'Spaw, you're dead right again.
All my working life has been with words - they've been the tools of my trade for more than 20 years and, like any tradesman, it pains me to see tools abused.
Yet the decline in literacy is by no means an American phenomenon. In the UK I have interviewed would-be journalists for jobs and found that it's not just their literacy that's substandard but their general knowledge and numeracy as well - and this includes English and PPE graduates from Oxbridge.
For what it's worth, which is bugger all, I fear that too much emphasis in education these days goes into passing a set of tests, from the basis SATS tests at seven (and, if this statistically-obsessed government gets its way) at four, to GCSEs, A-levels and many modern modular degrees.
Thus the role of the teacher has become, perforce, not to educate (e ducare - to lead out) but to narrow and channel young minds.
Teachers, though, have too many responsibilities already, and it is unfair to blame them for the way the system dictates they do their job.
The real problem lies with the abrogation by many parents of all educational responsibilities to teachers. "It's the school's job to learn them to read and write..."
Shortly before I left journalism I got involved in a reading scheme at a local school in central London. I remember being appalled at hearing some of the kids with whom I worked say that there were no books at home, and that their entertainment was entirely electronic.
But what made the work so worthwhile was, after sitting with these kids (aged from 8 to 11) and simply reading with and to them, they started getting interested in books. One admitted that his parents had never really read to him - they'd just bung a tape in the machine.
So like any revolution, the overthrow of illiteracy has to come from our own hearthplaces. Don't throw all the blame on "the system" or your kids' teachers - and become a passionate evangelist for the love of reading.
Sorry about all that - end of rant.