02:07
Emmanuel Shebbs
Letter writing is an act of communication. In most establishments, letter writing exercise, especially, ‘Application Letters’ are used by most CEOs to do entrance Tests for their applicants for employment.
This is because letter writing pulls the in-gene of personal expression in you. It causes you to do some more in writing, thinking, articulation and composition; it also tows out your initiative a great deal. For those that are writers, one common thing is that if you go through your work 100 times, you will do 100 corrections.
Letter writing used to be the sole communication link between us, those days when we were in school, and our parents who were at home; talking about the Pre-GSM era.
Those days, a day hardly passed without we, pupils (later students), boys or girls, scripting out some sheets for those boys and girls in the class. We wrote and sent out so called ‘love letters’ under the tables, desks; through the window blinks, frames and side pockets. In more comic ways, the ‘love letters’ will be dropped for the anticipated recipient in a place they use often maybe, in their school bags, lockers, stocking’s folds etc. These were fun and fantastic.
If we must be truthful to ourselves, ‘love letter’ writing was a taboo, but then, it contributed so much in building the literal skills of many young boys and girls of our time. Our teachers, in Sunday school, assembly halls, CRK (as it was called then) class would always feed our ears with their well brewed sentiments against ‘love letter’ writing. During the POP of the Batch C NYSC members, the scheme gathered that more than 90% of Nigerian graduates have very poor skills of letter writing. Do we really say it is just in letter writing? No. They have poor writing skills, not just in letter writing but in written expression.
Who has the blame? The Government says it is ASUU for churning out such half-baked products for service in the labour force; ASUU throws it back to the government claiming poor funding is the cause. Does funding affect knowledge? Well, your guess is as good as mine.
But one thing is that University education does not give room for word-to-word skill and tutorial in letter writing. When I was in college, there was no course like “Introduction to Letter Writing”; we had “Use of English” which rather scans over letter writing and never did an in dept study on it. But, I can remember vividly that ‘letter writing’ was contained in my ‘Use of English’ Text book, yet none of the three lecturers assigned for that course did talk about it. Perhaps they believed I should have known how to write letters.
That is by the way.
‘Love Letter’ writing is fast retreating. Its place has been hugely taken over by technological inventions, chief of which is SMS. Also, ‘Love letter’ writing has been swept off by social hubs and networks.
If you want to have a chat with your lover, you have very little to do. Just pull you laptop or Ipad close, key in your username and password. Are they online? If no, don’t worry. Pick up your phone do them a flash. Did they call back? If no, now, send a ‘Call Me SMS’; I think your service provider will help you do an SMS. You don’t need to worry about what grammar to use; they will send the message to your lover.
Didn’t they call back? Ok. Don’t worry. Pick up your phone, scroll to the SMS Icon; click on it then write: “Swt hrt pls login on FB”. Did you get the message? It simply means: “Sweet Heart, Please login on Face Book.
This is one of the many million SMS scripts that fly the GSM waves each day. It is grooved with lots of uncensored, ungrammatical tenses. Those good old days, a word or phrase of such like attracts swollen buttocks from the Head Master or Mistress as were then called. Nevertheless, you couldn’t do a letter without letting your close friend reread it for you, check for corrections etc. You wouldn’t want to be turned to a laughing stock after making such bold steps to write a ‘love letter’, so you would want to use most correct tenses, artistic hand writings to get your lover tripping.
Social life these days are a deviation from what ‘social’ means in terms. This era is replete with short ways of making friends, dating, chyking, chatting and socializing. These short cuts fall as fancies to our youths who care less about the moral lessons attached with social life.
In this era, youths and youngsters are imbued with the clue of a ‘world without stress’. A world which its flavours are sipped from the antennae sling of a rose flower; you may not necessary make some hard cuts before taking a sip.
What a life! This is exactly the consequence of technological social platforms known as social media. Imagine a boy or a girl born into this time and age. Poetries have been dapped away by soft peddling toys that sing poems. Some play the tunes without lyrics while others sing the whole. Does the child know what it is that the small red toy is playing? No. He nods his head at each tune. He cries when the toy is snatched away. ‘’Mummy, mummy” he calls. His books are far beneath the cushions.
Where are the chalks, plates, pencils? Where are the Macmillan’s sensible folk tale novels? Where are the play books and novels featuring our so much admired characters like Eze, Okon, Ada, Ali and Simbi. Haven’t they all been retreated? We recited their quotes, told their stories in our silent moments, drew their images on our palms and at the back of our 20 leaves Exercise books.
Imagine a child born into the fast streaming features of these technological confusions? What else could he learn other than the short hand, abridged, doctored and pseudo writing language like, “pls, lol, IJN, k, HBD, Tnks, hw, ” etc?
That is the problem we are passing through. NYSC may have made a wise observation yet it is not even the fault of ASUU as some claimed neither is it that of the government. It is the responsibility of a world of men with knowledge about child training and development. Suffice it to borrow one of Solomon’s wise droppings: ‘train up a child the way he should go so that when he is old, he may not depart from it”. That is the fact.
Let us go back to the days of ‘Love Letters’. To the days when the young child had value for what he writes, reads and says. It has so much good fixes in the moral life of the child than we ever thought. let us take our children back to use of papers and pencils rather than memory card, video games and cool snaps. It is about time. We have to show the love by giving our children the best they need rather than letting them chew what they see in the society.
EMMANUEL SHEBBS
