The Great and Mighty RL is in danger

The Great and Mighty RL is in danger.

Nowadays people tend to care less and less about the way they write and speak. And The Great and Mighty is in a big, even disastrous danger. I would mention two things that to my mind prevent people in some way from writing and thinking correctly.

The first thing is the State Exam. It’s an imminent threat which we should get rid of as soon as possible though it seems that this exam is way too profitable for some people in the higher authority and they won’t let us decide whether we need it or not. In past pupils would write a composition at their graduation exam. And I was told that it was almost impossible to cheat or write a good composition without reading a book that is mentioned in the topic of the composition. And what do we have now? We are writing a test, just think of it – a test, a very primitive test. And yes, also at the end of the test we are to write a composition of 180 words or so. But it’s nothing. One doesn’t have to read books to write this composition, one doesn’t have to amaze people by their individual style. All that a pupil needs is to write short simple sentences not to make mistakes. Profound thoughts are not required. One just have to state the content of a text and give a short comment on it to prove an idea if one agrees with it or prove the contrary if one doesn’t agree. The mind is not developing; it seems like a template – if you managed to write one good composition, you would be able to write thousands of them.

The next thing is the constant and rapid development of technologies. How did people communicate in past at a distance? They would write letters to each other. And they paid lots of attention to the way they wrote, to their style, grammar, syntax.  Their letters look like a piece of art; they are full of great finesse. And what do we do now? We are communicating by means of e-mails, chats and various social networks. The tempo of our lives is getting faster and faster. We don’t care much about the style, the way we write, think. The only important thing for us is the speed of communication and the fact that we have passed some information. Our minds got used to writing short messages and thus we have to rack our brains in order to write a proper long letter or message. It’s disappointing and I’m afraid that in this case it’s impossible to change anything. We cannot slow down the progress.

However I don’t lose hope that we will read more books, that we will revoke the State Exam and the situation would change. At least a bit.

Ksenia Kozlova, 301.