I think the point is that currently the language is "de"-volving.
Ugh, I almost managed to get to the end of this thread without blowing my stack. Who the hell mods up this kind of drivel?
Your comment captures the thoughts of middle-aged people all around the globe and all through time--speakers of every language in every literate culture believe that their language was "correct" or "at its peak" one to two generations ago. They decry the laziness or moral decrepitude of the young generation. They extend this criticism to art, architecture, music, and all other human forms of expression.
This has always been the case. When the waltz first became popular in America, it was considered tawdry and unclean. When people started pronouncing "knife" without the initial [k]-sound, their parents thought they were butchering the language. (Yeah, we used to say that word with an initial [k]-sound.) Ancient Latin speakers published books saying "don't say it this way, say it that way, because this is how our language is supposed to be". Spanish speakers wanted their future tense to be spelled cantar he and not cantaré, recognizing its periphrastic etymological root.
Try spelling it that way today. Try pronouncing "knife" with a [k]-sound. People will raise their eyebrows. Not because the words are wrong, but because the standard is cultural and, hence, arbitrary.
The critics in these examples were as ignorant and wrong then as you are now: you fail to perceive the subjectivity of your viewpoint. And every time I hear this crap I die a little bit inside.
Yes, the American education system is profoundly broken. Yes, literally thousands of children with shitloads of potential are being flushed down the pipes each year. Stupid parents, stupid system, stupid policymakers, whatever. But languages do not "de"-volve. They change.
Languages exist as a mapping from mostly arbitrary vocalizations and gestures into the semantic web of the experiential universe of the speakers, which in turn is influenced heavily by anthropological, cultural, and personal variables. These variables are subject to tremendous change across geographical, socioeconomic, ethnic, gender, political, occupational, generational, and temporal barriers (to name just those that came off the top of my head).
The fluidity and rapidness of language change are a direct result of the arbitrariness of this mapping, the fact that all those variables are in constant flux, and probably the fact that children are evolutionarily inclined to distance themselves from their parents' generation.
In other words, just cause you speak languages doesn't mean you know how they work. That's tantamount to thinking you know how the ocean works cause you swim in it sometimes.
English will survive just fine in all registers, including academic papers, in spite of the changes it will go through.
Even if we change the way we spell "through". (Horrors!)