# Rant about writing skills



## Faceman (Nov 29, 2007)

We fix it by teaching our children to read and write. I don't know anything about Canadian schools, but the percentage of functional illiterates we graduate from high school in the US is appalling...


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

Faceman, it's the same up here. They have these new fandangled teaching methods that work for some kids, but don't work for all of them. 

When I was in school, the methods were partly phonics and a great deal of repetition. No more repetition in school. No more writing drills, or spelling lists. While those things bored the heck out of me, every single kid went into high school being able to read and write. Not anymore. Seems to me, it's better to have 20% of the class bored and 90% succeed, than 20% succeed and 80% fail. Fail to learn that is; heaven forbid they should actually fail a grade! :shock:


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## apachiedragon (Apr 19, 2008)

"No child left behind" was absolutely the worst disservice we could do for our nation's kids. All we taught them was that they don't have to work hard or learn because they will have it handed to them no matter what. The schools don't want to risk losing their funding, so they will push them through anyway, whether they are learning or not. It is sad that these days it's easier to fail a grade by missing too many days than by getting poor grades.


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

My daughter started reading at a very young age. She did _not _want to be home schooled. So, until we could move to an area w a private school, the "deal" was that she could go to "day care" (aka, public school), _if _we sat down each day and reviewed her work as well as did a few lessons. How unfair to a child, but what else do you do??? 

I am here to tell you the public school system is at fault for poor writing skills, not to mention education, in general. My daughter would bring home papers w smiley faces, stars, "way to go" and "A's" on them that were more like "C" work. I would ask her WHY she didn't do it correctly (I knew she knew how to). Her answer? "b/c I don't have to [to get an 'A']". _Out of the mouths of babes!!_ I would make her correct them. Pretty soon this type of thing became more infrequent b/c she didn't want to have to re-do her work to meet my standards, _not_ the schools! The ONLY chance we stand is if parents take the bull by the horns b/c fighting the public school system is a _losing_ battle.

She is now the valedictorian of her senior class, she is going to her first choice university in the fall...and she occasionally corrects my English (which leaves me w an odd feeling).  And, she forgives me for all of those grueling after school lessons in her first few years of grade school.


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## Muppetgirl (Sep 16, 2012)

I'm too scared to reply, in case I make a mistake:shock:

I try hard to have everything correct, but sometimes auto-correct takes over!


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

I sure know what you mean. In my case, I am certainly quite literate. But, I often don't bother to correct my typing errors, so I s'pose I might not come off that way. Pure and simple laziness.

I won't even give a post that is the Berlin Wall of solid text a second glance, unless it's required as my moderator work (argh!)


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## Wallaby (Jul 13, 2008)

I know for myself, at least (and I'm 22 so not too far out of "teenager land"/public school), during high school it seemed like each english teacher I had had a different idea of what a run-on sentence was (for example. I still can't tell you what a noun/verb/etc would be used for. A semi-colon? What's that?!). 
Some teachers said that run-ons were anything with more than 2 commas (lists not included), some said run-ons had more than one subject, others said "if you have to take a breath while speaking the sentence, that's a run-on." And these were Honors and IB (like AP) English teachers who should have known their stuff. Eventually I just gave up and started ignoring those parts of class because each time I would master one "technique," a new and different rule would come along and my previously mastered technique would be "wrong."

End result = I have no idea what a run-on actually is. I know I do it alllll the time and I can definitely pick a run-on out of a paragraph, but ask me how to fix it and I'll stare at you blankly. Sure, I suppose most run-ons could be broken into short little statement-type sentences but that would make for some seriously boring posts.
I do try to combat my horror-grammar by using my "enter"-key liberally and breaking up each post, to hopefully lend space for understanding, but yeah.


I'm sorry. 
haha


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

If you want to see run-on sentences, read a British newspaper. I find them to be written as if there were a tax on periods, but a surplus of commas.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

I am two hard semesters away from my bachelor's degree in English lit or three hard semesters away from my teaching cert as a high school English teacher. However, I have second-guessed my decision to be a high school English teacher. Why, you ask? Let me explain.

When I was in high school, our teachers expected us to have a basic understanding of the English language and its rules. They were not there to teach us the basic grammar and spelling skills we were expected to have mastered by the fourth grade, they were there to teach us about literature and help us learn to write pre college-level papers. Because I have always been good with words, many of my classmates came to me to help them proof-read their papers. I also helped my mom grade papers from her fourth graders. 

Fast forward to a few years ago as I was helping my niece (then a sophomore in high school) edit a paper for her English class. My niece is a very smart girl. Imagine my confusion when it seemed as though a third grader had written this supposedly high school level paper. There were grammatical atrocities, spelling errors, and she used text speak, even! :shock: I asked her, not unkindly, why it was that there were so many errors in her paper. She replied that she had never really learned about grammar from any of her teachers and didn't understand why using text speak was wrong.

Thus began my quest to find out where the disconnect was between what was supposedly taught in grade school and what was being used in high school. I found apathetic teachers whose hands were being proverbially tied by the system. I found students who had no accountability for their lack of interest or inability to process and use what was being taught. Finally, I spoke to my high school band director (who is now a high school vice principal, but who was, at the time, a history teacher). He shared my disgust with what the education system had come to. He also let me in on the secret that it has become the parents who have taken a lot of the joy out of teaching (not all parents, of course, but the ones who feel that their Johnny is entitled to an A because he's "speshul" and shouldn't have to do the work required because it was too "hard").

That was when I decided that I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. I wanted to be a teacher to share my love of literature and the nuances of the English language with my students. Not to teach them basic grammar that they should have learned in elementary school.

I'm right there with you on having trouble reading posts with run-on sentences and the like. I have found myself many times having to hold my inner "grammar nazi" in check. Heck, I'm so bad that I have been known to point out grammatical errors in already published works by well-known (and some not-so-well-known) authors. Maybe I should become an editor...
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Muppetgirl (Sep 16, 2012)

I think the worst thing that has been quite common in novels (hands are shaking, am I going to make an error?) is speech without speech marks! What is with that?


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## ~*~anebel~*~ (Aug 21, 2008)

I really do feel as if our schools fail students and don't prepare them for life. My first year of Uni was hell. I actually had to study and manage a schedule and couldn't just skip classes, skim the textbook and ace exams. I however have yet to graduate a school without distinction. Uni really taught me how to write, not the BS English classes in high school. I really had to succeed in writing, even though my weakest thing is English and writing. And now that I'm doing a thesis I'm glad I know how to write well and that its easy.130 pages will be a piece of cake!
When I was a kid, my mother didn't trust the school system to teach me to read, and she taught me herself with phonics games and things. I was an above average reader for my first years of school and even now am able to understand new words (when I find them lol) better than many of my peers. However because I don't have a language brain, learning a second language is actually reeeeally hard  good thing its German so at least is phonetic!

But yes, overall I agree that public education is a wash. Being a smart kid, I didn't have to put effort in to get As. So I struggled with time management and scheduling. And without a few Uni degrees, I'd probably still be there. But then I know kids who struggled with the material in high school. It's not fair to anyone to have these kids in the same classroom. I went to school when we still got segregated into above average, average, and below average abilities. And still I don't think that recognized the needs of the kids enough. I certainly did not get what I should have out of public education. I wish I had been pushed at a Uni level and finished HS in under 2 years. But that was never an option. Same with kids who struggled, in 30 person classes? Really? How is that helping them learn?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Muppetgirl said:


> I think the worst thing that has been quite common in novels (hands are shaking, am I going to make an error?) is speech without speech marks! What is with that?


I know, right?!

The only thing that I really get tripped up over (I'm an aspiring novelist) is writing out a character's thoughts. I had two college professors who were instructors for my Independent Writing: Fiction professors. They both gave me different rules on writing out a character's thoughts. One said use italics to denote the thought, the other said not to. To this day, I have seen it done both ways, so I've come to the conclusion that it is a personal preference.

Tiny, I've noticed the excessive commas in posts written by some of our UK members on here. Not all of them, but quite a few of them.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

~*~anebel~*~ said:


> Being a smart kid, I didn't have to put effort in to get As. So I struggled with time management and scheduling.]


This!! I suck at time management and scheduling! I was one of those kids that could sit down the morning a paper was due, write the whole thing, and get a high B or a low A. In my world history class in college, we had a paper due every Wednesday. It was a short two to three page paper on a question our professor gave us. I would literally sit down on the Wednesday the paper was due after my 9am sociology class and write my paper to turn in for my 1pm world history class. I never got lower than a 95% on any of my papers that I wrote this way.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

Well, Drafts, if you could find it in your heart and spirit to become a high school English teacher, you might be able to change , in some small way, this terrible trend. I think many of us can recall some teacher in our past, whose committment to the vocation made a difference in our lives. Could you not be one of them?


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

tinyliny said:


> Well, Drafts, if you could find it in your heart and spirit to become a high school English teacher, you might be able to change , in some small way, this terrible trend. I think many of us can recall some teacher in our past, whose committment to the vocation made a difference in our lives. Could you not be one of them?


Don't think it isn't something I've gone back and forth on with myself for the last three years (since I dropped out of college). I actually have a list of pros and cons on my laptop. It's something I need to look at again, especially now that I have someone in my life and we want to start a future together.

My band director that I mentioned in my original post once told me that I should be a teacher. He said "Paige, it doesn't matter what you teach; you just need to teach." 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Darrin (Jul 11, 2011)

DraftyAiresMum said:


> I am two hard semesters away from my bachelor's degree in English lit or three hard semesters away from my teaching cert as a high school English teacher. However, I have second-guessed my decision to be a high school English teacher. Why, you ask? Let me explain.
> 
> When I was in high school, our teachers expected us to have a basic understanding of the English language and its rules. They were not there to teach us the basic grammar and spelling skills we were expected to have mastered by the fourth grade, they were there to teach us about literature and help us learn to write pre college-level papers. Because I have always been good with words, many of my classmates came to me to help them proof-read their papers. I also helped my mom grade papers from her fourth graders.
> 
> ...


What I've discovered is pretty much every English teacher assumes their students had already been taught the basics by previous teachers. Unfortunately that ends up leaving a whole lot of wholes in education. Toss in teachers that think using cuss words, l33t speak, text spelling and such and we have a lot of kids that are going to struggle in the real world.

For myself, I know when I read a properly written sentence but don't ask me why, how to map that sentence or to write one myself. I use the left side of my brain not the right. I would rather sit down and do some calculus then try to explain the difference between a verb and noun.


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## apachiedragon (Apr 19, 2008)

Another huge issue is the classes themselves. It has been shown time and again that different kids learn different ways. Instead of putting them in a class designed to teach the way they learn best, they are lumped together and expected to learn it no matter how it is taught (or NOT learn it, as the case may be). If they assigned them to classes based on their learning strengths, some parent would yell discrimination instead of realizing it might actually help their child learn better. Instead of everyone working together, it has become the government threatens the schools, the teachers and parents are at odds, and the kids slip through the cracks. 

I have a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing and had considered teaching as well, but I would have only agreed to teach at a small private school where politics weren't a factor and the kids could truly be helped. I hated the public school system. I went to private school for a year and a half, and learned more there than I did the entire seven years prior. When I went back into the public system for high school, it was a joke. I was so far ahead that I just coasted through. College was a wake-up call for sure. 

I use the forum to practice my english skills, not to forget about them. I was darn proud of that degree, even though I have never really used it. (Even more-so since I crammed all 4 years of English classes into two and a half. I started out as a Biology major and HATED it, so I switched to English the middle of my sophomore year.) The horses don't really care about proper grammar, lol. But like anything else, if you don't use it, you WILL lose it.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

All this talk about how our education systems get a failing grade in English is right on the mark. However, that doesn't help us with the people that were and are put through the current system without writing skills. We all know that we should, could and can help those immediately around us when they are young. But what about the young adults that have their GED but can't compose a grammatically correct sentence? What do we do to help them? 

Can we do anything, right here on the forum? Do they want to improve their writing skills?


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## apachiedragon (Apr 19, 2008)

I think at that point, they have to WANT to help themselves. Most of the ones that have made it that far without those skills see no reason to try and get them now. As we've seen in other grammar threads here on hofo, most of those that need help most don't care enough to get help, or are too defensive to even entertain the idea. There is always some excuse why they shouldn't try.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

<sigh> I see that even in the teenager I mentioned, Apachiedragon. It's very disheartening.


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## Cacowgirl (Feb 19, 2011)

I totally agree that the school system is failing in their job to teach the next generation how to function in society. Knowing the language and how to comunicate effectively is important. Parents need to make sure their children are ready to move into their next roles as the school system wasn't meant to take their place. My parents checked my work every night and made sure I knew my lessons.


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## Cacowgirl (Feb 19, 2011)

^Posted before I was done-bad computer! My other thought is that you would make an awesome teacher Paige. As another posted though-maybe a private school where the kids are motivated. I can't read a book that is poorly written, but when one just flows, I am sorry to finish it.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Genrally me spellin is OK. me grammer sometimes is not so good. I were tawt rite in skool and me english teacher would be turnin in er grave if she were to reed some of the fings people rite.

I am a teacher of riding, I long ago learnt that you cannot teach anyone anything unless they want to learn.

Some years ago I attended a primary school on an open day. One young lad, eight or nine years, was busy drawing a dinosaur. I asked him if it was a Brontosaurus and was immediately told it was a Stegosaurus and told the difference in the two (He spelt them correctly too) yet his teacher told me that he was backward and hard to teach.

I agree with the poor standards and here in the UK, many universities are complaining that new entrants are way below standard. Not just in English either.
Exams have been dumbed down to get high passes. This is not to say that the entrants are not working hard but that they are being taught so that the school passes the governments stats not so they get a good wide education.

Personally I disliked school. I found it boring most of the time. There were 38 of us in a class and although in the top stream, I found that many lessons were repeated over and over. Good teachers encouraged those that had grasped the lesson to go on to the next and set those that hadn't extra work until they did.

A teacher plays a big part in a child's life and can not only influence their learning but also their future life. Now, with many families not believing in discipline, the teacher has more problems to deal with especially in primary school.

My niece is just starting on teaching English. She wasn't sure if she wanted to teach primary of high and chose the latter because of the lack of discipline with many of the younger children. One mother, when told that her child had been punished for swinging on the curtains, said "I told the little bleeder that he wasn't to do that in school, he can do it at home." 
What hope is there with this sort of attitude?

This mentioned niece disliked English as a subject until she had a new young teacher when al changed and she learnt to love it. At a parents evening my sister was attending with her younger daughter, this teacher was pointed out to my sister. 
Sister then went up to the young woman and introduced herself saying that she had not an appointment with her but just wanted to thank her for all she had done helping to change E's attitude to English.

e was not pleased at her mother having spoken to the teacher but next day at the end of a lesson the teacher called E behind and said that she had been having a very bad time with parents either not turning up for their appointment or, moaning about how she was pushing them to hard. She said that she was seriously thinking about packing it in but then sis walked in and thanked her and that made it worthwhile. 

The fact that on TV and the radio there are a lot of badly speaking presenters. Regional accents I can take but, bad grammar grates hard. 

Not sure what can be done. Teachers have to learn that if a child does not learn when taught a certain way, to explain it in another. 
Long gone are the days when _any_ subject was corrected with a red pen for grammar and spelling - that is now considered to be incorrect and makes the child depressed. 

Discipline needs to return and if a child is turned over to a school then it should be left to them to implement the rules without parents complaining. 

Until teaching is left to the teachers without interference of the governments laying down the rules then things will not change.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Cacowgirl said:


> ^Posted before I was done-bad computer! My other thought is that you would make an awesome teacher Paige. As another posted though-maybe a private school where the kids are motivated. I can't read a book that is poorly written, but when one just flows, I am sorry to finish it.


That is one of the perks of living in Arizona. We had an abundance of charter schools (similar to private schools, but they are free to attend). I would definitely want to teach at a charter or private school. I never attended either, but I was a motivated student that loves to learn, so I learned a lot on my own. My mom told me a few years ago that if charter schools had been around when I was in school, she would have sent me to one.

My son attends a charter school. He's nine-years-old and a third-grader. He is in advanced math, advanced science and advanced English. When my brother and his boys came to visit from Georgia, they have one boy who is a year older than my son and one who is a year younger. I was honestly impressed with how much more advanced my son was than either of his cousins.

My niece (the one I mentioned before...I only have one) told me once that she would have LOVED it if I had been her English teacher. When I asked why, she said "Because I would have actually learned something in high school!"

Foxhunter, I know exactly what you mean about not being able to teach kids who don't want to learn. The sad part is, it isn't entirely the kids' faults. Their parents may have hated school, so they refuse (often subconsciously) to instill a love of learning in their children. Or even worse, they just don't care or want to take the time to care.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Muppetgirl (Sep 16, 2012)

DraftyAiresMum said:


> I know, right?!
> 
> The only thing that I really get tripped up over (I'm an aspiring novelist) is writing out a character's thoughts. I had two college professors who were instructors for my Independent Writing: Fiction professors. They both gave me different rules on writing out a character's thoughts. One said use italics to denote the thought, the other said not to. To this day, I have seen it done both ways, so I've come to the conclusion that it is a personal preference.
> 
> ...



Have you read 'The Handmaids Tale' by Atwood? Good example of speech without speech marks.


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## DancingArabian (Jul 15, 2011)

Some places teach phonetic spelling. They actually encourage students to use it! I had a friend who asked me to proof read his paper - he was in the same community college I was at. I could not understand his writing until I read it out loud - then I understood it! He couldn't spell at all and spelled by sound.

I think we should go back to when they would fail and even hold back a student who wasn't making it. All this new stuff where everyone's a special unique snowflake and is a winner is ruining people.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

DancingArabian said:


> Some places teach phonetic spelling. They actually encourage students to use it! I had a friend who asked me to proof read his paper - he was in the same community college I was at. I could not understand his writing until I read it out loud - then I understood it! He couldn't spell at all and spelled by sound.
> 
> I think we should go back to when they would fail and even hold back a student who wasn't making it. All this new stuff where everyone's a special unique snowflake and is a winner is ruining people.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Did you know that in public schools, teachers are no longer allowed to grade/mark papers and assignments with red pen? It's because some parents complained that the red pen was demeaning to their kids. *facepalm*
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Darrin (Jul 11, 2011)

Foxhunter said:


> Genrally me spellin is OK. me grammer sometimes is not so good. I were tawt rite in skool and me english teacher would be turnin in er grave if she were to reed some of the fings people rite.


You just made my eyes bleed! I've tried to write like you just did but can only get a couple words in before giving up, just can't do it.


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## Vidaloco (Sep 14, 2007)

My Mother is a retired court reporter who transcribed court cases at home. I remember sitting at her feet listening to "Did you beat the women to death?" (She verbally said quote, unquote) "uh-huh" spelling out u h dash h u h. 
I fret over comma placement constantly. I took several journalism classes and had planned on making that a career. Journalistic punctuation placement is different than normal. A list is e.g.; tobacco, firearms and drugs. The correct is; tobacco, firearms, and drugs. If you see me dropping a comma, that's why. 
As for blame on today's lax grammar, it's a full house. The school systems with its lack of funds, parents who have to work too many hours, or dependence on electronics by the young. I don't think we can say yes, that's what the problem is.
ETA- My first typing teacher would be aghast at not placing 5 spaces before starting a new paragraph. Not goin there :lol:


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## Vidaloco (Sep 14, 2007)

Why does it say you instead of "U"? Honest I did type the letter, not the word. Must be an auto correct.


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

I was never very good in English classes in high school. I didn't care what nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs were or used for. I knew I wasn't going to be a writer or editor or such. History wasn't a good subject either. I usually only got C's in them, with a couple D's. 

My brain was wired for math and science. I could ace those classes without studying. My senior year I was taking college algebra but I needed to have geometry done first. They allowed me to take both at the same time because I did well so far. I hardly ever took any notes in class, didn't study but I got A's. 

Even with my dislike and poor grades, I feel that I do pretty well. When I see posts that are run-on and have poor punctuation, I get irritated too. Is it really THAT difficult to even try?

Run-ons and lack of punctuation are one thing. Spelling is another issue. Granted, there are people from other countries and English isn't their first language. However, to those that it is their first language, most computers and cellphones have spell checker or autocorrect. 

Ok, my rant over 😳
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

Vidaloco said:


> Why does it say you instead of "U"? Honest I did type the letter, not the word. Must be an auto correct.


I've notice that happening too. An autocorrect in the forum or in the Internet somewhere.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

English is not an easy subject to learn, so many difficult spellings and sounds (especially if spelled correctly not the US way!) :lol:

There has been much change in the meaning of words.
I use to compete on a horse called Gay Boy. I thought that was a lovely name - which it was in the original meaning of gay.

I caused quite a lot of consternation and curiosity when in the US and asked a butcher for a joint (roast) and remarked when in a restaurant, "I'm going out for a ***!" (Cigarette)

I try to not correct youngsters I am around all the time. It can alienate them but it does grate when you keep getting "I were going." or "We was going."

Grammar does matter. I would always employ someone who spoke correctly over someone who didn't as long as both were capable. 

I do not know if any of you watch Super Nanny but Jo Frost, brilliant with not only children but people too, would not be employed by me because of her bad grammar. (Not that she would ever want a fixed job.)


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

Vidaloco said:


> Why does it say you instead of "U"? Honest I did type the letter, not the word. Must be an auto correct.


 
that is because there is software in place here to combat the ubiquitous use of textspeak. Sometimes, it backfires and makes us have funny results.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

anyone ever read that book that came out a few years ago titled:

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

the title was referring to the vast difference between these two sentences:




The Giant Panda eats shoots and leaves.

The Giant Panda eats, shoots, and leaves.


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## Golden Horse (Feb 20, 2010)

*Ode to My Spell Checker* (author unknown)

Eye have a spelling checker, it came with my pea sea
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write, it shows me strait a weigh. 
As soon as a mist ache is maid it nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it I'm shore your pleased to no
Its letter perfect awl the way, my checker told me sew.


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

There was one school exercise that "got my attention" w respect to the value of writing skills, and I never forgot it. Like muppet, I am a bit afraid to write it out b/c of the grammer nazis afoot.  Anyway, the teacher named one of two or three simple tasks (e.g., properly fold a letter and stuff it in an envelope), and each student had to write "how to" instructions for one of the given tasks, and do so in class directly after it was assigned. Being a kid at the time, my initial response was, "can it get any more boring than this?". During the next class he (the teacher) read each set of directions out loud and tried to perform each task according to the individual set of directions before him. It was really funny! He was unable to complete any of the given tasks correctly by following any of the written directions he had recieved. It took him all of two or so hours to "teach" a group of kids the importance of written communcation skills -and have them laughing whilst he was at it. The public school system does not need more money, it needs better teachers and a lot more discipline.


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## Golden Horse (Feb 20, 2010)

Missy May said:


> The public school system does not need more money, it needs better teachers and a lot more discipline.


Gets my vote:thumbsup:


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

Missy May said:


> The public school system does not need more money, it needs better teachers and a lot more discipline.


I disagree. Ever heard the saying, "You get what you pay for"? If teachers don't have a competitive salary, you won't get better teachers. We are having the same problem at my work. We manufacture products for the construction industry: roof trusses, floor joists, and walls. It is manufacturing but many think it IS construction. They think it should pay the same as construction jobs. 

The problem is that fast food places are paying similar wages as we do for manufacturing. So we are having difficult times finding decent workers. Not to mention that many that we hire and are the younger generation that think everything should be handed to them. They also think that the job is there for them and not that they are there for the job. More or less that they are paid to be there and not paid to work. 

So why don't we pay more? That would make our costs go up, prices of new homes and buildings would go up and our competitors would have to increase too or the contractors would just buy from them instead. 

Teachers on the other hand, don't have competition as we do. There is becoming a shortage of teachers. Why go into a job field that doesn't pay decent?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Golden Horse (Feb 20, 2010)

There used to be people who would teach for the love of it, but I agree that they need better pay. However, I do believe that there will be some fantastic potential, and indeed ex, teachers out there, who would not set foot in a school these days because of the lack of effective discipline. We also lose those who want to teach to open up children's minds and help them think, because so much of modern eduction is about simply reaching targets.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

The average annual income for a teacher in Arizona is in the neighborhood of $20,000. Where I work now, making minimum wage ($7.80/hr), I would make $15,000 in a year. I work Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm with a mandatory one hour lunch every day. When I go home, my work does not come with me. A teacher usually is at the school from 7am to 5 or 6pm. They bring their work home with them on almost a daily basis. There is no overtime and the benefits are minimal, at best. They also have to deal with rowdy and belligerent students (my mom had a chair thrown at her by a student when she was substituting a first grade class) and upset, often irrational parents on a daily basis. They are not, however, allowed to discipline the children who get out of control...and the kids know it. Why on earth, then, would any SANE person want to be a teacher when, for slightly less pay, you can have better hours, better benefits and none of the stress?! 

One of my very good friends was a kindergarten and first grade teacher before she got married. Her annual income when she started teaching was $18,000. She was at school from 7am to usually 6pm. On the rare occasion that she was able to come over to my place and hang out, she would always bring a large stack of papers to be graded. We'd make popcorn, toss in a movie, and sit on the floor grading papers, usually until midnight.

Usandpets, you may not have wanted to be a writer or a journalist, but at least you tried to learn enough about the written English language to communicate effectively.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

usandpets said:


> I disagree. Ever heard the saying, "You get what you pay for"? If teachers don't have a competitive salary, you won't get better teachers. We are having the same problem at my work. We manufacture products for the construction industry: roof trusses, floor joists, and walls. It is manufacturing but many think it IS construction. They think it should pay the same as construction jobs.
> 
> The problem is that fast food places are paying similar wages as we do for manufacturing. So we are having difficult times finding decent workers. Not to mention that many that we hire and are the younger generation that think everything should be handed to them. They also think that the job is there for them and not that they are there for the job. More or less that they are paid to be there and not paid to work.
> 
> ...


Teacher's salaries differ depending on state and county. Lets just say they _start_ at 35K a "year" (9 month work year), that is the same as 46.6K a 12 month work year. And, their benefits are better than most any others. I would not call that low for a starting "package". They also get more holidays than most anyone in any other profession of which I am aware. . And, I am guessing few, if any, private schools can match the benefits offered by the public school system. 

My daughter attends a private school. Most all of her teachers were professionals in a field before they became a teacher, or they have little other job experience but have at least a masters in the field of study they teach. All of them I have spoken to on the subject, bar none, work at a private school b/c they _really _want to teach _-_ but they will not teach at a public school. So, I think the public schools would have _no_ difficulty whatsoever locating qualified teachers if they made their primary mission education _and_ had some sort of reasonable discipline codes in place _and_ enforced them.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Missy May said:


> Teacher's salaries differ depending on state and county. Lets just say they _start_ at 35K a "year" (9 month work year), that is the same as 46.6K a 12 month work year. And, their benefits are better than most any others. I would not call that low for a starting "package". They also get more holidays than most anyone in any other profession of which I am aware. . And, I am guessing few, if any, private schools can match the benefits offered by the public school system.
> 
> My daughter attends a private school. Most all of her teachers were professionals in a field before they became a teacher, or they have little other job experience but have at least a masters in the field of study they teach. All of them I have spoken to on the subject, bar none, work at a private school b/c they _really _want to teach _-_ but they will not teach at a public school. So, I think the public schools would have _no_ difficulty whatsoever locating qualified teachers if they made their primary mission education _and_ had some sort of reasonable discipline codes in place _and_ enforced them.


My brother has a BS in Information Technologies, as does my brother-in-law. My brother makes $110K a year in Georgia working in the IT department of a large company (can't remember the field). He's not HEAD of the IT department, in fact, he's fairly low down on the totem pole. The head of the department is making closer to $150-160K a year (not including bonuses). He works Monsay through Friday with all major holidays off, paid. My brother-in-law works for Nissan as a manager in the sound engineering department. Before his promotion, he was making roughly $75K a year. Again, he works Monday through Friday with major holidays off, paid, as well as paid travel and vacations (he's been with Nissan for 10+ years, so he gets a lot of vacation).

Neither my brother, nor my brother-in-law, have more schooling than my mom, who has her BA in Elementary Education. Yet their starting salaries were significantly higher (two to three times higher) than my mom's salary wa when she retired after ten years with the same school district. Teachers are salaried, yes, but they are only paid during the nine months that they work. During the summer, most teachers have to take a part-time or full-time job (unless they're lucky enough that their significant other works full-time and can support them on their wages) over the summer, usually making minimum wage.

Also, I would LOVE to see a teacher who gets decent medical benefits. My friend that I mentioned earlier showed me her medical benefits statement once. My medical benefits, working full-time at Goodwill for basically minimum wage, were not only better than hers, but cost me less.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Start pay for a teacher in UK is: £21,588 to £31,552 - more for London areas.
($33,117 - 48,412) which is not bad by my book.

My niece has just done her final year. She was out in schools teaching and had three pretty rough ones to go to. She has a natural flair for teaching and although some of these children were disruptive she had little difficulty in getting them to want to learn.
The reports she received were far higher than any others in her group. I asked her how she kept control with the disruptive students and she answered "Same as you get control of an ill mannered horse stop it before it starts." 

I have never been a high wage earner. The only time I ever had a job with a bonus was after I broke my back and went into a job at an estate agents. Only thing was I got colds, hated getting up in the morning, found majority of the time boring and generally was miserable. 

I say teachers (good ones) are born not made. They deserve good pay and payments should be given to those that are best at the job regardless of what they are teaching. By this I mean the teacher who is taking children that are having problems because English is not their first language or learning problems and getting their grades up deserves paying as much as the teacher who is taking the A streams. 

Job satisfaction counts for a lot.

As an aside I just wonder if things will go a full circle and teachers will be allowed to discipline once again!


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

I don't think you can look at just the days and hours that are technically in the teacher's job year. They have a ton of training they have to do, and the homework and testing means a LOT of time spent at home. Also, the job is much, much more stressful than many similar jobs earning a similar salary. It requires a lot more creativity to deal with the diverse students that will be thrown at you, and the sometimes woeful lack of support they get from home.

If you consider the way that teachers are paid in countries that score very high on education ratings (rating the success of the students), you can usually see that the teacher is paid a lot more than they are in the US.

I think that a lot of this paying the teacher a very small amount stems from the way that teaching children has been seen as a job for women, and in the old days, single women, thus it was "OK" to pay a lot less. Often the women who taught at elementary/secondary shools lived at home with their parents, so a living wage was not needed. Once they married, they were expected to quit and live on their husband's salary.

anyway, I think a certain amount of that has persisted in the way that we value a teacher's education, as opposed to a computer programmer, or a engineer. They probably all took about 4 years to complete their higher education, but their value to society isn't measured equally.


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

Drafty, people that have a passion for teaching, or anything, do not necessarily determine if they will pursue doing "x" based on what someone else w a four year degree in another field makes. 

Are the figures you cited adjusted for today's dollars? Just curious...not being poopy, here. How about their (IT workers in your example) retirement plan, how does it stack up? How Calstrs invests, for example, can significantly affect the stockmarket - it is huge. CA's teacher's retirement plan is pretty good and they can retire after 30 years. Many other states offer pretty darn good retirement packages as well.

I have _nothing_ against paying qualified people a good wage, however, the way the public school system is set up and the power of the teacher's union do not lend to "the most qualified" individuals getting hired or remaining employed. As it stands right now the argument from teachers is that if they were paid more they would become better teachers. They aren't asking to be replaced by more qualified people that will be paid more than the current wage. Based on this "how well I am able to do a job depends on how much you pay me" logic, if you pay me enough I can perform brain surgery w the best of them. 

Also, like I said above, a public school teacher's salary depends on which county in what state they are employed. So one can only talk about their salaries "in general". Private schools are the best "comparable" w respect to salaries, IMO, b/c the salaries offered by private schools are, by and large, no higher than those by the public school system and their benefits are definitely not as good. Yet, many of the private schools operating in all 50 states somehow manage to offer a much better education. 

The reason I personally feel public schools do so poorly overall and in general is a pretty simple one. The monies they collect per attending student is not spent on students equally. By and large, a bright student that behaves and tries to learn will have the fewest dollars spent on them. Not a formula for success.

Sorry this is so long...but the current state of affairs w the US public school sytem really irritates me.


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## alexischristina (Jun 30, 2009)

I haven't read the entire thread, so I apologize in advance. I just wanted to throw out the fact that in high school from grade ten through twelve I took honours English and Advanced Placement Literature and it wasn't until college that I learned the technicalities of grammar. Commas, semi-colons, all of that fun stuff. I'm the queen of over-using commas, and run on sentences and I STILL managed to ace those classes without this correct knowledge.


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

DraftyAiresMum said:


> Usandpets, you may not have wanted to be a writer or a journalist, but at least you tried to learn enough about the written English language to communicate effectively.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Actually, I only learned enough to pass. However, more must have sunk in than I thought. LOL Either that or I've become a perfectionist in my old(er) age. I hate to admit that I'm in my 40's (I know not that old), because in my mind I think and I act like I'm in my 20's. Slowly, my body is trying to tell me my real age

I think that I make an extra effort now because it irritates me to read something that runs on. I know everyone makes mistakes now and then. Yes, even me. Haha. Almost every post I make, I'll read through a couple times before actually posting. Just to make sure it's what and how I want to say it. I'll even reread it after I post and edit it if I missed something. Maybe I'm just being picky.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Missy May, the numbers I quoted for teachers pay are accurate to within the last couple of years. I can't imagine they've gone up much, if any. 

My brother and brother-in-law both have great retirement/401K plans available to them. My mother (who, granted, retired over a decade ago) is pulling a meager $300 a month from her retirement. My friend who was a teacher until recently (within the last two years) couldn't afford to pay into a retirement/401K account (much in the same way that I can't afford to pay into a 401K and still bring home a livable wage at my current job).

I do agree that people who get into teaching don't do it for the money, they do it because they love to teach. However, how backwards has our society become that those who play professional sports or fix computers make many times more what those who educate our children do? How can we expect those who do love teaching to continue doing so, when many of them barely make enough money to live on (yes, you can live on less than $20K a year, I'm living proof of that, but not when you're expected to provide your own supplies, the cost of which keeps going up)?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## HorseCrazyTeen (Jul 29, 2012)

One thing my mom is extremely picky about is grammer, so I pretty much know it all. And WELL. I write well for the most part, though sometimes I let it go in the chat room. :hide: 

I always proofread my posts before posting them, too. I usually catch quite a bit because I type quickly. 

My biggest grammer pet peeve? A paragraph with nothing save exclamation points for punctuation!


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

HCT, we all "let it go" sometimes. When I'm in a hurry, I've been known to write in shorthand (shorten my sentences, etc). What we're talking about is wen ppl aint gots no clue whut there doin or typin or jess plane dont care.

If we're going to talk pet peeves, mine is using the wrong spelling of a word. For example, using "there" instead of "their" or using "your" instead of "you're."
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

Teachers in the Ontario system are limited in what they are allowed to teach, how they are allowed to teach it and how they are allowed to grade it. They have very little freedom to do what many of them know would be much more successful. All in the name of "province wide consistency." Blah.

Drafty - I here you. I gave a caret to my hoarse today after I put the reigns over his neck :lol: Homonyms are a pet peeve of mine as well. Another one I have is not knowing if you need to use a subject or an object. As in: "Me and Tommy went to the store." Arrgggh... Everytime I hear someone say that, I ask them, "If you went to the store alone, would you say, 'Me went to the store'?"

What about local dialect? If you can't speak properly, how in blazes are you ever going to write properly? Up here, the word isn't "supposedly" it's "supposebly". And the locals "berry" their dead, not "bury" them. Also, the ratio of adults in my neck of the woods that can't conjugate verbs is shocking.

Then there is the regional accent. That became very interesting when I was teaching word sound structure based on letter combinations to a dyslexic teen. I had many interesting conversations with my coach and sometimes there wasn't a clear answer. Ever try to breakdown the pronunciation of a word that is pronounced differently in different countries, and then back up what you say? Sometimes it's impossible to do.

So, while language is definitely something that can be studied to death, I just wish more people would take pride in how they speak and write. 

We don't knead to be purrfeckt, but we can try.


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## HorseCrazyTeen (Jul 29, 2012)

O. i sea wat yu meen now, Drafty. And yes, that bugs me to death, too. 

One thing that also probably doesn't do anything good for people's spelling or grammer is texting. Most try to just get it written in the fastest, easiest way possible. And it would be one thing if that was limited to texting, but it will usually transfer over to regular writing as well. Heck, I have a friend who can barely spell, and a lot of it is due to the fact that she texts constantly.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

I'm "cursed" that I LOVE to read and have a very high retention of what I read. Because of this, I have a large vocabulary. I don't feel that I should have to "dumb down" my vocabulary and the language I use for the people around me. If you don't know what I'm saying, ask me. I don't mind explaining what I'm saying, especially if it helps expand your vocabulary. My boyfriend hates it when I use words or phrases he doesn't know and he refuses to ask me what I mean.

HCT, I can type almost as fast on my iPhone's little tiny screen as I can on a regular keyboard. Okay, maybe not "almost as fast," but close. I write all my posts on my phone (no Internet at home and no computer access at work) and I still take the time to proofread and make sure everything makes sense (although sometimes little mistakes slip through and I correct them as soon as I see them).

Another thing I've noticed lately on the forum is the rash of posts that make absolutely no sense. Not just run on sentences or poor spelling, but they simply aren't coherent. It's difficult to read them, much less answer them.

_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

I was exceptionally lucky in all aspects of the whole grammar and spelling movement. I went to a very small school (my graduating class consisted of 12 students, counting myself and it was one of the largest in school) so there was more one-on-one time with the teachers. The teachers actually cared whether we learned or not, they didn't pass anyone just to pass them, the students were required to do well enough to earn a passing grade.

BUT, even all that was only part of my life. I grew up in a family of voracious readers. My parents and older brother read to me when I was little and we would often spend evenings with books instead of the TV. We didn't even have cable from the time I was about 8 until I was in high school. I would often go to the library and check out up to 10 books per week. I would purposefully check out books that were above my level because they challenged me. If there was a word I didn't know...well, I had a dictionary. If I didn't understand a sentence, I would either ask a parent or a teacher or re-read the entire paragraph for context clues until I was able to get the gist of it.

Now, all that being said, my Mom works in a local school (not the same one I went to) and she often spends days in the library checking out books. What she told me is that at the beginning of each year, the students are tested and assigned a "reading comprehension level". That I can understand, but those levels are kept on file in the library and the students are not permitted to check out a book that isn't on their level. While, on one hand, I agree with part of that to keep kids from checking out books that are 3 grade levels below them, I guess I don't see what's wrong with letting a kid try to struggle through a book that's a little bit above them.

For example, she said there was one kid who had a reading level of about 3rd grade (this was a teenager) who came in and wanted to check out one of the Twilight books. Because it was above his reading level, she couldn't check it out to him. I suppose I just don't understand that. If he has the desire to read something above his level, why not let him give it a shot? It might encourage him to buckle down and better himself.


LOL, NM, I get tired of people around here that spell phonetically. I mean, the southern accent is hard enough for non-southerners to understand when it's spoken. When it's written? Fat chance of _anyone_ understanding that.

Anyway, enough of my rantings now LOL.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

what does perspicatious mean? Did I spell that right?


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## HorseCrazyTeen (Jul 29, 2012)

Drafty-- Me too! I read ALL the time. I don't know what I would do without a good book every now and then.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

tinyliny said:


> what does perspicatious mean? Did I spell that right?


Close. It's perspicacious. It means having a keen understanding.

Smrobs, I totally agree with the reading level thing! That's ridiculous. They should have it set up so that they can't check out books below their level, but are ENCOURAGED to check out books above their reading level and challenge themselves.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

tinyliny said:


> what does perspicatious mean? Did I spell that right?


Is this maybe what you mean?



> *per·spi·ca·cious*
> _adjective_ \ˌpər-spə-ˈkā-shəs\
> : of acute mental vision or discernment : keen


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

SMR - I wasn't referring to phonetic spelling. I was referring to the breakdown of correct spelling into individual sounds, but it's difficult to do when teaching people from different regions. 

Potato is a good word to use as an example. Some regions say a short "a" and some a long "a" - how to discern the difference if you don't know the word itself? You can't; it's impossible. Then look at the final "o"; how can it be pronounced as a long "o" when there isn't a trailing "e"? It makes no sense. So it becomes a "special" word. There are pages and pages of special words.

And reading isn't the answer, although it does help a bit. I think that we believe that reading is the answer because usually those that love to read already have an ability with letters and words. 

We have a house full of readers here. Voracious readers. Including my son: the dyslexic teen I mentioned earlier. He loves to read, but he can't spell worth a dime. The letter symbols just don't connect to sounds for him. He has mostly learned to read by recognizing entire words, but makes no sense of the phonetic breakdown. He's better than he was, due to the course we did almost 2 years ago now, but the only way he will ever learn to spell is by drill work or buckling down and completing the course we started. And he refuses to do it. <sigh>


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

There are certain accents I just love to listen to – including some of the “mispronunciation” of words that goes with them. I think regional accents add “spice” to language. And, I especially like nifty colloquial phrases, none of which one would be likely to employ in any sort of important document. People often do not always use correct English in casual conversation (written or spoken). I know I don’t. No harm done. It is just the fact that if one is unable to “switch gears” from informal language to correct English, then they have limited themselves. That can be a rather sad thing if they have something really important to say. Which goes back to - what to do, what to do?

And their, their all you “they’re” Nazis.


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Missy May said:


> And their, their all you “they’re” Nazis.


That right there LITERALLY just made me twitch!! O.O
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## VelvetsAB (Aug 11, 2010)

NorthernMama said:


> Teachers in the Ontario system are limited in what they are allowed to teach, how they are allowed to teach it and how they are allowed to grade it. They have very little freedom to do what many of them know would be much more successful. All in the name of "province wide consistency." Blah.



_Try being the first year of students that went through all the new changes, before they were completely solid. I graduated the year of the double cohort. _

_To clear things up a bit for those who are outside of Ontario, in 1997/1998, a new way of grading came out. We went from grades (A through F, like normal, or a percent value) to a level system of one through four, with four being the highest. Level one was basically saying you didn't have the comprehension of whatever subject, with level four being you had the required knowledge and possibly were above it. Along with changing the way of grading, they added a Grade 10 literacy test. _


_I posted a thread about the importance of spelling and grammar some time ago, and while it did end up getting derailed and closed, there were some good points made in it. I still feel the same way as I did when I posted that thread. Yes, spelling typos happen, but when you make errors and don't correct them because you don't care, that is when I have the problem. _

_Spelling is such an important life skill that so many of the younger generation is missing out on, and it is a horrifying problem. Trying to find a solution to fix it is not going to be easy, because I truly believe that the majority of them just do not care to spell properly._


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## VelvetsAB (Aug 11, 2010)

_Too late to edit, but I came across this on Facebook not long after I posted. LOL_


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## AnrewPL (Jun 3, 2012)

I agree with a lot of what is in this thread, the writing skills of many people now are pretty bad. The fact that I can say that is telling; I am dyslexic, and managed to get into a Ph.D.
Part of the underlying problem with the problems people have concerning language, I think, stems from the philosophy many people seem to have regarding how to rear and educate children. Think of all this nonsense where children can't get failing grades, where they can't have papers marked in red pen, where they all win a ribbon in a race, even if they come last. These are all examples of an effort to somehow make life easier and, apparently, provide the child with some sort of validation. As far as I can see all this kind of stuff does is create self centred little narcissists who think the world is there to serve them.
However the problem goes much deeper than simply limiting people's language skills, it limits comprehension and critical thinking skills too. For example, I am a great fan of having children read classical bourgeois literature, the prose found in Walter Scot, or Dickens, Cervantes or Dumas, you will rarely find in a modern book. It has a complexity that forces one to concentrate on the writing and think through language in a much more complicated way than something like a “Twilight” book (excuse me as I go and vomit due to the admission that I know of the existence of such drivel). 
The kinds of books that children have had to read, since before I went to school, are so basic and straight forwards in their use of language that they are both indicative, and a result of, a general dumbing down society. Reading those kinds of books encourages basic and straight forwards thinking that conforms to a lowest common denominator and creates people who cant even think outside of the confines of docile conformity (perhaps a little harsh,??? but possibly true never the less).
My experience is telling in that I was diagnosed as most likely dyslexic at about the age of 8 or 9, but my mother was struggling to keep a roof over our heads, so the testing and treatment stopped there. And I cant spell to save myself, always get left and right mixed up and have the mathematical ability of a newt. I can, however, read. Yet due to atrocious spelling, teachers always thought I was a little slow. Bullied at school I sought refuge in the library, in a book; and I learned to love to read doing it. I learned, not only to love to read, but also to think in much more abstract ways than what is normal and by the time I was 12 was reading classics that most adults have difficulty with. I still cant write anything without proof reading it numerous times before submitting, or posting it, and spell check is a two edged sword. Yet, I cant help but think, “If I can overcome this, how on earth can someone who can actually read the word, as it is written, not get it right?” Boggles the mind.
Basically get rid of all this “OOOO little children, you are ALL winners” nonsense; some of them need a hefty dose of reality.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Oh Anrew, how I agree with you.
I haven't ever had a child of my own but have always had a lot around me. 
A neighbours boy 10 years, told me he was stupid because he couldn't read. he was anything but that. 
His parents weren't bad parents but neither of them showed any interest in education as both had got by without bothering themselves.
I took it on myself to teach him to read. Didn't have a clue as to how I was going to do it. early reader books would be boring so, I bought comics. Pictures and helping him with phonetics he soon caught on. After all, KERPOW and ZAP are easy to pronounce!
He was keen to learn and most evenings we spent at least an hour reading.
This lad was very unconfident. He stuttered badly and was keen to put himself down. 
The stutter lessened after a while and then stopped when he was reading. Next thing was the school wanted him to attend a special school for backward children rather than high school. He was in a special class for reading three times a week with 25 children for 30 minutes each lesson. How can any teach that number of children who find reading hard?

By this time his favourite book was Treasure Island and he found pleasure in the classics. 
I went to the school with his mother and met with the head and his teacher. I tell you how I never thumped her I do not know! 
She did nothing but call the lad, thick, backward, lazy and inattentive. I was gripping the side of my chair as I was so angry.
The head had a bookcase with leather bound classics on it. I called the lad in and picked up Treasure Island. Opened it randomly, handed it and told him to read.
He couldn't get a word out for such a bad stammer and I immediately told him to turn to the wall, close his eyes, breathe deeply and to imagine we were in my house not the school. I finished sternly with "Don't you dare let me down."

He did as he was told and read, with barely a stammer, from the book.

I turned to the teacher and said to her "So he cannot read?" to which she replied "Well, he has probably learned it by heart."

I turned to the head and asked "Why the hell do you employ someone like this who undermines rather than encourages?"

The lad went to High School worked diligently and took all his exams with good passes. 
I moved away and hadn't seen him for many years until my father's funeral three years ago. He is working for himself, travelling all over the Far East and is married with three children. By the car he was driving and the house he showed me pictures of, he is a wealthy man. 
It was good to see him and he told me that he still loved to read the classics. His favourite author being Thomas Hardy. 

As for all children being winners - well I attended a couple of sports days with my sister's (Primary) children. How boring it was. The school was divided into eight teams of all ages and they moved from one boring game to the next gaining points for their team.
Kids were bored as were parents. Head told me that it was not right that children had to loose. I told her that it was important they learned to loose so they could learn to win with good grace. I also asked about the child that was athletic but useless at written work, and she had no answer.

By the time my nephew attended the school the format was the same but they had proper races for those that wanted to have a go. 
What a difference in all the children and the parents. Everyone cheering and urging the children on. Little ones being helped by the bigger ones, lots of laughter and no tears. Even those that came last were cheered and encouraged to continue. 

Even I, representing my sister, entered the 'mother's' egg and spoon race. I have never been able to run but that is not the point - it is the trying that counts. I proudly say I did not come last, I managed to beat a mother who was heavily pregnant with twins that she delivered the next day! 

Life is not fair and the sooner children learn this the better they will get on.


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## Darrin (Jul 11, 2011)

Going to pull this back to pay because it's a pet peeve of mine. Schools in Oregon constantly complain about not having enough money to properly teach the kids. A study came out on how much government employees are getting paid, they didn't do all classifications but instead did 6. One of those 6 studied was teachers and it was broke down by county. Our top paid county has a starting pay of 36k/year which is just below overall average pay in the state. Benefits paid to that teacher is about 50% of base pay so total package is 54k/year. Those teachers top out at 76k/year and benefits explode to about 80% of base pay. That means pay plus benefits ends up at 136k/year. 

Now lets look at budgets. There are two different budgets they play with one is the all funds budget and other is general budget. All funds is all the money they take in from all sources, a number they don't want to give out. General budget is how much of that money is actually allocated to teaching the kids. For the same school system above general budget is about 7k per kid per year. Now when you wrestle the all funds number from their grasp and divide it by the total number of kids in that school district guess what the number is. Just over 14k per kid per year. What they wont tell you is where that other 7k per kid is going but it's not going to the classroom.

This school district also has a horrible drop out and failure rate, about 50%. So you have teachers making upwards of 76k/year which is almost double the states average pay and still have terrible results. Toss in gold plated benefits package and these guys are making more than 3x what the average Joe worker makes. I submit that pay is not the problem with our school systems.

Before jumping me and giving examples of poorly paid teachers, yes I believe there are a lot of under paid teachers out there. The point is paying more will not solve the problem with a secondary point of some school districts spend a lot of money on non teaching related expenses which is just wrong.


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## smguidotti (Jul 31, 2012)

For me I know I would have done better in school if the classrooms had been smaller. That being said, I feel the education system is kinda of a "one size fits all" type thing which does not work.


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## Faceman (Nov 29, 2007)

Darrin said:


> I submit that pay is not the problem with our school systems.


Pay IS the problem, but not just an across-the-board problem. Tenure, seniority, and unions are the problem. Whether it is a teacher, a government worker, or any other worker, a system in which pay is not based upon merit and that neither rewards excellent performers nor permits discipline and termination of nonperformers is doomed to failure, which is quite evident in our teachers as a group.

I mean, what else would we expect? Our students can't be flunked, breeze through grade schools with low standards, attend colleges with low standards, take an education curriculum that is arguably the easiest curriculum there is, and take a job with tenure and union protections that ignore performance. Duh...


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## Faceman (Nov 29, 2007)

smguidotti said:


> That being said, I feel the education system is kinda of a "one size fits all" type thing which does not work.


Quite the contrary. You are far too young to have come under a "one size fits all" public education system. Turn the clock back 50 years, and 90% of students were far better educated than today. It is true that the lower 10% did not receive close personal supervision and attention, however we have lowered our standards to the level of the minority at the expense of educating the majority. Math, science, and communication skills are appallingly low, and those that worship "modern" education methods are blind as bats to reality...the proof is in the pudding...


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## DraftyAiresMum (Jun 1, 2011)

Darrin, I completely agree that there are states out there that pay their teachers a decent wage. I know Oregon, Washington, and Alaska are among them (I know about Washington because I wanted to move there lol). However, if you look at their test scores, they are correspondingly higher than states where teachers are not paid well. Again, I use Arizona as a reference because I live here and know the numbers (well, not exact numbers). Arizona has one of the lowest test score averages in the country. We also have the second lowest-paid teachers in the country. Coincidence? I think not.

Anrew, I couldn't agree more about the classics!! My son's favorite book is Treasure Island and has been since he was in the second grade. When I asked him if it was a simplified version, he acted offended and showed me his copy. It was the regular version. So, I bought him the Harry Potter books for Christmas (not exactly classics, but well-written nonetheless). He loves them and has read them twice (this was Christmas of 2011). When he was little (before he started school), I didn't have many kids' books in my library at the time), I used to read him Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. He had to ask what things meant a lot, but it did help him learn to figure out the meanings of words on his own (and how to look up words in the dictionary).

I taught my niece to read, as well. Her teachers, her mom, and even my mom (the fourth grade teacher), had given up on teaching her to read. As a last ditch effort, my sister had me come stay with them over the summer (they lived about two hours away) to try to teach T how to read. I approached it similarly to how Foxhunter did, letting her choose what she wanted to try to read. Over that one summer, she not only learned to read, but developed a love of reading. That's why when I proof read her paper for her sophomore English class, I was appalled at how poorly written it was. Her spelling was fine, but her grammar, punctuation, and the use of text speak made me cringe. It made me realize that not always does a love of reading equate to the ability to communicate in writing effectively.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

If you look at all the costs associated w a school (construction, maintenance, transportation, salaries, meals, etc., etc.,.) and the total amount of money received from all sources for public schools (local, state, federal, grants, etc.,.), _very few_ private schools even come close to receiving the same amount of funds as public schools do. We do not need to spend billions or even millions on studies to determine "how" to improve our schools when there are hundreds, if not thousands, of proven "templates" to simply observe. And, as far as foreign countries go - no country spends more on public education K-12 than the US. So, again - money ain't the problem.

With respect to "the classics", most private schools have a "required reading list" for their students to complete that only includes the classics. This is_ not _a "new and novel idea", it is what_ was_ most often practiced _before_ education was removed from the public education system. I think it rather obvious which "approach" isn't broken.

Parents deserve a lot of the credit w respect to failing school systems. Yes, the federal government is famous for ruining whatever it touches, but they couldn't have achieved such stellar levels of ineffectiveness in any given public school w/o the help and assist of parents. The current thinking seems to be that since some parents are too "something" (brain dead?) to get involved w their children, niether they nor their child is responsible for the child's behavior/inabilities at school. And, the public school system spends the lion's share of the money it recieves on these children (e.g., there are not too many grants out their for well behaved, fed, and cared for children that are operating at their grade level). I think a more productive approach would be to _at least_ spend_ as much_ on the kids that have no "problems".


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## michaelvanessa (Apr 25, 2012)

*writeing english.*

ok i will try harder as i do ramble on.
well i skipt school so i have no grades what so ever.
my reading is 100% and my writeing was atroshous i will say that for it.
also my spelling is bad to so in life i think i have got through quite well.
some times when i look back i think i was dislexic as the truth is even my writeing was very poor and my spelling and my maths.
my writeing has inproved i do a lot of reading so i think i have home schooled my self some part.
how ever i do make mistakes i admit that.
thanks for reading and sorry for my long sentances.
michael.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Missy May said:


> And, as far as foreign countries go - no country spends more on public education K-12 than the US. So, again - money ain't the problem.


According to statistics the US is not the highest per head for High School students.


Bar Graph Map Correlations 

Showing latest available data.
Rank Countries Amount 
# 1 Switzerland:	$9,348.00 per student 
# 2 Austria:	$8,163.00 per student 
# 3 United States:	$7,764.00 per student 
# 4 Norway:	$7,343.00 per student 
# 5 Denmark:	$7,200.00 per student 
# 6 France:	$6,605.00 per student 
# 7 Italy:	$6,458.00 per student 
# 8 Germany:	$6,209.00 per student 
# 9 Japan:	$5,890.00 per student 
# 10 Australia:	$5,830.00 per student 
# 11 Sweden:	$5,648.00 per student 
# 12 Netherlands:	$5,304.00 per student 
# 13 United Kingdom:	$5,230.00 per student 
# 14 Israel:	$5,115.00 per student 
# 15 Portugal:	$4,636.00 per student 
# 16 Spain:	$4,274.00 per student 
# 17 Ireland:	$3,934.00 per student 
# 18 Greece:	$3,287.00 per student 
# 19 Czech Republic:	$3,182.00 per student 
# 20 Hungary:	$2,140.00 per student 
# 21 Thailand:	$1,177.00 per student


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## Darrin (Jul 11, 2011)

Foxhunter, the one district in my example above is over 14k per student. State average is still 12k per student. The general fund budget the state likes to hand out is 7k per student. So how accurate is that ranking? I really doubt my state isn't the only state that likes to play these number games.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Darrin - just something I Googled!

I agree that facts and figures vary depending on what Google throws up.


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## Missy May (Feb 18, 2012)

Foxhunter said:


> According to statistics the US is not the highest per head for High School students.
> 
> 
> Bar Graph Map Correlations
> ...


What is spent on public education overall is not limited to what is allocated per student per a given year. Do these figures include grants, construction costs, transportation, or "free meals", for example? My guess is - no. Notice, however, US students score pretty far below "number 3" in any subject.
BTW...no country outspends the dollar amount the US spends on education.


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

I spent hours last summer helping a 10 yr old who was a bit behind in school. It's not that his parents didn't try. Some kids progress better with someone else. The work was mainly arithmetic and reading. He doesn't know how to read a regular clock because of all the digital. We worked on that as well.


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## Endiku (Dec 6, 2010)

Hey look, my name! How did I miss this thread? xD

This looks like it has mostly been an adult conversational thread up until this point but I'm going to shove my nose into it anyways. I'm telling you though, that poem that was written made my head hurt, and my eyes want to bleed! I think it summed up my entire life. haha.

I honestly don't think that I am an exceptional student. Rather, I have had a lot of wonderful people that have been willing to help me, and an autoperfectionistic side that drives myself and others crazy from time to time. I went to a public kindergarten for one semester, and apparently my teachers were all freaking out because I was incapable of singing my ABCs in order or writing them correctly. They told my mom that I might be autistic or dyslexic, or both, and that I should be put into special ed as soon as possible. That, ofcourse, was when my mom decided to homeschool me.

Most people thought that my mom was nuts, because she had barely completed highschool herself, and only 10% of my family even completed highschool on either side. She did it anyways. When she realized that I wasn't capable of learning to read and write 'normally' she concocted her on way for me to learn. We used dough to manually create my ABCs so that I could 'feel' them and learn that way, labeled everything in the house so that I could see the way it was written when I used it, and constantly used my new skills to apply them in our daily lives. When I would do my school work, she would refer to the way we used it, or how it felt, or how it sounded to remind me what was correct. The best thing she ever gave me out of my elementery and grade school years was the love for learning. It is what fuels me even now.

Fast forwards to highschool, which I am currently in, and I do have to admit that I have to look a lot harder at things than most people do. I have to work my butt off to accomplish mundane tasks such as reading something for the class, or writing. Things don't just 'come' to me like they do when your average person learns to read, and nothing about my writing or my math skills (I am dyscaculate as well as dyslexic) is automatic. I still have to think about what a letter sound like, and feels like when I use it. I still have to think about whether I am using a short o' or a long o'. But I am in no way incapable.

I struggle a LOT with normal curriculum (sp?) materials even now, which is very unfortunate considering that I am now what my friends call a "hybrid homeschooler." I take dual credit college courses, as well as Honors classes at a local PREP school for omeschoolers. These courses are designed for intelligent people with a knack for learning, and then there is me. I have learned after many years though, that just because I struggle does not mean that I am stupid, or incapable. Rather, I simply do not fit the manufactured cookie cutter shape that schools create. I'm sory of that 'odd ball' lumpy cookie that would typically be tossed out if caught at the manufacturing plant, dispite the fact that I 'taste' just as good as the others. Why? Because I am different, and in the world of industrialization, different is bad. That being said, I have accepted the fact that I am not a normal 'cookie' and I have learned to use different methods that make sense to ME, in order to make sense of thing. For example, I am EXTREMELY color oriented. Colors 'make sense' to me. I use colors to organize my thoughts on paper when I am writing, and my numbers when I am calculating. Does it take more work? Yes. Would most people be willing to put in that effort? I don't know. But it is possible. I am just grateful that I did not have parents or teachers who gave up on me, because if they had, I would just be another teenager that failed at writing. Because they took the time to teach me how to appreciate communication, and then proceeded to teach me how to appreciate writing as a form of communication...I not only am willing to put forth the effort to sound at least a little bit intelligent, I actually enjoy writing!

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, I still make tons of silly little errors that I often cannot catch though. Oh, and for the record, I still abhore math. LOL


When it comes to 'normal' schoolers in a 'normal' public school setting though, I really do feel bad for kids my age. I sympathize for those with learning disabilities like mine, because I know they haven't had the opportunity that I have. For example, I have a friend with some minor learning disabilities. The public schools just don't work for her though, and she has fallen through the cracks. While I am an 11th graders in AP Chemistry, she is in IPC. While I am taking classes such as government, financial ed, algebra II, and SAT prep Composition, she is taking 'fluffy' classes such as dance and fashion. I am dyscaculate and learning about pascals triangle, while she struggles at my dinner table to divide 6 by 2. The only difference I can find, is the classes that we take, and the people who teach them to us. IMO the fluff classes such as fashion, sewing class, break out dance class , etc- are worthless and should be removed. Yet instead of those classes being cut out, _important _things are being cut out. Another large problem is that those with honest learning disabilities such as my friend and myself tend to get lumped in with those that just don't care. And I can tell you this...not even the most motivated dyslexic in the world can learn with a bunch of slackers goofing off around them.

But all of these problems that have been brought up by all of us necessitate change, and change is something that our world seems to be very against. Especially when it comes to government and finances, because everyone is so worried about what it in it for them, and how they are going to get it for the least cost to themselves. Anyone heard of the phrase TAANSTAFL?

I'll stop blabbering now, but I will end with something that a classmate of mine asked just two days ago in Government, when we were discussing things like this.

"People are always worried about how the government can help the people, and how the government can help the people. But my question to you is...how much of this do you think would go away if we would drop what is obviously not working...and the people helped the people?"


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## smguidotti (Jul 31, 2012)

Maybe the issue of kids doing horribly in school has less to do with money issues than it does with kids just being flat out distracted by the likes of technology. 

I feel like my generation has a learned short attention span -- if that makes any sense -- In that most of my peers are so used to transferring/receiving information so fast via the internet which most can access constantly and readily in their hands (smart phones) that many kids/people can't sit still in a classroom with out getting distracted. 

I find that many people I know, including family members, give off this facade on the internet that they are people who give a crap about worldly topics because they 'liked' it on facebook but if you question those same people in person they just regurgitate what they see on the computer with no true understanding of what they just "shared".


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## Vidaloco (Sep 14, 2007)

Being a reader is a huge help in being a good writer. My Mother is a reader and read to me as a child. I think that's one of the gifts you can give as a parent, read to your child. 
Although I haven't picked up a book in years, I still read. For some reason, after being a 2-3 book a week reader, I just stopped. Every time I pick up a book, I get about half way through and lose interest. I'm not sure what's up with that. I blame it on old age and the internet :lol:


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## Shropshirerosie (Jan 24, 2012)

I only really chose to join this discussion because I am fascinated that Tinyliny and others have noticed that the British contributors to this forum use commas more than others. I am now going to go and glance at my journal to see if I'm one of the offenders.

Charles Dickens is my personal run-on sentence criminal. That man could fill an entire paragraph with just one sentence, and an over-abundance of semi-colons. Maybe full stops were too expensive for all but the richest authors to use frequently? :think:

I marked some papers in our schools spell-a-thon last week and was surprised at the range of standards within each year group. The children who received parental literary support were obvious. And to my uneducated eyes, the children who appeared to be struggling with undiagnosed (or unsupported) dyslexia were also obvious.

My son is now 7 years old and remains in the state schooling system because we have been lucky enough to live in two places with high quality, well funded, and well run schools. If I ever observe that he is suffering because of poor schooling I will take him private in a heartbeat. Sadly there are many children whose parents don't have that choice.


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## Vidaloco (Sep 14, 2007)

Endiku said:


> "People are always worried about how the government can help the people, and how the government can help the people. But my question to you is...how much of this do you think would go away if we would drop what is obviously not working...and the people helped the people?"


I enjoyed your post and give props to your mother. As far as the quote from a schoolmate, look at history. The elder George Bush, after having served as the two-term vice president under Ronald Reagan’s decimation of social programs, he discovered “compassionate conservatism” and delivered his 1988 Republican Convention speech as the presidential candidate, calling for a “thousand points of light” to deal with the devastation of social programs for which he and the plutocrats he represented were responsible. They expected private charities and individuals to step up and care for the poor. Unfortunately it didn't happen. I'm surprised your teacher didn't comment on that since it was government class. 
Sorry, didn't mean to stray into politics but history is history.


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## Endiku (Dec 6, 2010)

Without wanting to start a debate and risking taking over NorthernMama's thread, I'll just say that I agree. She actually did tell us about a few instances in which 'people help the people' did not work, though I don't think she used either of your specific sources. Very good point though. I think that my schoolmate's idea is one that theoretically could work, but because of many different components in the way people are at this moment in time, it doesn't work and can't work. It would take a lot of reformation to get to that point, if its even possible. In actuality though, it seems to me that it would take a lot of reformation in _any_ part of our government, schooling system, economics, etc to get out of this rut and into something that works, and none of us seem to have a complete answer for it!

However, I think 'people helping the people' CAN be applied to daily life in a less extreme level, such as parenting. Sometimes, small changes can lead to big reformations, as seen in history. It just takes determination, on both the part of the parent, the child, and those around them!


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## AnrewPL (Jun 3, 2012)

Yeah Endiku you are entirely correct. Problems in education systems are intimately entwined with problems throughout society more generally. I think the driving force behind it all is the reduction of the entire social world to economics; there have been careers made on discussing this stuff so I won’t bother to even try to encapsulate it in a nut shell. However, suffice to say, that when everything is reduced to quantifiable dollar terms, and rationalised on lines that prioritise aspects of elements of society, education for example, that are conducive economics over other aspects, like actual quality education, we are on a slippery slope to sh%* creek. That is to say, in this day and age not only is the cart put before the horse, the horse is considered entirely superfluous, and worse, unprofitable, and done away with. How to fix it? Who knows, whatever the answer it will mean scrapping neo-classical economics.
It was interesting to read how your mother helped you with reading by making letters from dough; I figured it out by pretending I had my own language and had to teach myself English. I still get plenty of words wrong, and it gets really embarrassing when I say a word wrong when I am presenting a seminar paper, but I’m slowly sorting it out.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

Michaelvanessa - thank you for contributing. Your post was slightly difficult to read, but it is apparent that you made extra effort to be clear. I don't know how to help you to continue your learning. All I can suggest is to use short thoughts -- don't try to get everything that's in your head on the screen too fast.

Endiku -- huge, let me say: HUGE! koodos to your mom. I knew my son was having unusual difficulties at a young age. Children's rhymes, Dr. Seuss books, the alphabet -- all were out of his learning area. I have been a teacher of various things at various times, but I just couldn't figure out how to teach my son. It was disheartening. If only I could have seen with different eyes. I knew he needed a different way to learn, but I couldn't figure out what he needed. By the time I found some help, he was already 14. Trying to teach a 14 year old to learn to read and write properly, when he's discovered the wonder of reading his own way, is... well... very difficult for the teen to accept. 

Both you and Andrew are two of many examples of people being able to succeed if they want to. I wish my son would want to... Ach - this is too sad for me. next topic...

Someone mentioned reading as a benefit to writing again. Again, I'll say it's only a limited aid. I found that out rather quickly with my son. When he finally started to read on his own with enjoyment I was so sure that his spelling would begin to improve as well. I was wrong. Very wrong. You can learn to read by whole word recognition and context. You can't learn to write that way.


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## amberly (Dec 16, 2012)

I am one of the best writers in my grade and the best writer in my english class. So that is pretty sad and people don't even talk to me anymore because I correct what they say too.
"Me and jj went skiing."
JJ id mean? (me + 'an'd = mean) Get it?


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## AnrewPL (Jun 3, 2012)

Both you and Andrew are two of many examples of people being able to succeed if they want to. I wish my son would want to... Ach - this is too sad for me. next topic...

Someone mentioned reading as a benefit to writing again. Again, I'll say it's only a limited aid. I found that out rather quickly with my son. When he finally started to read on his own with enjoyment I was so sure that his spelling would begin to improve as well. I was wrong. Very wrong. You can learn to read by whole word recognition and context. You can't learn to write that way.[/QUOTE]


Don’t worry, for many years, throughout my school years from year three to year twelve I had given up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to succeed, it was that I believed it was impossible for me to do so. I had been taught that I was dumb and taught to teach myself that I was dumb, and it is one of the things that I still hold bitter resentment towards my teachers for. It was the influence of others; one, the guy who taught me to deal with horses, and another well after I had left school that convinced me that perhaps I wasn’t so stupid after all. 
If you are there encouraging your son you are already giving him the basis from which to succeed, it might just take him a little longer, or he may have to find a way out of the ordinary to get there; but you telling him he can do it even if he thinks he can’t will be the best help he can get. 
As for the reading learning to write, well it helped me, probably not so much in the spelling department, but in other ways. What helped me a little with spelling though is learning grammatical rules I after E except after C for example and learning to assign my own consistent system for understanding the letters and their place in words, that one is my own language. From there it has been a long and slow struggle to learn to associate the correct pronunciation to words. In my head, the word I read may sound and look entirely different to how it actually sounds and looks, but through context and use of a dictionary, and strangely enough being forced to learn Latin roots in high school, I have learned to associate the correct meaning to my version of the word. This is the reason why I found being forced to read aloud in class in school so painful, I just couldn’t do it, is sounded like a foreign language to everyone else in the class, to me it made sense, it didn’t to anyone else. From there it is a matter of learning the English equivalent to the word in my language. 
I don’t know if that makes any sense. Anyway, just believing in your son and telling him he can get through it when he thinks he can’t will be a huge help to him.


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## Endiku (Dec 6, 2010)

If you know what to research, there really are a LOT of resources readily available. I recently stumbled upon a forum for dyscaculates that has _vast_ amounts of knowledge that I have found to be helpful for my dyscaculia, as well as my dsylexia. I cannot link it because of HF rules, but could PM it to anyone interested, or you can just type in Dyscaculia forum. Dyslexia forum is great as well.

As it turns out, there are many different ways to learn, just like there are many types of people. It is foolish of us to think that every person will learn the same. Some are visual, some are visual, some are kinetic, some are all three. And then there are some of us that are extra special, and have a totally unresearched way of learning.

For example, I tend to believe that I am a synesthete. If you do not know what this is, wikipedia has a pretty sound definition. Because I use synesthesia to learn, I have integrated color into becoming a VERY large part of my learning. Every shade represents something different from me, and I can literally 'feel' and 'taste' a word when a color is linked to it. It sounds rediculous, I know. I had been using techniques that are common to synesthetes for years before knowing the proper term for it though, and once I realized that I just might be synesthetic, I began to research it myself and 'experiment.' As it turns out, using this new knowledge of my possible gift has helped me TREMENDOUSLY in the past year or two. 

Northernmama, perhaps your son has one of these, as we dyslexics and dylcaculics call them, "hidden talents." These hidden talents are very complex sometimes, and hard to discover, but I have come to realize that many of use do have them. Its quite remarkable actually, to find that there is more to us than what first meets the eye.


On another note, someone mentioned that they call other people out on their bad grammar. I would like to say that this is probably the worst way to try to change someone. I have a few guys in particular who LOVE to correct my misspellings and errors, and I can tell you that while I am careful not to let them know, it really does irk me. It is one thing to kindly say 'oh, by the way- I think it is spelled like this ____' but another to constantly nit pick or run around on FB, for example, astrixing every single thing. I love when someone helps me improve, but only if it is in a loving or at least constructive manner.

Of course, most of the guys that I know that bother me about it don't even know that I'm dyslexic. I'm picky about who I tell at first, because I don't want to be judged by some silly label. I'm a lot more than just a person that has a hard time spelling. I also feel like people wouldn't push me to be the best that I can possibly be if they thought there was something 'wrong' with me because they would think I'm just doomed. Its sad, but its true.


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## Roadyy (Feb 9, 2013)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a good example of a book full of run-on sentences... I just finished it for the 2nd time. It took me awhile to adjust to reading it due to the writing style, but it is a good read.

I have a couple of co-workers who are dyslexic and have learned how to write again through working on it with diligence. They got tired of being made fun of when they were younger and that drove them to do better rather than fetal up in a shell. I know that isn't always the case with ridicule and would prefer to encourage with positive more so than negative reinforcement.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

Andrew; said:


> Don’t worry, for many years, throughout my school years from year three to year twelve I had given up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to succeed, it was that I believed it was impossible for me to do so. I had been taught that I was dumb and taught to teach myself that I was dumb, and it is one of the things that I still hold bitter resentment towards my teachers for. It was the influence of others; one, the guy who taught me to deal with horses, and another well after I had left school that convinced me that perhaps I wasn’t so stupid after all.





Andrew; said:


> If you are there encouraging your son you are already giving him the basis from which to succeed, it might just take him a little longer, or he may have to find a way out of the ordinary to get there; but you telling him he can do it even if he thinks he can’t will be the best help he can get.
> As for the reading learning to write, well it helped me, probably not so much in the spelling department, but in other ways. What helped me a little with spelling though is learning grammatical rules I after E except after C for example and learning to assign my own consistent system for understanding the letters and their place in words, that one is my own language. From there it has been a long and slow struggle to learn to associate the correct pronunciation to words. In my head, the word I read may sound and look entirely different to how it actually sounds and looks, but through context and use of a dictionary, and strangely enough being forced to learn Latin roots in high school, I have learned to associate the correct meaning to my version of the word. This is the reason why I found being forced to read aloud in class in school so painful, I just couldn’t do it, is sounded like a foreign language to everyone else in the class, to me it made sense, it didn’t to anyone else. From there it is a matter of learning the English equivalent to the word in my language.
> I don’t know if that makes any sense. Anyway, just believing in your son and telling him he can get through it when he thinks he can’t will be a huge help to him.


Andrew, thank you. That was very nice to hear. He too was treated as stupid, but when I spoke with the teachers I found out he had them wrapped around his little finger. Stupid, is he? It sure provided a lot of humour at the dinner table. 



Endiku said:


> If you know what to research, there really are a LOT of resources readily available. I recently stumbled upon a forum for dyscaculates that has _vast_ amounts of knowledge that I have found to be helpful for my dyscaculia, as well as my dsylexia. I cannot link it because of HF rules, but could PM it to anyone interested, or you can just type in Dyscaculia forum. Dyslexia forum is great as well.
> 
> As it turns out, there are many different ways to learn, just like there are many types of people. It is foolish of us to think that every person will learn the same. Some are visual, some are visual, some are kinetic, some are all three. And then there are some of us that are extra special, and have a totally unresearched way of learning.
> 
> ...


Thanks to you too Endiku. Yes, I have researched to death. There is an International Dyslexia Organization, did you know? We have a branch in Ontario and they were/are great for support and info and new info. There is definitely a lot out there and the IDO is just a small part. We did try to find his learning forte, but still looking... not colours, not touch, not really reading, auditory is about the best so far we've found... I'm thinking its going to be something visual, but just haven't found the right area of visuality (is that a word?).

As for correcting people -- I hear you. I used to correct people all the time. I've learned that there is a right way, a wrong way, a right time, a wrong time... Young kids under the age of 7 are the easiest to help! Teens are dang near impossible for the most part and adults -- well, they tend to be touch and go! Mostly I let them go It still grates on my nerves though.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

N MAMA - some years ago there was a TV documentary called "Why Men Don't Iron."

It was very interesting on how male and female brains are wired very differently.

A high school took part in one of the episodes and pupils were made to sit boy/girl.
The girls stopped the boys messing around and the boys stopped the girls from chatting.

Teacher were told to give tests in every lesson, this offered a challenge to the boys and most important was to use graphs or drawings to explain things becaue the boys learnt better that way.

Exam results for the boys (which were generally lower than the girls) went well over 50% higher. 

Might be the way to go with your lad.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

Yes, Foxhunter - he is a very 3D thinker just like his Dad. He's great at drafting and physics.

I think the line delineating how boys and girls think differently is not as clear as it once was due to the changes in upbringing at a very early age. More important is that each individual learns best in a different way. So our society needs to teach in a manner that benefits the greatest percentage even though some may be bored. We just can't teach individually and we can't teach the boys one way and the girls another. 

It's been interesting to hear how even teachers can't figure out how to place commas. I think that teachers don't know sentence components and sentence structure themselves, therefore it is not getting taught. No consistency either is resulting in students getting frustrated.

I thought it was just in my area because we are in such a backwards town. I guess it's everywhere.


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