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"I would despair over the literacy of Canadian born adults."
Actually you should.
As you may know, I was involved at the board level with Quinte Literacy, a non-profit agency helping those in needs of basic literacy and numeracy skills. Things are real bad out there. Millions of adult Canadians (all age groups) never achieved basic reading or writing skills. Yet the problem is largely ignored by governments at all levels who count on volunteers to do the job.
@pierrelebel wrote:"Things are real bad out there."
Your work with a volunteer literacy group is commendable, and necessary despite our supposed universal education system.
Now, you probably know I am a linguist, or at least I was originally trained as such. Languages were my business for many years and I see problems where other people see perfectly normal everyday speech. I just can't help myself, like a musician who hears a false note, and it drives my husband crazy.
Therefore, forgive me for saying that I hope the quote above was in jest on your part in the context of your post. We all know that "bad" is an adjective that can only be modified by an adverb, right? That would be as in: "Things are really bad out there." Were you pulling our legs, or just testing to see if I'd pop up? If the joke is actually on me for being such a fusspot stickler, that's OK! 
@puckstopshere wrote:
There is a simple reason for the decline in literacy - social media. Facebook, Twitter and email (and all their other incarnations) have reduced us to a form of short hand.
I read your post with a great deal of interest. From the viewpoint of a trained linguist and writer, I tend to look at the current transformation of English that we're witnessing as a bizarre sort of accelerated process of language metamorphosis. By that I mean that technology is speeding up (and making almost universal) what might otherwise be a gradual change over perhaps decades, if not centuries. Interestingly it's not just English that is quickly evolving, but it is the main object of pressure, being the world's lingua franca.
The Industrial Revolution had a similar though much more dilated effect on English in making conventions of speech, writing, spelling and grammar almost mandatory, which in turn demanded the creation of a more consistent basic education system. Worldwide trade, and the expansion of the British Empire, required a common understanding, a linguistic currency that most users could easily comprehend. There's little use in efficient international commerce if no one can agree on how to communicate, or conversely if people waste too much time trying to understand each other.
The evolution of language (again, from a purely linguistic standpoint) isn't a bad thing in itself; in fact no worse than natural physical evolution. It's usually an interesting and organic process that can be studied in slow motion over half a century or more. However today we're in danger of very quickly descending into a world of English speakers who can only communicate via electronics, either via internet "shorthand" typed on keyboards, or via voice. I agree with you that books -- those wonderful, physically and mentally satisfying things -- will soon become as obsolete as pencil and paper.
These days I meet the occasional youngster (i.e. under 25) who is unable to read cursive handwriting. The next generation may struggle with being able to read and write the printed word correctly. If technology then fails, how will they communicate?
I sometimes wonder whether the accomplishments of our civilization that do not get recorded in books or by another physical means will even be accessible to future civilizations without the technology that created it. Just think of trying to find the right gadget to play an old 8-track recording today. Yes, so far we've managed to develop means of converting and upgrading, but that ability may not always exist in the future. Our combined, accumulated knowledge can probably soon be stored in a closet-sized computer, but it could also vanish permanently without all the technology to support it. It exists in less than thin air.
Written language, perhaps only second to the mastery of fire, was man's greatest achievement. It's the reason we can still read Plato, Socrates, and all the rest, including the bible. Here I'm not referring to a particular language, but the act of committing ideas to a coherent written system that can be preserved and read centuries or millennia later.
How ironic to imagine that more than 6,000 years of development of the written language and its precious preservation through various civilizations might be shattered in a few decades by advanced technology. Now there's classic Greek hubris!
As an aside, I'm fascinated by your story about the boat. Is there a chance that boat was one of the "Winsome" series that won many races in the 50's? I owned one of them briefly a long, long time ago and in faraway Vancouver, when it was rundown and in need of a lot of care and elbow grease to make it the beauty it once was.
Incidentally, I can say with some authority that your English teacher was simply rigidly following the accepted code of grammar set out by Victorian era school authorities when she laid down the law concerning the word "but" at the beginning of a sentence. But -- she was dead wrong from a linguistic and stylistic perspective! It's the same kind of argument music teachers use, and of course there's merit in it when you're teaching a 10 year old. It doesn't quite hold water though for someone who has learned technique and needs to bend the rules for the sake of expressiveness or emphasis. Just ask Mozart (or James Joyce).
Great having a "convo" with you! LOL 
My daddy always raised me right and you do not for no reason ever be mean to girls aka women .. You either say something nice or just walk away so when my teacher made these 14 year old girls ball there head up I lost my **bleep** and ruined my chances at having a teacher for english for 2 years LOL
You remind me so much of my father! He would never allow us kids to talk back to our mother because, as he told us in later years, he "didn't have a mother to talk back to". She passed away when he was 9 years old.
My father was a bookworm but was not well educated. With grade 9 education, hard work and the assistance of an electrical inspector who moved onto our street he managed to obtain his electrician's license just before the law was changed requiring a minimum of grade 10 to obtain the license. He began on his own and eventually hired up to 5 men. His business was always operated from our home. At the age of 55 he sold his business and semi-retired. Before he was 60 he was fully retired and spent 6 months of the year in Florida. How things have changed in the workplace today!
I am also a reader, loved English and have always been a perfectionist when it comes to language. I have loosened up considerably, though, since I started selling on eBay. I guess what I read on the boards is rubbing off on me (oh, no!!). But I do love this quote from Sir Winston Churchill on grammar......
“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
No matter how corny it would sound, when I wrote letters I would never end a sentence with a preposition. I would if I was talking to someone but not in the written word!
DH was never a reader until recently but he has been volunteering for the Reading Assistance Programme at our grandsons' public school for about 3 years. He works with Grade 1 students and absolutely loves it! He is great with children and I can see the joy and pride he feels for these kids when they move from one level of reading to the next. They have a few volunteers and treat them well. There is a huge need for them.
DH and I do have our favourite Archie Bunker type words that we have heard people use over the years. Our most favourite expression came from a fellow describing something on a Hummer as being an "obstacle illusion".
And with that I will end this post, sort of.
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