrats struggle with unclear instructions or have to redo poorly written work.
“It’s impossible to calculate the ultimate cost of lost productivity because people have to read things two and three times,” said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National
…While two-thirds of companies surveyed in the 2004 report said writing was an important responsibility for workers, 100% of the 49 states responding to the anonymous survey said it was. More than 75% said they take writing skills into account when hiring.
“You have to be able to write, convert an idea and turn it into words,” said Bob Kerrey, the former U.S. senator and governor from Nebraska, who is chairman of the commission.
In public office, “I read things that were absolutely incomprehensible,” Kerrey said. He shudders to think how Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, published 229 years ago Monday, would have read in standard, government-worker bureaucrat-speak.
“It would be 10 times as long, one-tenth as comprehensive, and would have lacked all inspiration,” Kerrey said.
(Via d r i f t g l a s s.)
Go back to the post about Toyota and math teachers.
The biggest problem I have with certain religious and political movements is that it’s okay not to think. Mind control to make people dumber (as opposed to what? Controlling your mind to make yourself smarter, of course) and this is what you get.
And it confuses me to this day– why do people want to create a class of dummies they can rule over? Great, then you run an army of morons. Can anyone possibly be proud of that?
Power is its own reward. They may be illiterate minions, but they are your minions.
I’ve lost track of the number of times something intended for publication has come across my desk on city, state or school board letterhead that contains fundamental errors of spelling, grammar and/or punctuation. It’s especially unfortunate to see it coming from the schools.
And then there’s the copy to which the president of a large corporation affixes his name. It is often so badly written that I have to rewrite it from scratch. It amazes me that a) whomever actually wrote it does such a poor job; and b) that the guy whose name is attached to the piece (assuming he didn’t write it himself) is fine sending out something with such obvious errors.
And don’t even get me started on such non existent “words” like “proactive.” Some idiot came up with it, under the belief we needed a word that means the opposite of “reactive.” Well, we had that word already- “active.” So, “proactive” is redundant, but people, especially the politicians- toss it about- on paper and aloud- like it actually means something.
Probably the worst example of writing skills can be found on the Internet, where some people don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re”, “they’re” and “their”, and think “loser” is spelled with two Os. Let’s hope it’s just the same three people posting all those grammatical error-laden posts. It’d be depressing to think that such basic errors were the results of their schooling.
For myself, I don’t think the education system is to blame (in all of the above cases), so much as these individuals themselves. I think there’s an unfortunate trend towards laziness when it comes to writing coherently, once people are out of school and not being graded on their skills. Part of that laziness comes from people just running spell check, instead of taking the time to _read_ over what they’ve written and make sure they’re using the right words.
Rick