Language Arts

That's what they called what I later came to learn was "English" class while attending a Catholic elementary school in the 1970s.
My two-year-old has made the transition from babbles, whines, and an occasional word into building near-complete sentences within a week's time.
My wife and I recently returned from a week-long vacation to northern Michigan, where we stayed in a cottage at a Houghton Lake resort and hosted my mother and my friend from another radio station many years ago (though not at the same time).  As we pulled out of the driveway, that's when our child made the transition as described above.
OK, who are you and what have you done with our daughter?
I have always been a proponent of daycare centers.  I believe that the best of them can best teach where a stay-at-home parent doesn't have the patience or know-how for.
My two-year daughter attends a Christian-centered day care center four days a week.  The day care center is a non-profit enterprise operating as a separate arm of a Presbyterian church.
My wife and I are Christians, but not 'holy-rollers' my any means.  However, we recognize the value in Christ-centered teachings.  As an only child, we want Savannah to have the proper social interaction that she needs to function effectively in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.  Social interaction is just as necessary as academics to survive in today's world.
And as a country, we are falling way behind in academics.  Especially where basic English skills are concerned.
As a broadcast journalist, I often pore through multiple media sources when writing my stories, to find the differing 'takes' other journalists have on a story and if it's slanted, to what angle is the slant.
While coming upon a story from the website a local TV station here in the Pittsburgh area, I noticed that the writer had written that the victim of a home invasion "was woken up by the noise".
"Woken" up.
While Dictionary.com, reports "woken" as a past participle of 'wake', it's still open to argument.
During the John Chancellor era, the victim "was awakened by the noise". 
I rank woken with 'got'. 
Don't even get me started with gross misspellings.  A former colleague of mine, who was a feature reporter on the guilty TV station in question, occasionally featured misspellings she herself witnessed in very public places.
Restaurants.  Car repair shops.  Beauty salons.  One would think that if you owned a business, you would have the sense to have the basic skills necessary to fill out a loan application.
Even those are 'dumbed down' for the masses these days.
This is why passive parents make me sick.
Spend some time with your kid.  And I don't mean throwing about a ball or being their 'buddy'.  Teach them some things.  And encourage them to do better.  And encourage is not a synonym for 'push'.  There is a difference.  It's your duty as a parent to learn it...and teach it.
Otherwise, we're one day going to raise a generation that eventually progresses to the level of its own incompetence. 
If we aren't already there now.

NEXT WEEK:  Restauranteur Relief