Is text messaging causing the destruction of the English language?

What would you do if you opened up a book to see nothing but chat speak? Personally, I would be terrified. The problem is that so many youths in America are learning chat speak at the expense of English and it is taking its toll on the language.

When I was in school, chat speak was a constant frustration for the teachers, as so many of my classmates inserted chat speak into their assignments. I would hear the teacher say to the class almost every day, "'Cuz' is not a word. 'U' is a letter. Please spell your words out, or you will be marked down." The reminders would become more heavily emphasized when it became time for essays and other papers. It was not only endlessly frustrating for the teachers to constantly need to remind students that they had learned English and to please use it, but frustrating for those of us who actually use the English language and were told over and over to do so! It is not the fault of teachers that so many students seem incomprehensive of written English; they teach students as well as they can. It is the students who use chat speak who believe for some misguided reason that it is appropriate when they're not texting their friends.