A disturbing trend I see in one of my paid adjudication positions, wherein coworkers evaluate such factors as appropriate reading level, is massively underestimating childhood vocabulary. Today I saw someone claim elementary students would be unlikely to know the word "bog." Today I saw someone claim elementary students would be unlikely to know the word "peninsula." Both instances were in otherwise extraordinarily trite, dumbed-down texts oozing in talking down to kids like they were toddlers. First language English speaking elementary aged kids likely experience the words "bog" and "peninsula" in class for various geography, history, or science units.
When I was growing up and dinosaurs were the raddest thing, seven-year-olds were regularly spitting out motherfucking "Diplodocus" or "Stegosaurus." They can handle "peninsula" in their text! Besides, kids are okay if they encounter words they don't know. That should be a regular occurrence for them. If they don't know the word, well, now they've picked it up! Because it's accessible to them and you should treat it as accessible to them. Because that's how kids engage meaningfully with the world, use their mind, and grow into adults. Because kids actually like it better than when you try to cement them as incompetent. When was the last time you cracked open The Chronicles of Narnia and realized the very-accessible text still gave periodic words like "jollification" and "skirling"?
Lest you think I'm, like a pendulum, swinging the opposite direction and evaluating our texts as if kids can read anything, I'm not. I will rate accordingly if a sample incorporates vocabulary like "jollification" and "skirling." I am not treating the average elementary text as one implementing the names of scientific species of trees and extinct fauna (although... Zoobooks, anyone?). What I am putting my foot down for is words like "bog." For the love of God... the word "bog" is BOG. IT IS NOT A WORD PEOPLE SHOULD FIRST ENCOUNTER IN TEENAGED YEARS!
I am tired of marking, in my evaluations, "No, kids should be able to read this. Kids should be able to read this." I am tired of marking, in my evaluations, "No, eighth graders should be able to read this. Eighth graders should be able to read this." Irrespective of whether literacy rates are holding well in education, irrespective of whether a kid you know cooperates when presented with reasonable opportunity to learn, the last thing you want to do is decide all of society should be treated as dumbed down, incapable, and lacking the ability to talk, read, and learn. I have no intention of sounding alarmist like society is collapsing if children don't say "pusillanimous" or that I believe adults should all tout erudite vocabulary. I don't care if everyone's academic. I'm talking about my coworkers' all-too-baffling low expectation of the basics. Consider the consequences if you make their expectation default, implement an internet where an eleven-year-old doesn't have to read the word "bog." I am watching people construct their own towers of self-created incompetence and sealing others' fates as fools.
