50+ Lifestyles

PUBLISHER’S CORNER

By Eloise Graham

Back to the Basics

It has been a year now since America began to shutdown and encourage sheltering-in-place. I learned a lot of new technology about staying connected virtually. Ten years ago, I am sure I thought I would never need this type of knowledge. But thank goodness for it and the young minds that can explain it, or at least fix it, for us first-year-Baby-Boomers. If we hadn’t had the young minds to educate us in this virtual endeavor, it would have been a much lonelier year. I would have missed out on a lot.

But I feel our youth are also missing out on a lot. We need to teach them the basics: the three “R’s” – Reading, (W)riting and ‘rithmetic.

Reading and Writing

Today, everyone is texting. Our youth have forgotten how to read and use punctuation. An example of a text, “OMG u r 2 funny c u tonight k” Translation, “Oh my goodness, you are too funny. See you tonight, okay?” That was a simple one. Some I get from my granddaughter I have to read three or four times to decipher what she means. Even then I can get it wrong. Adding punctuation would be a big help. To me, with all of the emojis and abbreviating words to their sound alike letters (i, c, r, u), we have almost reverted back to hieroglyphs on the cave wall. That’s a big step backwards in writing and reading – just basic communication.

I recently heard stories of teenagers that could not read hand written notes that were given them. The notes were written in cursive, which is no longer being taught in school. Granted, some people’s penmanship leaves a lot to be desired, but it is still communicating with others and others should know how to read it. Cursive writing is individual and personal, almost like a fingerprint. Do you remember getting letters and you knew who it was from just by the style of the penmanship? Our youth is missing that experience.

Now to conquer Arithmetic

The basics of adding and subtracting have been challenged because “borrowing” and “carrying over” don’t seem to be allowed. Counting change back at the checkout register can be a complete disaster. Have you ever had a bill for, say, $11.10 and you hand the cashier a twenty, a one and a dime? They look completely perplexed and try to give you the one and the dime back saying that the twenty will more than cover the cost.

SMH – oh, that means “shake my head” in the new language of today.