English is in the hands of teenagers, and you can do nothing about it

Teachers, shaking in their seats, are pointing their fingers at the hairy, uncontrollable, toxic monster that is our smart phones. Those machines of evil that are threatening conventional spelling and grammar rules with a nuclear bomb whose codes are comprised of neologisms and abbreviations. After reading “Twtr? It’s majorly bad! Leading headteacher condemns ‘text speak’ for eroding schoolchildren’s language skills”, I do believe that our teachers and educational system are majorly bad as well! Teachers push us to think critically and to be open-minded yet they themselves are rebels against their own cause– they refuse to accept that texting and the development of bidilectal teens is in fact a miracle and not an apocalypse of language. All the new terminology and methodologies of communication are in fact, evolving and not eroding our language. It is true evidence that English is constantly morphing and is fluid, not fixed in a grammar textbook. It baffles me that they as teachers, the alleged congregation of intellectuals closest to our reach as students, are neglecting such a development and shutting it down as though it were a pest.

Why don’t they, rather than criticize us endlessly, guide us through the blurred line that is learning when to code switch? Why don’t they then give priority to English rather than sit and moan in their seats with a pout, doing nothing, while Math continues to stereotypically be the prime subject for success? Our parents pay thousands for them to do so. That is ineptness in its polished glory. Parents also pay thousands for them to blossom our love for reading– and it is clear that that love will not flourish if all students are made to painfully sit down and analyze every metaphor ever written by Charles Dickens. It is natural then, of course, that a regular teenager will “spend much of [his/her] free time on sites such as Twitter and Facebook instead of reading”. It would go against the tidal force of nature to expect them to do something they have not been nourished to enjoy. So rather than blame students for their own inability to teach, teachers should wake up to the call of linguistic evolution and steer us in the right direction swiftly rather than hammering an integral part of our shared identity as the new generation. After all, English is in our hands now, and we shall not be afraid to use it.