I love xkcd, especially this comic:

As a linguist, I can tell you, people are always decrying the decline of the English language; doomsayers lament that this may be the last generation marginally capable of stringing together words into a grammatical sentence!

But that’s simply not true.

Language has survived this far, and it will continue to survive indefinitely–if in slightly different forms. Common ‘pet peeves’ are actually symptoms of language change. For example, the inability to correctly execute the traditional distinction between ‘lay’ and ‘lie,’ pronouncing ‘pillow’ to rhyme with ‘fellow,’ and contractions like ‘gonna’ are signals of things to come: the next stage of English.

However, returning to the comic, I’d like to make a quick counterpoint. While there is no danger of humanity devolving into a quivering mass of stupid–à la Idiocracy–there is a very real danger of entering a dark age if we fail to educate ourselves. For this, there is precedence, and history has a demonstrated tendency to repeat itself.

I agree that the solution is not to institute selective breeding programs, but if we are at all concerned with the perpetuity of our species, we should make it our utmost priority to make education and information widely available, and to stamp out superstition and prejudice. That might mean socializing education a little more.