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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

I
> >Btw, I graduated in the 1950s. The kids today seem lots more literate  
> than I was then.
> 

I hear this a lot.  But when it comes down to the particulars, I find very 
little evidence for it.  Until recently I taught classes from time to time at 
the various colleges in the area.  I find the average high school graduate to 
be 
funtionally illiterate.  There are exceptions, but I believe those 
individuals would have been fluently literate no matter where they were.

Here is an example.  I was teaching a class on manual commuication (sign 
language) at a local Virginia community college (and admittedly the grist for 
that 
mill is on the average pretty dismal, but they all were high school 
graduates).  The class had 33 people in it.  This by the way was Manual 
Communications 
Level Two, and I did not teach the Level One class.

I started by introducing the classes of signs beginning with all the words 
that are forms of the verb 'be'.   So, asked I, what are the forms of the 
verb 
'be' that begin with 'w'.  Blank stares.  'A'?  Blanker stares.  Can anyone 
tell me ANY form of he verb 'be'.  No one could.  33 students who had all 
graduated high school and had had at least two terms of college level 
English, and 
not one had a clue that the word 'be' is related to the words 'am', 'are', 
'was', and 'were'.  Not one.

In a computer class I remember giving up trying to convince a group of 
students to make a distinction betweent the words 'perimeter' and 'parameter'.

I was contract work at a pharmaceutical research facility for a number of 
years (went there for a three day gig and ended up staying twelve years, so 
that 
was my 'Gilligan's Island' job).  The new chemists coming from a universtity 
with an ostensibly good reptutation could indeed function in the laboratory 
(which was LIM automated anyway, a good trained monkey could have done 80% of 
the 
work),  In conversations with them I found their knowedge of chemsitry and 
especially math to be frighteningly shallow.  There were exceptions, but for 
the 
most part I'd have asked for my money back that I'd spent on that degree.

So I'd have to say, Gene, my experience with the literate leads me to a 
different conclusion.   </HTML>