That is no longer the case.
While most journalists write at the fifth grade level.
I’ve been hiring technical college grads since the mid-eighties. I used to throw away resumes with poor grammar and spelling errors. After all, one must assume the resume is the applicant’s best effort.
If I did that now I wouldn’t have any resumes.
The degradation in basic reading and writing skills is disheartening. It seems young Americans can no longer read and write, and immigrants can’t be bothered to learn proper English.
Ugh.
For example, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is considered 7th grade level, as is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Poe ranks around 9th grade. Classics from Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Shakespeare, Trollope, and Wharton are High school level, along with Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad. In other words, Old School writing.
Wonder how much it would be worth to have someone else homeschool your child, old school style. No common core, reading at the required level (like, before they dumbed it down) and plenty of socialization. A private school, so to speak.
And, did ya’ll know that most newspapers at written at the 7th grade level? Are you connecting the dots?
A couple of decades ago, Chicago Magazine carried a story about two sisters, who had graduated from high school on the South Side of Chicago.
They were #1 and #2 in their graduating class.
Both had their applications to Malcom X College rejected.
Malcom X College is a Jr. College on the South Side of Chicago.
The sisters were black. As was, probably, their high school population (and teachers).
The reason for the rejection was that their reading and comprehension skills were at the elementary school level.
I’m sure they would be accepted today. Maybe even to an Ivy League school.
The standards at their old high school (if it’s still there) are undoubted lower today.
This is actually great news....7th graders are reading at college level!