On education and grammar.

When something has to be read twice to make sense then it's time to ask for a proof reader or try and work the meaning into the surrounding text. If you don't know how to say something clearly it's perfectly alright to ask for some experienced help.
The question is: Who is the real villain in kids not being willing to do that?
The closed book test in schooling? Children become afraid to seek help when they are told that the teacher's system is good enough and it's their fault if they didn't understand.
The busy, over-burdened teacher? Who can afford the time required for thirty or even forty children in a class who all have trouble reading the same thing because of a gap in the state / federal curriculum?
The state / federal standards of education? If you have to come up with standards and incentives for an entire system can you be blamed if a few kids here and there are not motivated to do well?
UNESCO? The only people who go this far are conspiracy theorists and rouge educators like Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt and John Taylor Gatto. Most of their research is based in fact and then makes a lot of assumptions in how the communications from that body are received and implemented.
The students? Lets face it, some subjects are dry and boring, and you just think about X-Box games in class when you're not sneaking in a couple extra minutes of sleep because you spent all of last night playing on your X-Box.

The answer is Q: All of the above. Sadly there's no big bad boogey man that we can rip the mask of and say it was them all along. All we can do is look at how to build a better system with less and shallower gaps. though I think Norway's system is getting a lot of well-deserved praise because it's ability to let children play and be kids to balance out their in-take of knowledge. The truth is pushing knowledge is kids doesn't work! The cancellation of Reading Rainbow was a great example of this... and the Kickstarter to get it online showed that people RAWK!

Sadly though, for as long as there's politicians who can get leverage out of it, kids will be taught whatever seems like a good idea at the time and we're going to be told to like it or we're anarchists / communists / terrorists and people who are making a fuss so we can annoy other people.
A.G.