#1892 Discipline-Phobia

"He had went to school????"

Even *I* don't say that in jest or "jive"...

I know I have to re-read what I type since I can mak the mistake of saying "me" instead of "I" as in the shopping sentence. If I am tapping away at the keyboard when I am angry, I am too prone to hit send before doing a spell check or reading what I actually wrote. I do look like an ignorant person at that point.

Sorry to be a pill, CF Scorpio.

I am overly-sensitive to grammar corrections because that is ALL my grandmother did when I was young. She would "correct" me about every little thing from childhood to young adulthood saying how it was for "my own good", which I knew was B*S. I also hated how she said it was "constructive criticism". Even a young person has feelings! But...I could not say a thing to HER when I hit adulthood.

I understand my late-grandmother wanting me to be a well-spoken and decent adult. However, her constructive criticism really was more about picking at every little thing I did. It still ticks me off 20 - 30 years later...

What scares me is that I have met several school teachers with horrible spelling and grammar skills. It really frightens me. It makes me wonder what qualifications these people have, and what standards the schools are using when they hire people.

I have 2 teachers in one of dance classes who mispronounce words constantly. It makes me wonder what the kids are learning in their classrooms.

There was a guy in my 12-step group who was a teacher, and he actually argued with me that "each other" should be spelled "eachother"!!!

If teachers aren't capable of teaching spelling and grammar, who will?

"What scares me is that I have met several school teachers with horrible spelling and grammar skills. It really frightens me. It makes me wonder what qualifications these people have, and what standards the schools are using when they hire people"
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When I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher who just plain old didn't really like me all that much. I was a bright student, but had a lot of trouble with my handwriting. Even now, I don't like to write and type most things, because my writing is atrocious. One of those things, yanno?

One day, my teacher made me take my handwriting test home to have my mom sign it. On top, the teacher had written "Dot your i's and cross your t's." I handed my test to my mom, who was sitting on the bed putting curlers in her hair. It was dark in the room while she was watching the morning news, so she squinted to read what the teacher had written. She reached over to her bedside table and grabbed a pen that just happened to be red. She read the paper over again, scratched her head, then crossed the teacher's t's and dotted HER i's, then prologued her signature with "Practice what you preach".

The teacher was LIVID and went on and on (in class, in front of all the other students) about how in all her years of teaching, she NEVER had a parent question her methods. She called my mom and my mom explained that she knows who her father is (he was some bigwig in the education system, and he even had a local elementary school named after him), and that if it wasn't for this relationship, she'd have no business teaching at all.

I had my share of bad teachers too, NotQuiteSure. My 4th grade teacher made us learn the word "communist" for a vocabulary lesson, and the definition he made us learn was "someone who causes trouble". Talk about simplistic, inaccurate and biased! I guess he wanted to brainwash some 9-year-olds.

My 5th-grade teacher (who was supposed to be teaching us the metric system) argued with me that mountains could not possibly be measured in meters, because meters were too small. She said mountains in Europe were measured in kilometers, not meters. I argued that we measure mountains in feet, which are smaller than meters. She went ballistic on me. I went home and told my parents (who were both teachers) and they gave me a pile of evidence to show her, and they also called the school to complain about her.

Now I see you point, CF Scorpio. It is one thing if a person in the teaching profession just lets loose after work when it comes to grammar and speach...but wanting to insist on spelling "each other" as "eachother". You're 100% correct and I should not let my late-grandmother's constant nit-picking give me issues about things that DO matter!

I note that CFScorpio is still making comments about my grammar and spelling ability, without actually giving any examples at all as to what these "perceived " failings are.

It is all too easy to be critical without giving any evidence.
I note that CFScorpio has yet again failed to answer any of the real points of my original post, but has instead attempted to "sidetrack" the discussion into grammar and literacy (and of course my personal "failings" in these things).

Anecdotes about teachers who people claim to have known or met should not be accepted without question as being the absolute truth.

I don't know what going to dancing class has to do with an expert knowledge of teachers. Usually like with like go to those places.

I am, as you guessed, British and proud of it and as such belong to the Nation that provided the world with the English language.

If teachers in America are perfectionists in grammar and spellings, then how do they explain ebonics which is a derivation of English, should you not being critical of those. Because of all this concentration on perfection should this time not be taken up with doing the job they are supposed to do to teach children survival skills in the real world.

Ex-teacher, I don't think CFScorpio was saying anything negative about *you* in those posts. About ebonics - that is exactly what she and others here are saying! The teachers - at least here in America - can sometimes be really terrible, and the standards are being lowered so much that now the ability to use proper grammar and spelling is quite rare. Many CF are annoyed that we help to subsidize the educational system with our tax dollars, and the results we are seeing are discouraging and downright insulting.

I watched the debate for the Texas governor election over the weekend. One of the guys who is running said that teachers don't make a "living wage", and he wants to give them all $6000 across the board raises regardless of merit. Teachers here in Houston start out at about $40K muper year, no experience, and that is only for 9 months of work per year. Sorry, but many people live on much less, and somehow they make ends meet. Most of my peers in health care make less, and if they mess up they are responsible for a person's life, not just some misspelled words or poor language. I apologize to any teachers I am offending (and there are many GREAT ones out there, don't get me wrong as I know I might get flamed), but the pandering just chaps my ass!

Oops, that was "$40K per year" - stupid cut and paste! :spin

Yo my peeps, let me hip you to some jive...
Seriously. You all understood what the other person was saying, right? It wasn't like wakwoi Jklk hcih qoka kbkoow, was it?

I am assuming not, because you all seem to be perfectly capable of pciking apart eachother's arguments, and writing styles, jsut fine. And you see, that's the point of my arguement. Language is a living concept and it changes over time, and even over space. Some people may indeed rite and speek very differently in different situations. (For example, I don't usulay use such ridikulous speelign.) Lettuce stop nitpicking over each other's grammatical, spellign and typographical quirks and realize that as long as we understand what the idears the other person is tryign to put fourth, then it should all be good. If you don't understand what ideas a person is trying to put out there (too much sarcasm perhaps? maybe it's in russian?), that would be the perfect opportunity to ask further questions...about their ideas.


But then again, I grew up in the 70's with "Free To Be You And Me" and thusly am kind of an "everyone (who doesn't piss me off) is beautifully unique" sort of beatnik...anything I say about language should be considered suspect.
:spin

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

but too much focus on one minor point like grammar, detracts from the teaching of other more relevant things, like respect, but teacher arent (are not) able to punish kids, if they do they get into trouble..

when does grammar become important, in office jobs, but since most of these kids will be flipping burgers their entire lives. this is a problem i see in american schools, the focus of lessons into areas that are moderatly important taking on the idea of word of god.

kids are being told they are sick add or adhd, or a myriad of other conditions, when bad parenting is the actual cause in a lot of cases (i dont disagree that the conditions exist, just they are over diagnosed)

theres stories in the UK today, which say course work is to be banned for some lessons as its easy to cheat, the history of the 2nd world war is nearly non existant. the teachers want to teach it, but the authorities wont let them.

thats the whole point, focusing on one point grammar over good citizenship, or giving girls more access to lessons and equipment, and letting boys learn with inferior items.. and if you say it never happens i can tell you it does. and so can a lot of teachers.. there is a bias towards girls on the idea that they were being not taught as well as boys, which may be true, but now its the other way.. if not how do you explain so many boys taking ritalin and other versions, far more than girls, boys going round in gangs, why now has there been an increase in boy violence, is it natural, if so why did it happen no and not 20 years ago..

look at how many school shootings all done by boys, you cant tell me that you beleive all boys since year zero did it.. there has to be a reason, why boys are feeling so let down they have to go kill so many people..

teachers cant punish, parents wont punish, teacher cant teach whats needed, parents dont teach whats needed. THATS the Problem. grammar is irrelevant to the situation, i cant find any crime that could have been cured by good grammar, i cant find any problems that can be fixed by using the correct grammatical usage. focusing on the grammar of a person, rather than the message IS the other part of the problem. the nit picking, rather than the subject.

does it matter if you put your preposition here or there.. no.. does it matter that boys are killing people.. yes.. are all boys evil.. no.. are boys being let down by a feminised education system.. yes.. BOYS are not GIRLS and GIRLS are not BOYS. why should they focus on one at the expense of the other..

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

I do think that is exactly what CFScorpio was doing Greengrass.

I saw many years ago the way teaching was developing and wanted no part in it. Teaching used to be a vocation nothing to do with how much money it paid, it was the love of teaching children the ways of the world and how to cope with it.

These days, unfortuntely children do not on the whole have the pleasure of a childhood. They are for the most part treated as miniature adults from birth. You only have to look at the way some of these so-called mothers dress them and speak to them and at the first opportunity leave them with strangers to rear them.

When I realised how the teaching profession was progressing I had the sense to move on into another more satisfying and important career.

If I could have taught in traditional ways, instead of changing the system so regularly that the children never come to school two years together with the same format I might have continued but not under those continually changing circumstance and less control of the methods of teaching in your class.

If $40,000 is the pay for a teacher it is considerably less than I pay administration and clerical staff. I most certainly would not want to take the responsiblity of someone elses children for that sort of pay. If a mother finds it difficult with one or two children how do they think a teacher feels with a class full, some of whom are labelled as ADD etc., well I know I wouldn't. It is unfair to criticise a teacher without knowing how you yourself would cope in the situation they sometimes find themselves in.

I have to say that I realize how much the educational system is going to hell. I was a substitute teacher after I finished my bachelor's, thinking I might want to give full-time teaching a try. It was definitely not for me! The kids were such brats, and got away with so much crap. Everything became about discipline and not hurting poor Bratley's delicate self-esteem (even if Bratley calls you a "bitch" or performs some other act of insubordination).

"If $40,000 is the pay for a teacher it is considerably less than I pay administration and clerical staff."

Good lord, I must be living in the wrong country! (I already knew that though!) Seriously, if you adjust for the actual time worked by teachers (9-10 months versus a whole year), they already earn over $50K annually, starting out. For them to bitch that it's not a livable wage just chaps me hard, especially when minimum wage is still $5.15/hour in my state. And yes, I realize it is MINIMUM WAGE, implying that people who work for this amount have to take it because they are not educated or skilled or whatever, but still that is a pretty damn good salary for someone fresh out of college. That $6000/year pay raise they are talking about could go for other education-related things: how about subsidizing skyrocketing tuition rates and fees for college students who are actually performing well, or doing volunteer work for the community?
Just an idea.

minimum wage here in the uk is £5.35 an hour, yes and thats for all workers, over $10 an hour per person..

i lived through the changes here, every year we had a new way of examination, you didnt know what you were going to study that year, as it would all be changed, and its happened every year since the early 80's.

but there has been a change in the way kids are being taught, and not for the best. i can only speak for the UK,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/10/nhistory110.xml

History teaching at A-level is so fragmented and useless that it produces "nothing but elaborately polished mediocrity" among students, claims one of the country's most eminent academics.


Despair: Dr David Starkey

David Starkey, the television historian and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, said events were often taught in isolation leaving pupils with no understanding of the order in which they occurred and little idea of what went on before or after.

He said: "There is no point in doing merely a fragment in time with no sense of what might have led up to events and what consequences flowed from them. At the moment, pupils study a bit of American history and a bit of Hitler. That's almost useless."

It was absurd that the main history syllabus covering Hitler stopped in 1939, he said. "There is no Second World War and no Holocaust.

He was speaking before the premiere this week of the film The History Boys. This depicts the clash between two teachers, one who values learning for its own sake and one who sees teaching as a means to passing exams.

It is a debate he believes is worth having as he fears that highly prescriptive curriculums, combined with a fear in schools of failing in the league tables, had produced "nothing but elaborately polished mediocrity" among students, who were coached to pass exams, but not to understand their subjects
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thats what i see happening all over, its not about teaching anymore its about passing exams, now parents have an excuse if their kids are dumb or fail, they suffer from autism, add, adhd, etc etcetc..its just an excuse for a majority, (a reason for a minority) but as has been seen boys who are being taught differently than they were, are more and more acting out.. why..

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein