> “Great injury was done after the engine ran up the platform. The brickwork was swept away, and a large portion of a wall was thrown down; in fact, one carriage was thrown completely through the platform wall by the violence with which it was hurled over the line.”

> The Era, 26 February 1860.

It is amusing to read the writing styles of then with the now. The use of language in the Victorian era was a lot more poetic. While in many ways I do welcome the directness that modern articles have, I do also feel we've lost something in artistic merit.

Use of the passive voice gives it a different rhythm. Contemporary "best practice" is to avoid writing in passive voice. What I find interesting is that using active voice for inanimate objects like brickwork and walls and carriages, seems a bit anthropomorphic or perhaps animistic. Sure, "the wall fell" but not by its own volition.

Yet, for me the passive voice in this passage bogs down a bit in the final phrasing as subordinate clauses convolute as multiple inanimates suffer external effects. But in the end, the use of passive voice allows "great injury" to be the subject of the first sentence and empowers the paragraph in a way that "The engine" as subject simply cannot.

We have access to many more news stories now, writing for easy reading is a must. When news travels at a slower pace artistic writing is a must.

> university professors complain about standards worsening in their annual intake of students

They've been doing that since the 11th Century[1] - if this were even vaguely true, your current average student intake would be somewhere around the level of planaria or possibly tardigrades. It's demonstrable rubbish.

[1] http://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/the-long-history-of-teac...

Ah yes, the well-worn 'people have always been complaining about things getting worse' rebuttal.. But your argument is flawed - just because it might not always have been true does not mean it is not true now. As I said, I'm inclined to believe those at the chalkface. Here's one reference I was able to find easily: https://www.bjupress.com/resources/articles/t2t/declining-li...

I find that article to be in need of review by someone with good literacy. It presents single datapoints and talks about "this decline", despite not actually presenting past data to compare with the current numbers. The largest timespan it shows is the literacy from '92 to '03, and they explicitly quote the report saying that "average prose and document literacy did not differ significantly".

They also fail to mention that the 2003 report showed no decline except for Hispanics. Maybe, just maybe, immigration by people with non-English backgrounds was the cause, not textbooks? It'd be nice to at least see that discussed.

> they explicitly quote the report saying that [...]

Which ignored the part immediately before that citing an 8 point rise in quantitative literacy between '92 and '03.

Also blatantly ignored the following sentence showing +6 for prose and +8 for document literacy for POC. And the one about Asian/Pacific Islanders getting +16 from '92 to '03.

It is a shoddy piece of work picking only those points that bolster their existing conclusion.

> bjupress.com

Would you consider them an unbiased source given their stated goal is to "support Christian educators by producing textbooks and materials that shape a biblical worldview"?

That's another logical fallacy. There are stacks of references available on this.

Could you then find another one?

You could do better than a reference that lies about the contents of its citations. For example, there is no evidence that "over 50% of American adults over the age of 16 were functionally illiterate." The actual number is 14%, if I'm taking the cited source's statistic of "below basic prose literacy" as the definition of "functionally illiterate."

Actually, upon reading the whole article, this feels a lot more like the same millennium-old whining "kids aren't appreciating the same classics I did and therefore they're stupid idiots." Kids these days read and write a lot--text messaging, twitter, facebook, social media.

If you want to convince someone that it really is the case that people are getting dumber, you need to find references that don't read like the same age-old complaints: you need to show that it's dumber on an objective measure of intelligence, not "they don't show appreciation for the classics," which is what you usually find instead.

Contemporary education eschews the use of passive voice. The passage would judged negatively in most contemporary classrooms in the English speaking world.

What is the reason for rejection of the passive voice?

My guess/speculation/opinion is that it is related to the common pedagogical premise that the primary purpose of writing is to present a convincing argument. And passive voice is viewed as "weaker" in the context of debate and argument by conventional wisdom. For what it's worth, I think the emphasis on writing to argue and convince is a significant contributing factor to the behaviors people exhibit once they discover text boxes on the internet.

An alternative approach to writing is as a tool to examine one's own thoughts...and perhaps explain them to others. That is, writing can be a tool by which the writer comes to understand the subject rather than a means of teaching it to others. This is a bit more at odds with the idea that education is about filling up the empty bucket of a student's mind.

How is expressing your individuality incompatible with good writing?

a. are we really going to harm poor precious little Henry by making him rote learn grammar instead of expressing the minimal amount of individuality he might have by school age (we don't read books written by children because they don't have much interesting to say) b. by not giving children a proper grasp of language we are actually limiting their ability to express themselves, for God's sake

I think it's dangerous to assume that kids neither have individually nor anything interesting to say.

Just the other day my 3 year old was explaining to me how cars, tablet PCs and people all need different types of energy to function. I found that conversation to be far more interesting than half the discussions I have with peers of my own age.

OK, so what about point b - by prioritising children expressing their individuality we are actually limiting their ability to express themselves with eloquence?

I didn't really want to get into an argument about education but since you asked: honestly, I see no evidence to support your point. My wife is a primary school teacher and most of my extended family currently work or have worked in schools. Not one person I've spoken to has ever talked about kids being treated even remotely in the fashion you describe.

I am sure you could find some specific examples which support your theory but my experience would suggest those examples are the exception rather than the norm.

You could make the argument that it is easier for kids to express their individuality than it ever has been but I think the credit for that belongs to the Internet and changing social attitudes rather than schooling (though maybe schools have become more intolerant to bullying than when I was young? That would also certainly help).

Perhaps it doesn't fit your political viewpoint. Teaching is notoriously left wing. I know teachers myself, and they have told me that education has changed in the way I have described.

I'll just leave thus here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2815147/Why-trendy-t...

Teaching isn't "notoriously left wing". Half the popular schools out there are religious schools and place a stronger bias on religious dogma than any left wing educator would be comfortable with.

But it is pretty clear your stance on this is pretty far right so anything is going to seem too left wing for your liking. Case in point: you read the Daily Mail and Christian publications and take them at face value. If the issues were are prevalent as you pretend then you wouldn't be scraping the barrel with 5 year old reports in papers that have a terrible reputation for inaccuracies.

Anyhow, I said before that I didn't really want to get drawn into a debate about education - I have to endure enough ranting about it from my wife each night - so this is the last I'm going to say on the subject.

Oh yes I'm so destroyed. And your account is less than one day old.

> by prioritising children expressing their individuality

It doesn't happen. You're wrong. You're being very firm with your assertions, but they're based on something that doesn't happen.

Have a look at common core standards for English. Most of them have nothing to do with "expressing their individuality", but about introducing a topic, making an argument, and supporting it with evidence.

And the Railway Department report into the incident, with obviously many more details : http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BoT_TottenhamFeb1...

TL;DR

There was a defect in a tire that when subject to wear failed catastrophically causing the front axle to derail when braking prior to entering the station. The train was braking later than the textbook safe distance and was not configured for ideal braking performance. The derailed axle hit some of the track infrastructure causing the locomotive to jump the tracks and hit the platform while the rest of the trail piled on the back.

Just like every other "disaster" it's a bunch of otherwise inconsequential actions, bad luck, an operating procedure that doesn't account for day to day reality and a little bit of corner cutting coming together at the same time.

Trains had tyres??

Forged steel, vs the cast steel/iron of the wheels themselves. They are heated and press fit on the wheels, and the cooling shrinks them onto the wheel. This is usually semi-permanant, with replacements only from wear against the rails. The cast iron would be too brittle and crack. In this case I would assume there was a casting defect in the wheel, which broke within the 'tyre'. Wagon wheel tyres are made in a similar way, but use wood spoked centers.

Still do. The ICE derailment at Eschede, for example, started with a tyre peeling off a wheel at speed.

tl;dr

The railway firm used an off-brand wheel on the engine. It had a flaw in a weld, and failed. The engine derailed.

you forgot the part where the author is trying to flog their new romance novel, available now on Amazon for the low price of $2.48

Right, thanks :)

Also, the train was moving at just 30-40 mph. Those are typical speeds for current vehicle crash tests.