Mind your language, it's more sophisticated than you think

First, there's Scots. Calling a newspaper after hours, the security guard was trying – and failing – to sound authoritative and literate. "I'll try to connect you with the appropriate… ach, gonnae gies a minute and haud on the now."

I understood him perfectly. Was he illiterate? Was our communication worthless? Was he a shoddy purveyor of localised slang or a literate working-class Scot? Importantly – to paraphrase Unesco – would he "participate fully in his community" speaking "properly"? Probably not.

Second, there's yoof. Does anyone actually remember learning the business of growing up? Childhood household rules had to be dumped rapidly at the street corner so the tricky teenage business of hanging out and looking tough could begin. Then teenage rules had to be dumped (or concealed) in favour of the multiple rule-sets of adult society. One language for the workplace. Another for the pub. One for your mum – another for the terracing. One vocabulary for discussing Top of the Pops – another for speaking to teachers.

The young Scot has always been multi-lingual and multi-literate. But when my generation was young our alternative, informal society was backed up only by ourselves, Monty Python, Stanley Baxter and Parliamo Glesca.

Now youth/informal/alternative society is supported by an online universe and manipulated by TV, computer games, comedians with must-learn catchphrases and gangsta rap with must-imitate attitudes.

The average Scottish teenager is regularly immersed in social situations that demand jargon-fluency, not sentence structure, for social survival. Street talk beats class talk hands down (even if 90 per cent of it originates from American sidewalks). Such a world is not completely desirable – but it's here.

Not speaking in sentences – the bte noir of Bill Jamieson and Joyce McMillan in last week's Scotsman podcast – is a form of verbal solidarity between members of an emerging and excluded world. They communicate through television, texting, MSN, PlayStation consoles and Bebo, and they don't think they will ever need us – or our stiff, formal old world.

Up to a point they're right. In the past, if you couldn't understand signs in public places, Tannoy announcements on trains, the history of kings and queens or day trips to museums full of unexplained exhibits – tough. The bar was set high and if you couldn't jump it, then the hell of absolute exclusion was all that would mend you.

TV and the internet have changed that. Drop-down menus, me-too purchase suggestions, pop-up videos and Googling all encourage approximate knowledge, not absolute precision.

And a new hierarchy has been created. Interest first, importance second. Henceforth what kids find uninteresting they will not learn or use – because unlike us they have alternatives. This is either a recipe for mass exclusion, or an opportunity for Scottish adults to formally enter the informal world.

Beware the siren words of the likes of John Humphrys who described texters as "vandals trying to do to the language what Ghenghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago".

A study at Coventry University suggests, on the contrary, that a child's texting ability is a good predictor of reading skills and "phonological awareness" – the ability to manipulate patterns of sound in speech. Dr Clare Wood said: "Texting enables (children] to practise reading and spelling on a daily basis. If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it."

Others suggest education is currently hampered by teacher anxiety over the impending switch to the Curriculum for Excellence. Strange that. Anxiety and lack of preparation are never accepted as reasons to postpone tests when children are involved.

Driving tests, report deadlines, self-assessment form-filling – all these everyday tasks are accomplished (despite nerves) thanks to non-negotiable deadlines. Why should the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) be any different?

The bigger problem is that no-one can explain it. What is CfE in Plain English? Is it "teachers thinking on their feet and updating crap lessons?" Or "focusing on people, stories and school visits not dry abstract subjects"?

If literate Scottish professionals cannot explain the new system or their anxiety about it, that speaks volumes about the collapse in literacy. What is communication used for in Scotland? If reading, writing and formal speech are used to baffle, disguise and discourage as often as they inspire, clarify and empower, why are they important?

If home, street, youth, class, ethnic or gender identities demand completely different sets of linguistic and behavioural skills to those taught in the classroom, why shouldn't street literacy win every time?

Working class, Scots-speaking children know Scottish society pays only well-meaning lip service to personal transformation and equality. Why then should they bother with vocabulary that will leave them dangerously stranded from their peers and community?

The gap between public and private language measures the mental health of a nation. The consistently informal Irish are doing fine – the sometimes freezingly correct, sometimes grunting Scots are not.