Why Can't PVT Johnny Write?

In my current employment, I receive e-mails from a large number of young soldiers. Under current recruiting rules, they either graduated from high school or successfully completed a GED program. They were then screened for aptitude for a highly technical field. They have completed intensive training for that technical specialty to a level that would probably rate at least three separate industry certifications and around 10 semester hours of college credit. These are not stupid people. Why can’t they write?

It is rare for me to go an entire day without receiving an e-mail that completely lacks punctuation, capitalization, spelling and other grammatical rules. I’m not referring to a missing comma and a few misspelled words – I mean no punctuation whatsoever. I mean more than half of the words longer than five letters spelled wrong. They cannot correctly spell the abbreviation for my rank, even though it is shown on the web page where they get my e-mail address. In some cases, they cannot correctly abbreviate their own rank! Lesser examples of such ignorance are even more common, and are not exclusive to the younger soldiers.

We now call it Elementary School, but the first few grades were once called Grammar School. You were expected to learn basic grammar by the time you left the sixth grade. That, in fact, should have been enough to get by and avoid embarrassment throughout adult life. The next six years were supposed to extend the depth and expand the breadth of your knowledge of the English language. So how did these people complete that last six years without being competent? And if they could not manage at least some level of competence in English, what are we to assume about all the other subjects they were supposedly taught?

In the book Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein postulates a society in which the vote is given only to veterans of national service. The theory is that people who have voluntarily risked their lives to support their county will, on average, vote for what is best for the country, rather than what is best for them personally. It worked well in the book. I even agree with the theory behind it. If we tried it in real life, though, there would be a very dangerous transition period, because the people we have in national service right now are not up to the intellectual challenge.

There are three points, though, that make it even more frightening. One, in Starship Troopers, you had to complete your service to earn the vote – these soldiers already have it, and are already affecting our elections. Two, the soldiers are a reflection of our society at large, so you can assume there are other people out there equally ignorant. They still have the vote. Three, there are people out there that were turned down because they fell below our enlistment standards. And they still have the vote.

The Cosmic Cue Ball

I was pretty rough on the "Intelligent Design" movement last time - and I stand by that. To me, the ID concept is a thinly veiled attempt to get Creationism back in the schools as a wedge to eventually get back to teaching Christianity as part of the curriculum. What bothers me is not so much the lack of science involved - I don't expect modern scientific rigor from a "theory" based on a 3000-year old book. It bothers me more to think that the people behind ID really believe we're that stupid. Unfortunately, they're probably correct, on average, but I'll leave that for another entry...

However, I've often heard a concept that could be termed Intelligent Design that intrigues me. I don't know the source of it, but I suspect I first heard it from my dad, and we discussed it again in a late night philosophical discussion (is there any other kind of philosophical discussion?) during my recent visit. I like to call the idea "The Cosmic Cue Ball."

In short, let's assume that mainstream scientific theory is all true - the Big Bang, expanding out to make the universe, matter cooling, forming galaxies, stars, planets, and so on. Add in Evolution here on Earth to get life and eventually intelligent life. No matter how you look at it, there are some pretty unlikely chances occurring in that series of events. That can be explained by random chance - after all, in an infinite universe, it had to happen somewhere. But of course, there's really no good explanation for how the Big Bang got started in the first place. So, let's postulate an external source for the Big Bang - and since we've done so, let's explain some of those unlikely chances, too, by further assuming that it was intentional. Not only did this source cause the Monobloc to explode, it did so it just such a way as to cause the formation of everything we know today - including ourselves. Imagine a billiards shot on a table the size of the universe - if I hit it just there, with exactly this english on the ball, then this particle will hit there, and that one there, and so on, to the billionth upon billionth power...eventually leading, not as chance, but as a result of skillful intent, to a universe bearing life.

While I don't necessarily accept this concept, it does explain one thing that Big Bang and Evolution do not cover sufficiently for me - there doesn't seem to be anybody else out there. In the standard theory, we have to accept that either all other intelligent races are too far away to contact, or that by chance, we really are the first, or even ONLY race to develop. In the Cosmic Cue Ball theory, we can assume that Intelligent Life (or a side effect of our existence yet to be determined) was the goal...and the Ultimate Pool Shark didn't necessarily need two races to make the shot.

As long as I'm on about Intelligent Design again, check out today's Non Sequitur.

School Report

I went to the Open House at the boys' school today. Looks like they're both doing pretty well. I didn't get to meet all their teachers, due to the awkward system they have set up - they schedule a 10-minute block for each class, and you have to basically follow the child's schedule around to all their classes to see all the teachers. Since no arrangements were made to allow for one parent attending for two children, I had to pick and choose a bit on which teachers to meet.

I met three of Michael's teachers, for his Spanish, History, and Physics classes. All three seemed to think he's a pretty smart kid, and told me he should have no problem making up for missing four days last week. His Spanish teacher was especially enthusiastic - not so much about Michael, just enthusiastic in general.

I met the teachers for David's Chemistry, Algebra, French, and Creative Writing classes. They seemed pretty impressed with David. I nearly made his Creative Writing teacher cry when I told her that he was more enthusiastic about her class than he had ever been about anything in his life. As it happens, he likes that teacher, but that's not why he's so excited - he's been pumped up about this class from BEFORE the first day of school! Would you believe he's working on a novel?

At any rate, they both seem to be doing well, which was very gratifying. I know they're smart, of course...with a mom like theirs, they could hardly help it, and I like to think I'm not totally stupid, myself. But it's always nice to have other people agree with me...and even better to see that they're applying themselves well enough to make that intelligence apparent!

As an aside...if anyone is actually reading this blog, I'd love to get a comment once in awhile, just to let me know if I'm wasting my time!