A small attempt at pulling the plug on devolution … courtesy of the typewriter

I’m about —–> this far <—– from purchasing a cane. (You see … I borrow Bob Degon‘s quite a bit and I’m certain he’s getting weary of me asking for it. I mean … a thing like that could eventually ruin a friendship, you understand.)

What do I need a cane for, you might ask? Simple: So I can wave it while yelling at those damned kids to stay off the lawn.

In many ways, I’m rather old school. I don’t subscribe to a lot of things electronical or technological. I’m not hip on updating my computer, I don’t need the latest version of cell phone nor do I play games or watch films on it. (I never understood why anyone would want to watch a film on a cell phone.) I don’t have notifications pinging at me that there are new Twitter messages pending. (I check it religiously every 4 days or so … or whenever I get around to it. I happen to know this secretly drives fellow colleague Ivey West a bit bonkers.) When I text, I don’t do so in acronyms. I use proper punctuation, I capitalize where needed, I don’t morph words or sentences into jumbled mish-mash. I don’t use numbers or symbols for actual words and I do not use any kind of emoticon whatsoever. (I’ve never understood the logic of the amalgam of a “less than” symbol and the number “3” placed adjacent to each other as an equivalent for the word “love.” Because, to me, it looks like a sideways asshat. And that’s exactly what I call it when I see it.) I even keep a big, thick, antiquated dictionary at my side when I write. I have never (yes, I used the word “never”) been put out for stopping what I was doing, flipping open the pages of my Webster’s and looking up a word that needed to be looked up.

My point in all this is relatively simple: I believe the use of technology has denigrated the average student/kid/youth to the point of being rendered socially uncommunicative. Not only do kids refuse to take the time to spell correctly (everything must be done quickly for some reason), it’s easier to cannibalize words rather than take the time to type them out. This is a disservice. It’s a disservice to how they’re learning, what they’re retaining and to the English language itself. They’re forcing themselves into “dumbery.”

One of my favorite bands, Devo, was and still is right: Devolution is real. You can see it in kids’ inability to articulate. You can see it when they substitute the word “whatever” for a good argument. You can see it when they inject “like” in a sentence a dozen times to emphasize a point. You can see it when they ejaculate “OMG!” and “WTF?” in everyday conversation like it really means something.

And that’s why I dog dug the piece in the video below, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Bill Geist‘s piece on the re-emergence of the lowly typewriter. As a matter of fact, I just about stood up and applauded when Phoenix, Arizona teacher Ryan Adme — self-admitted typewriter lover — declared of his classroom charges: “Students who are typing on a regular basis were more prone to identify their own spelling mistakes and go back and correct them.” In my book, fellow citizens, that statement alone is worth pulling the power cord on your electronic device.

So … I’m hunting for a cane. A big one. One that will *swooooosh* noisily when I cut the air above my head with it, waving it around like some crazed mad man.

And all the while yelling: “Hey! You kids! Get off my damned lawn and pick up a dictionary and learn something!”

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Aug 12, 2012 @ 15:18 EST5EDT