By Francis X. Maier
Do you remember the fabulous seventies? The decade of Watergate, the recession, the gas lines, the defeat in Vietnam, unemployment, inflation, and the failed rescue of the hostages in Iran. Add to that the emergence of «whole language» theory in education. Whoever came up with that idea deserves a one-way ticket to Svalbard. Check the map. It’s not Las Vegas. Mention «whole language» to my wife, with forty years of experience teaching in Catholic schools, and she’ll laugh at you.
Whole language theory held that learning to read through meaning and context was superior to traditional classroom methods. Also more «authentic.» Therefore, the teaching of young people should reflect it. According to this approach, children would naturally absorb the relationship between sounds and letters simply through exposure to the printed word. Phonetics instruction—the learning of the relationship between sounds and the combinations of letters that represent them—was relegated, especially in public education. Grammar was too. Grammatical rules were considered artificial and stifling.
Consider the results.
By the mid-1980s, national reading skills had clearly declined. The consequences were not long in coming. Christopher Lasch, distinguished author and professor at the University of Rochester, was forced to publish Plain Style, a manual intended to correct the writing clumsiness of his elite students.
Today, more than half of American adults read below the sixth-grade level. Twenty-seven percent do not read any book a year. Twenty-one percent are functionally illiterate. Nearly a third of high school graduates read below the basic competency level. Nineteen percent can barely read.
As expected, students’ reasoning skills have also declined. Whole language theory is far from the only factor that fueled these problems. But it helped set them in motion. Modern digital technologies, heavily driven by images, have only exacerbated them.
At the beginning of Plain Style, Lasch notes that
«[Today] even those who can write an acceptable sentence… often find that it is beyond their capacities to order sentences so that one follows another in logical sequence. Building a coherent paragraph, not to mention a coherent essay, thesis, or monograph, exceeds their mastery of language… Each point [in a text must lead] logically to the next, and each paragraph, even each sentence, adds something to the previous one, carrying the argument firmly toward a conclusion that seems both natural and irresistible, because it has been carefully prepared».
Bad writing suggests confused and lazy thinking. We correct, or at least improve, our ability to reason by reading—substantial books, many of them, varied and good ones. Screens have their utility (like sharing these words), but they tire the eyes and the brain. Books are tactile and silent; the print remains still and permanent; thus the imagination is nourished. Books demand concentration. The best books also reward it, because in the process they teach the fruitful use of words and ideas.
There is no single model of good writing. There cannot be. History, biography, religious works, and fiction require different things from the author. Chasms of style separate Hemingway’s short story «A Clean, Well-Lighted Place» from Tolkien’s «Leaf by Niggle»; Graham Greene’s «The Hint of an Explanation» from Terry Southern’s «The Road Out of Axotle.»
All are small jewels of talent. Each bears the imprint of the author’s personality. But every good writer first understands the power of words and then masters the rules of grammar before transgressing them to the best effect.
So, what constitutes «bad» writing? George Orwell was no friend of the Catholic Church, but he wrote a highly useful essay—Politics and the English Language—for anyone who wishes to think clearly and write well. His main targets were the calculated lie and evasion that characterize much of modern politics. But the value of his essay goes far beyond politics.
Vague, insincere, lazy, and confused language inevitably corrupts thought. A mass of complicated words, he wrote, can «fall upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details» of the truth.
Orwell had a special aversion to the passive voice (for being inherently weak); unnecessary adverbs and adjectives; the piling up of noun compounds and complex phrases; bloated paragraphs; complex clauses; inflated style; and the reliance on pretentious, multisyllabic words of Latin or Greek root, instead of the simple clarity of Anglo-Saxon. All these linguistic resources have their place, but bad writing uses them excessively and without measure.
The purpose of words is the exact and transparent transmission of ideas, experiences, emotions, and facts that, together, express the truth. For Orwell, a straw-man label like «fascist» no longer means more than «undesirable» to those who use it. The writer who resorts to worn-out metaphors or empty phrases like «the fascist octopus has sung its swan song» has begun to «turn into a machine. The appropriate noises come out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved.»
In simple terms, the deceptive or incompetent writer instinctively resorts «to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting ink.»
But why does all this matter? In his essay «The Death of Words,» C. S. Lewis wrote that «when, however reverently, you have killed a word, you have also… erased from the human mind the reality that word originally represented. Men do not continue for long thinking about what they have forgotten how to say.»
For Lewis, the word «Christian» is today too often the victim of an attempt at verbicide. It is attacked again and again, both with mockery and with feigned approval. But its meaning is resistant and specific; always new and demanding. It has power and beauty. It fears no contempt. It has no use for nominal adherence or courteous affirmation.
Here is the point. In Matthew 5:37, Jesus says: «Let your yes be yes, and your no, no.» The Epistle of James (5:12) repeats the message. However, in neither case does Scripture encourage silence. Quite the contrary: Jesus commands us «to make disciples of all nations» (Mt 28:19). The Christian task is to change the world with the witness of our lives. We do it with the honesty, clarity, perseverance, and zeal of our words and actions.
God is in charge. But the work is ours.
About the author
Francis X. Maier is a senior research fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.