Straight From The Hart By Joan Rowden Hart In the April 18, 2012 edition of the Lebanon newspaper, Associate Judge Steve Jackson, speaking at the local Kiwanis club, is quoted as saying: “One branch of our government is the judiciary, but really it is based upon words and concepts and ideas and principles that are in written and spoken words. We live in a time right now when there has never been a bigger danger to those principles because we have students graduating every single day that can’t read or write.” Judge Jackson added that people do not know the language well enough to carry on this country. “I think it’s very, very important that we get a handle on this. If we go much farther, that’s going to start becoming a real problem,” Jackson said. I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read that article because it really struck a nerve with me. There are always exceptions, but most young people nowadays seem incapable of communicating either through the written or spoken word.