This BBC story points out something that ought to be pretty obvious: bad writing will hurt students when they try to find employment. What’s true in Britain is no doubt just as true in the US.
Gee, it’s too bad that the professionals who teach English have mostly decided that it’s old-fashioned and hegemonic to insist that students learn to spell, use proper grammar and so on. That’s one of the key points covered in a paper recently released by the Pope Center. I suppose that we could either reform the way we teach English to make good writing a top priority again, or we could have Congress pass a law making it illegal for employers to discriminate based on the ability to use the language. We would probably find quite a lot of support for the latter in academe.
