Community member Lee Levin of Leawood, Kansas, addresses Marvin Fremerman’s editorial “Why can’t people talk like I talk?” which ran in the April 27, 2023, edition of The Chronicle.
Marvin Fremerman asks, “Why can’t people talk like I talk?” It is an excellent question, deserving an answer. I am 94 years old — at the very tail end of the Greatest Generation. Just about the only advantage of being very old is that if one is blessed with a good memory they have seen much of the pageant of life in all its confusing context.
The reason people can no longer talk in proper English is that it is no longer being taught. In high school, I vividly remember my English teacher, Miss Hathaway, who taught us the rules of English. Yes, English does have rules. It has subjects and predicates, adverbs and adjectives, nominatives, and a whole string of other things. She taught us how to diagram a sentence — something I am certain none of my grandkids can do.
I grew up during the Great Depression. There was absolutely no federal aid to schools, yet I received a superb education, far superior to what passes for education today. My generation was educated, not indoctrinated. Schools were safe. Major offenses were chewing gum in class or running down corridors. There were no entry barricades. And so we learned to speak proper English, and much more besides.
We learned to respect the police. Today, children are led to hate the police, the very uniforms that guard them while they sleep.
In my time, there were also millions of guns in private hands. Since it was the Great Depression, one would think that crime would be endemic. Not so. Communities were safe. Front doors were left unlocked. Now, in a society of almost unbelievable affluence, gun violence is at a peak.
In my time, a handshake was more binding than any written contract. There was civility. Women never swore — never. Men never swore in the presence of women. Movies had no obscenities, no nudity, no scenes of extreme violence. And they were excellent.
We see these movies on our TV sets — when they are over, it never occurs to us that they could be so marvelous without having to include extraneous crudity. In my personal opinion, it is this crudity in the movies that has had a significant responsibility for the coarsening of society. We tend to believe that the speech and conduct we see on the screen is the norm, is permissible, is expected, and we act accordingly.
The Greatest Generation loved America passionately, willingly fought and died for it. I am a Korean War veteran, and though it may no longer seem fashionable, I am not ashamed to say that I love America deeply. When I die, which certainly will not be that far in the future, I will be entitled to have a normal size American flag placed on my coffin. I want more than that. I have purchased a very large American flag so that it can be draped over the entire coffin. Sneer if you wish. I won’t mind.
My generation lived through the Great Depression. We defended America against the Nazis and the Japanese Empire. Some of us were called back to fight in the Korean War. And then we built the most successful, the freest nation the world has ever seen.
We passed anti-segregation and civil rights laws. Were we perfect? No, of course not. But in order to make changes, was it necessary to destroy the very civil society which our generation had inherited, preserved, and improved upon?
I hope Marvin Fremerman will forgive me for expanding at such length upon the question he asked, and please forgive any grammatical errors.
