Children Can´t Speak or Write Properly Anymore

For centuries now there have been recurrent complaints about the state of the English language. These complaints always seem to assume that the language is in decline and that this decline is associated with moral decline. Although it is of course important that educational standards in school should be carefully maintained, there is in reality nothing to suggest that today´s youngsters are less competent at speaking and writing their native language than older generations of children were. THose who complain today that standards of literacy are declining assume tacitly that there was a Golden Age in the past when our children, for the most part, could read and write more competently than they can today, and the complaints fit into a patters of complaint literature that has been with us since the eighteenth century. Complaints of these days are never clear as to the Golden Age when children were more literate than they are now. When could it have been? Not in the 18th and 19th century, because most people could not write their own names. Also not in the 40's, 50's and 60's, because they were not as educated as the children are now. 

The children are nowadays expected to meet higher standards. That's why it can seem that they can't speak or write properly anymore.