With increased access to the Internet by practically every American public school student has come an awareness of just how ill poorly educated our young people are in regard to English grammar and spelling. It appears that an entire generation has somehow managed to graduate from our public schools without having grasped some of the most basic principles of writing.

One need only spend a few hours perusing online forums, discussion boards and/or social networking sites to see the magnitude of the problem. It is appalling and an embarrassment that so many of our young people, even those who have graduated with high marks, express themselves so poorly in writing. The most common issue, by far, is confusion in regard to simple homophones.

To put it simply, our schools are producing high school graduates who haven't mastered areas of English language that we should expect to be drilled into their heads by completion of elementary school. As concerned citizens, we demand a campaign to address this as a serious issue in school systems across the country, and for the public at large. We need to return to a place of being among the most literate populations in the industrialized world.