This post is a little different than my usual. But it struck me recently that, after this year, every student currently enrolled in school will graduate in the 20’s and 30’s. The 20’s and 30’s!
As an English teacher, I have made some observations about our language over the past couple decades. I’m not talking about language in the bad/good sense, but in its actual use as a spoken, written, and read language.
Get to the point. Whether it’s the opening of a television show, a news article, or a blog post, we have been conditioned to get to the point and move on. No details, no superfluous words, just the facts.
Spelling doesn’t matter. We are creating our own spelling in the 21st century. If a word is too long, we’ll replace letters with numbers (gr8; b4) or just use the first letters in a phrase (lol; omw).
Books are boring. When I started teaching, I could assign books like Great Expectations and The Scarlet Letter and, while my students may not have loved them, the majority read them. Today, those books are overwhelming to most students, who will likely give up after the first few pages and simply watch a YouTube summary instead. (Hang with me, this isn’t a “beat up the kids” post, I promise)
Teens know more. While they may not read 500 page books, teens today read the equivalent amount of words in social media and on their phones. They read and write more daily than I ever did at their age. And when they don’t know something, they can look it up immediately. They know so much!! We don’t give them enough credit for this (see, I told you to hang with me!).
Images are replacing words. Everyone knows this, but the change, as an essayist postulated over 20 years ago, has the potential to be as 
monumental to humanity as was the shift from being a oral culture to a written one. We are moving away from being a written culture and into a “visual” culture.
So what does all this mean? What are we losing by reducing the length of the works we read, the words we spell, even the stories we tell? I believe that all this breadth of knowledge can prevent us from having real depth. We need to slow down to really think about the world, about God, about our purpose. We need to sit quietly to process and pray. We don’t need to try and turn back the clock. We need to enjoy new developments and, as a teacher, I need to prepare my students to understand this visual culture, even as I continue to challenge them to enjoy the beauty of the written language.
Parents, we must to learn to navigate the world our kids are living in. We need to understand their technology, to engage with them in it, and to protect them from it, when necessary. And teens, give your parents some credit — they have a lot to teach you about the joys of words and stories, the thrill of wrestling through a great book. Our world may be changing, but we don’t need to leave the old behind. Classic books aren’t as overwhelming as you may think. Writing styles may have changed, but we still know boys like Pip and women like Hester; the themes of maturity and hypocrisy still ring true. And we learn from those who have wrestled through those issues before us.
Language is important. It’s the vehicle God used to tell us about Himself. His son is called the Word! Language may be changing, but it is still precious. Let’s protect it, even as we develop new ways to communicate our ideas.
