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14 Law Notes Gen. Prac. [i] (1978)

handle is hein.journals/lwntgen14 and id is 1 raw text is: Published by the American Bar Association's Section of General Practice Winter 1978 THE EDITOR'S VIEWPOINT Bruce E. Davis I. Wits and Words (Revisited) In the past, we have written about our use (or misuse) of the English language. Our professional tools must include the ability, with varying degrees of skill, to use words, organized (hopefully) in some fashion or another. Our professional proficiency in speaking and writ- ing was grounded on teachings begun in junior and senior high schools throughout the land. Nearly all of us suffered through Latin, Chaucer, MacBeth, Julius Caesar, composition, contemporary literature, etc., before reaching college. Can you visualize the added confusion which our profession would bring to our society if our exposure to the principles of English were to be curtailed? Well, my colleagues, such a frightening development may be underway in our secondary schools-and even in some colleges! As you will recall, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, high schools broadened their curriculum offer- ings as a means of making curriculums relevant to students and encouraging potential dropouts to stay in school. Such courses proliferated; high schools began assigning courses with titles such as American Hang Ups, and the like. Certain high school courses once considered basic were made electives. While many of these courses were as academically rigorous as the tradi- tional courses they replaced, many were not. Last August, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the College Entrance Examination Board cited the proliferation of electives as one likely cause of the nationwide decline in average scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Educators suggested this increase in practical courses-some directed towards specific em- ployment demands, e.g., key punch operators-made high school curricula more in tune with the 1970s. As a result, in my view, there has been a significant in- crease in the number of students entering college, and entering the job market, deficient in one of the most basic of all skills, the ability to communicate. If you question this judgment, we suggest you spend an hour at your local high school in conversation(?) with the seniors-you know . . . right on . .. alright . . . say, man . . . like, you gotta. . . .-sentence fillers, they are called-I call it inability to express ideas without surrounding trash words. Recently, The New York Times, one of the last bas- tions of proper English, printed a study by the Univer- sity Application Processing Center of the City Univer- sity of New York. The study included figures for senior classes of 1973 through 1978, showing a decline in the percentage of students taking at least one semester of junior level academic work by the end of their third year in high school in all five basic subject areas: English, mathematics, foreign languages, social sciences and science. In English, for example, the percentage fell from 77.7 percent to 67.9 percent, while in mathematics the rate dropped from 28.6 to 24.6 percent. Likewise, the percentage of students taking no (continued on next page) Copyright @ 1978 American Bar Association Vol. 14, No.1 24 pages LAW NOTES FOR THE GENERAL PRACTITIONER Chairman and Editor V Bruce E. Davis, Bethlehem Steel Corp., Bethlehem, PA Vice-Chairmen and Associate Editors: Advisory Board, Vice-Chairmen: Richard P. McLaughlin James R. Phelps Wayne Boyce Judge CharlA4 fL Richard E. Wiley F. Wallace Pope, Jr. Prof. Louis M. Brown Editorial Board Domenico J. Alfano (Administrative Law) William 0. Bittman (Criminal) Edward F. McKie, Jr. (Patent, Trademark Richard K. Decker (Antitrust) Judge Ralph J. Podell (Domestic Relations) & Copyright) Judge Francis J. Larkin (Commercial) Mitchell W. Miller (Economics of Practice) Vacant (Real Estate) Sidney L. Krawitz, (Contracts) Marvin A. Cohen (Estate Planning & Probate) C. Dale McClain (Taxation) Robert M. Westberg (Corporate) William B. Spann, Jr. (Labor) Harry Sabbath Bodin (Trial Practice Leonard Kopelman (Miscellaneous) & Negligence) Produced by the ABA Press LAW NOTES for the General Practitioner

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