XplanaZine

Kent Graham will tell you he’s just another reader who enjoys words and language. “I don’t consider myself any kind of word expert,” he says, “I wouldn’t even think of offering my services to Merriam-Webster or any of the other dictionary builders.”

Graham’s modesty, while endearing, has no basis in reality. Graham is indeed a word expert. He has made the study of words a lifelong avocation, and even with his busy schedule, he stays up on current trends in our ever-evolving language.

Graham’s mother got him hooked on books at an early age, and he values richness in word usage much like a wine connoisseur values a vintage Meritage. “The greatest pleasure I get from reading, aside from a good story that makes me go ‘Yee-haw,’ is reading a well-painted tale where the writer obviously loves language and uses words in a way that I can’t fail to appreciate.”

After receiving his undergraduate degree from Texas Tech in 1970, Graham spent the next few decades employed by the U.S. Air Force serving for many years on the E-3, also known as the AWACS. He retired from the Air Force in 1998.

“When I retired I said laughingly, ‘I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’” Looking through the University of Oklahoma’s College of Journalism catalog, Graham came across a professional writing program and saw it as a perfect fit. He is currently finishing his master’s degree and is teaching writing classes, during which he enlightens–or at least attempts to enlighten–young minds as to the benefits of literacy.

Xplana: What do you think of the current level of literacy among the general public?

KG: I think it’s sadly devalued. I’m sure that there are as many reasons for that as there are pontificators trying to find them, but these are some of the factors at play. For one, we are not as much a reading culture as we once were. Books now have more competition. Also, popular forms of communication tend to be dumbed down. They resort to direct communication and language. It’s as though people worth communicating to have only a fifth-grade education. I’m talking primarily about television–radio to a certain extent–but TV and movies are the main communicators these days. The language of the video media is very basic, very elementary.

Xplana: Do you think technology has had a negative effect on education?

KG: Technology is too easy a target. Technology may be the instrument, but the real villain is ourselves. We as parents and we as taxpayers have been complicit in an overall dumbing down of the system. Technology merely offers different ways of getting information quickly to people. For instance, it allow students to work at their own pace and not be bound to the routine of a classroom. But at the same time technology can be a hindrance. Computer-based learning systems contain pictures and sounds which distract from words. Since youngsters are naturally attracted to flashy lights and attractive colors, they find themselves not working with words or language.

Xplana: How do you think our current educational system has affected the level of literacy?

KG: It doesn’t challenge youngsters enough, particularly in the language arts. I was going through a pile of books the other day I brought from my mother’s estate. One was an elementary reading textbook from when she taught during World War II. The copyright date was 1920. This was a fourth-grade reader, and the vocabulary, the language structure, and the reading style was more advanced than my sons’ eighth-grade language arts exercises.

The emphasis has been to make students all read at the same level rather than to make students learn their language. Consequently, people finish their education without learning to read challenging material.

If you read almost any novel from the 19th century, you’ll notice they are more difficult to read than novels currently being published. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that the language itself has changed. Syntax and structure are different now. The other reason is that writers two centuries ago used more words than are used today. Most of the words are still in our vocabulary but we never use them. For many it’s almost like reading a foreign language–they find themselves getting out the dictionary and looking up unfamiliar words.

In books by British writers today you generally find a larger variety of words than found in books by American writers. The language is richer in some respects in other English-speaking countries than it is here in the U.S. because if we don’t keep it simple, people might not understand what we have to say.

Xplana: What can parents do to improve their child’s education and level of literacy?

KG: Parents can talk to their children as though they are humans. Ours sons had useful working vocabularies by the time they were three or four because they had been talked to as people and not as babies. It’s during those first five years that their language wiring gets set.

And they can read to their children. You build language into kids by reading to them and later by letting them read to you. Besides, reading is such a great companionship-building activity because not only are you telling them stories, you’re sitting together. It’s a great family activity.

Kent Graham will be writing a regular column for Xplanazine on the never-ending nuanced nature of natter and narrative as well as issues other than the overuse of alliteration.