I dont know if its because I’m getting older (Nearly 39 now) and I don’t read outside of using a computer but I feel like my overall vocabulary, spellying and grammar get worse and worse by the day. Feel like I need brain training.
That’s just called “practice”. And I’ll say its easier to find when its already part of your day to day job activities. If you’re reading and writing with other collegiate professionals at a collegiate level, you’ll maintain your skills. Otherwise, you tend to sink to the common denominator.
I don’t even think that’s bad per say, either. I wouldn’t expect a college athlete to maintain the skills of a 25 year old who trains 4 hours a day if they took up a desk job for ten years. The fixation on having Genius Level Skills at everything overlooks the cost-benefit of maintaining those skills when you have nothing to apply them to.
The idea that the US population would somehow be better off if everyone read at a 12th grade level really begs the question “What are you doing with 12th grade reading/writing skills that would improve your life?” And none of these articles seem to have an answer to that question. It’s just intrinsically better because 12 > 6.
Would your life be better if you could bench press 400 lbs rather than 200 lbs? Would it be better if you could do trigonometry in your head? Recite the Hamlet soliloquy by heart in the original Ye Olde English? I guess, maybe on the margins. But Idk how much of my life I can spare to achieve any one of these. And I don’t know if what I’d give up to achieve them would be better on balance.
the underlying assumption you are missing here, is a political one.
That better reading skills would create a better public voter base would who would vote democratic or more progressively.
That’s a projection based on the current stat, which show that generally, democratic voters are higher educated than republican voters and/or the assumption that a literate public is a good thing.
And TBF the USA founders based a lot of the constitution on the presumption of a educated well-informed public as a foundation for it’s architecture.
So in the liberal sphere, an uneducated, less literate public is a political threat both towards conservatism, and an eroding on the American political project.
And a lot of praise of the USA model in the 18th and 19 centuries was precisely because we were one the first nations to have a public education system and were were such a highly literate nation.
There are also economic concerns here. A more literate/educated public is generally more economically productive.
And a lot of our ‘educational slide’ has been a product of the last 30-40 years.
Anyone who has read a Free Press article or Ross Douthat column or subscribed to The Economist knows this isn’t true.
Conservative Intellectuals are a dime a dozen. The Ivy League is full of them. The courts are packed with them. Legions of Ben Shapiro wanna-bes goose step across Twitter and Facebook daily.
Reading skills won’t make you progressive if all you’re reading is Rand and Heinlein. Intellectuals wrote The Bell Curve and justified the invasion of Iraq. Education is not ideologically neutral and being “smart” does to turn your vote Blue.
The Causation on this is backwards. Progressives venerate academia. Academics don’t venerate progressivism.
It can take a bit of motivation to get started, but reading books can be so fun and worthwhile (with the right books for you). I read a lot of books until I had a kid, then I didn’t have the time or energy to keep it up. Just recently I suffered a back injury that keeps me in bed a lot of the time, which forced downtime on me, and so I started reading again.
I wouldn’t recommend the back injury, but I’ve so much enjoyed embracing books once more. Like you, I’m 38 and felt like my literacy was declining. Now I feel like a lot of it’s coming back! If you can, you should try to resume reading.
you should read more physical books and less online commentary.
you have two vocabularies, active and passive. passive vocabulary is trained on daily interactions. active vocabulary comprises of long-term language you have learned over your lifetime. usually activated while you are reading.
if you read social commentary daily and it’s written by people who have a 6th grade vocabulary, you’re atrophying not just your passive but active vocabularies.
give it a shot for a month, you’ll see an improvement.
it’s a concept I learned from an old teacher from a long time ago. it made sense to me at the time and just kind of stuck with me.
I did evolve the concept a bit for use with the internet, but the original concept centered around speaking vocabulary and the importance of speaking proper English vs lazy English (slang).
I’m unfortunately out of practice with proper speaking etiquette and so my vocabulary has suffered from it.
I dont know if its because I’m getting older (Nearly 39 now) and I don’t read outside of using a computer but I feel like my overall vocabulary, spellying and grammar get worse and worse by the day. Feel like I need brain training.
Yes, like GreenKnight said, read more books, it helps with concentration, reading comprehension and just calming down.
It’s great thing for not only your brain but your overall well-being.
That’s just called “practice”. And I’ll say its easier to find when its already part of your day to day job activities. If you’re reading and writing with other collegiate professionals at a collegiate level, you’ll maintain your skills. Otherwise, you tend to sink to the common denominator.
I don’t even think that’s bad per say, either. I wouldn’t expect a college athlete to maintain the skills of a 25 year old who trains 4 hours a day if they took up a desk job for ten years. The fixation on having Genius Level Skills at everything overlooks the cost-benefit of maintaining those skills when you have nothing to apply them to.
The idea that the US population would somehow be better off if everyone read at a 12th grade level really begs the question “What are you doing with 12th grade reading/writing skills that would improve your life?” And none of these articles seem to have an answer to that question. It’s just intrinsically better because 12 > 6.
Would your life be better if you could bench press 400 lbs rather than 200 lbs? Would it be better if you could do trigonometry in your head? Recite the Hamlet soliloquy by heart in the original Ye Olde English? I guess, maybe on the margins. But Idk how much of my life I can spare to achieve any one of these. And I don’t know if what I’d give up to achieve them would be better on balance.
the underlying assumption you are missing here, is a political one.
That better reading skills would create a better public voter base would who would vote democratic or more progressively.
That’s a projection based on the current stat, which show that generally, democratic voters are higher educated than republican voters and/or the assumption that a literate public is a good thing.
And TBF the USA founders based a lot of the constitution on the presumption of a educated well-informed public as a foundation for it’s architecture.
So in the liberal sphere, an uneducated, less literate public is a political threat both towards conservatism, and an eroding on the American political project.
And a lot of praise of the USA model in the 18th and 19 centuries was precisely because we were one the first nations to have a public education system and were were such a highly literate nation.
There are also economic concerns here. A more literate/educated public is generally more economically productive.
And a lot of our ‘educational slide’ has been a product of the last 30-40 years.
Anyone who has read a Free Press article or Ross Douthat column or subscribed to The Economist knows this isn’t true.
Conservative Intellectuals are a dime a dozen. The Ivy League is full of them. The courts are packed with them. Legions of Ben Shapiro wanna-bes goose step across Twitter and Facebook daily.
Reading skills won’t make you progressive if all you’re reading is Rand and Heinlein. Intellectuals wrote The Bell Curve and justified the invasion of Iraq. Education is not ideologically neutral and being “smart” does to turn your vote Blue.
The Causation on this is backwards. Progressives venerate academia. Academics don’t venerate progressivism.
It can take a bit of motivation to get started, but reading books can be so fun and worthwhile (with the right books for you). I read a lot of books until I had a kid, then I didn’t have the time or energy to keep it up. Just recently I suffered a back injury that keeps me in bed a lot of the time, which forced downtime on me, and so I started reading again.
I wouldn’t recommend the back injury, but I’ve so much enjoyed embracing books once more. Like you, I’m 38 and felt like my literacy was declining. Now I feel like a lot of it’s coming back! If you can, you should try to resume reading.
agreed.
you should read more physical books and less online commentary.
you have two vocabularies, active and passive. passive vocabulary is trained on daily interactions. active vocabulary comprises of long-term language you have learned over your lifetime. usually activated while you are reading.
if you read social commentary daily and it’s written by people who have a 6th grade vocabulary, you’re atrophying not just your passive but active vocabularies.
give it a shot for a month, you’ll see an improvement.
where are those terms from? i am not familiar with the idea of passive vs activity vocabulary, sounds interesting.
it’s a concept I learned from an old teacher from a long time ago. it made sense to me at the time and just kind of stuck with me.
I did evolve the concept a bit for use with the internet, but the original concept centered around speaking vocabulary and the importance of speaking proper English vs lazy English (slang).
I’m unfortunately out of practice with proper speaking etiquette and so my vocabulary has suffered from it.
Q.E.D.