I'm floating through my usual list of websites, reading the profanities and profundities when I came across this:
"Largo Middle School eighth-grader Miguel Latorre listens during a presentation on bullying during health class recently. The insults written on the board by a social services counselor are the kinds of things students said they hear from bullies. [DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times]"How can you be college-educated and still get this wrong in front of a group of students? Oh yeah, I remember: "POTATOE"
Doesn't it look as though Miguel is desperately trying to refrain from pointing out these errors?
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Social services counselor? Hell, I've seen several teachers make this sort of simple English error. For example, our middle son's sixth grade teacher's work was chock full of spelling and grammar mistakes. So, we used it as an opportunity to improve our son's skills by having him proofread the lessons and make corrections. Our oldest son's second grade teacher created a poster which was supposed to help students with phonics. One set of words on the poster showed different ways of creating a long "a" sound. The word "lemonaide"(sic) was part of this list, and the "ai" was underlined. Another word on the board was "shariff".
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't limited to grade school and middle school. I would say that at least half of the emails and nearly all of the newsletters and memos I have received from high school teachers contain errors that could be caught by a spelling or grammar checker.
However, the offender that disturbed me the most was one of our first son's college teachers, an English composition instructor. I happened to look at the syllabus for the class and noticed that it contained obvious mistakes. I do hope that she at least made her students observe correct mechanics in their writing.
Ah, yes, "potatoe". Poor spelling and grammar is good enough for government work. Arne Duncan just fits right in.
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