I've posted before about the grading I did for a high school English department. The experienced teachers welcomed my meticulous notations on the children's essays; it was the brand-new, first year teacher who had a cow and refused to even hand them back to her students saying they would be devastated by all of the red marks. She didn't even notice that I included some kind of positive remark or suggestion on each one, to encourage them to improve, progress, etc. This was at the beginning of the school year so they ahd plenty of time to do so. When I called the head of the English dept. at the college, he told me they routinely had freshmen students who couldn't write to save their lives.

Now that I am vetting manuscripts, mostly fiction, I am finding it runs the gamut of well-written to really poor attempts.

I know of some schools which are returning to what they call a "Classical" education which teaches much as they did when I was in school. Unfortunately for some of us, where we are, most of them are fundamentalist Christian-based schools. To each his own, just not my cup of tea.