While reading an article in the July issue of Planning, the aptly titled magazine of the American Planning Association, I was confronted with a disturbing truth. The article, “Planning Education 2.0,“ focused on recent graduates in the field of urban planning and discussed what has become an unfortunately increasing reality: an alarming number of college students are graduating and entering (or attempting to enter) the workforce without the ability to write effectively. 

Before proceeding, I should preface that I do not hold unrealistic expectations that every college graduate should possess a grip of language to rival that of Dante or Faulkner. However, I do believe that when we allow basic proficiency in such a vital skill to slip from the grasp of college graduates, then we are setting ourselves up for disaster. 

(Author’s note: I’m not even going to begin lamenting on the state of elementary and secondary education, an important issue in its own right that deserves the greatest level of attention from our elected officials).  

Not only is the ability to write essential to success in nearly every occupational endeavor – though effective communication skills will indeed give an individual a marked advantage in his or her aspirations – even more importantly, it is critical for the maintenance of a successful democracy.  An electorate that is easily swayed by those that possess a more sophisticated command of language (and the many ways it can be manipulated) is vulnerable to a tyranny of language.

A tyranny of language exist when a small subset of the population can effectively outmaneuver and/or deceive the general population through their manipulation of language without the act of manipulation being brought to widespread attention. We are not yet at that stage, thanks in no small part to the incessant dedication on the part of the press – both the mainstream and the grassroots – to their role as the Fourth Estate. A role which this administration, as did others that operated largely in secrecy, has tried to minimize as much as possible. However, there is ample evidence that we as a society are not immune to such a condition.

A recent and quite telling example of such vulnerability is the Bush administration’s attempt to re-label common forms of contraception – such as birth control pills – as “abortion,” therefore allowing healthcare providers to refuse such products to women who request them. Luckily, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-New York) and Patricia Murray (D-Washington), members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, have raised the level of awareness on this issue and created a petition to halt this absurd exercise in linguistic trickery. However, unless we can ensure that prominent elected officials will be in a state of omniscient oversight working ceaselessly to expose such attempts in the future, we must ensure that our population is able to contend with agents of strategic deception.

The cost of higher education in this country has been increasing exponentially and there is no evidence that it this trend will cease any time soon. As tuition at both public and private institutions continues on its upward curve, the return on our investment should not dip. The most significant factor in America becoming the leading power in the world was the country’s unwavering commitment to and belief in the value of education. As a recent David Brooks commentary in The New York Times points out, we have allowed our determination on the priority of providing superior education to waver, and thus our educational system has become stagnant, while other nations surge ahead. 

If only we could manage a bit of this linguistic trickery ourselves to get this issue deemed a matter of “national security,” it may receive more than a passing glance.

If the example of linguistic trickery mentioned in this article makes your blood boil with rage and/or indignation (and even if the temperature increase is much slighter, a healthly simmer, for example), click here to sign the petition protesting the Bush Administration’s deceitful devices.