Vandal With a Handle

The LA Times is not impressed with modern education about writing. Apparently, the No Child Left Behind program is succeeding by letting No Child Get Ahead. A quote:

Today's educational establishment is making actual illiteracy look good, like an act of humanity and rebellion. Writing, which ought to nurture and give shape to thought, is instead being used to pound it into a powder and then reconstitute it into gruel.

Another:

Obviously, if your no-child-left-behind funds depend on your test scores, you will teach your kids to write essays that move a computer to tears. But the idea that computers can grade essays in the first place is one that could only have occurred to people who have no idea how to write or how to read, people whose existence is redundant and hence indefensible: in short, the people who administer the education of our children.