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This 'ere is likely to be a long post, so if you've better things to do, I suggest that now would be a good time.
I employ staff for various kinds of work for my firm. Not all of them are IT geeks, but most of them are. With very few exceptions they can't write for nuts. One or two are functionally illiterate. One of the employment tests we use is known as the VIT - a Verbal Integration Test. It doesn't ask you to write anything, it asks you to respond to simple questions. On average the applicants' scores fall within about the fortieth percentile which, effectively, means that they understand little of what they read.
We employ them anyway, unless the other criteria are not met. Why? Because if we didn't, we wouldn't have any new staff at all.
I spend a good deal of my time rewriting business cases, terms of reference, reports, even letters. Out of perhaps 200 people at the premises I work at, I would say only 50 people have medium to good skills in written English.
This is, to my way of thinking, a shocking state of affairs. Here we are, entering or in the twenty-first century (depending on the way you count years) and more and more of New Zealand's youth are leaving school with no ability to hold up their end of a written communication. I don't know whether this is the case internationally or not.
The silly thing is that for years New Zealand was held up as a shining example of a literacy education system. Yet, between my leaving primary (elementary) school and my sister, who is eleven years younger than me, reaching it, something happened which has resulted in the situation today. My sister is bright as a button (she's just completing a PhD), yet my mother and I spent hours and hours teaching her to read the old-fashioned way - using word lists, spelling words out, learning word order, writing repetitively and all the other "obsolete" approaches to teaching reading and writing. She's only just forgiven me, some thirty years on. And she wasn't alone. A friend of mine who is a high school history teacher told me ten years ago that she and her colleagues actually have to teach kids to read before they can teach their subject sensibly.
For several years I was involved in the local adult literacy programme, teaching adults who had slipped through the educational cracks to read and write. Most of them were ashamed of their lack of literacy and some went to extraordinary lengths to disguise why they were visiting me or why I was visiting them. One woman used to hint to her neighbours that we were having an affair! And most of them picked it up pretty quickly, again using the old-fashioned methods, the "cat sat on the mat" approach rather than "it's okay if you spell it 'kyt', dear, because everyone will know what you mean."
The active members of this list (with the notable exception of Jazz) appear to be mainly "older" people, and I gather that most, if not all, have tertiary qualifications. No insults intended, but most of us also seem to be of "mature" years. There are about 1740 members on the list worldwide. It's not hard to find. Given that there are supposed to be over 70 million people with access to the Internet, 1740 seems a paltry number.
What do others think about this - the whys and wherefores?
And what does everyone think we can do about it?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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When my son was in elementary school (2nd grade if I remember correctly) I went to a parent teacher meeting armed with a story my son had written. Though it had a passing grade it was rife with spelling mistakes, none of which had been circled or underlined. When I brought it up, the teacher said that the new educational guidelines forbade correcting grammar because it would give the children, and I quote, “the red mark syndrome.” Correction marks on a paper apparently discouraged children to such an extent that they would never want to write again!
The teacher was supposed to note the words that the children had trouble with, and incorporate them into daily class work. I found this to be utterly ridiculous since there was no way one teacher could possibly bring up all the words kids are wont to misspell. I gave her the permission to “mark away,” and she seemed genuinely happy to get my o.k. She was quite certain that she was churning out a bunch of illiterates but was forced to follow the guidelines set out by the school board and their flock of psychologists.
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La belle Bel replied: She was quite certain that she was churning out a bunch of illiterates but was forced to follow the guidelines set out by the school board and their flock of psychologists.
Yes, yes. This seems to be part of "the new learning". The one-size-fits-all approach appears to have become a political correctness issue, with schools competing to be more correct than the others. The kids are the losers.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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My AP English teacher, who is also the English Department Chair for the school district, often talks about how we're not being taught proper grammar. She says that the problem is that most teachers find grammar utterly boring, but she really enjoys it. She frequently lambastes us about grammatical errors. The problems that she finds aren't usually spelling (that's fixed by computer spell checks now) but errors like comma splicing, quoting, sit/set, lay/lie type things. I agree it's a major problem and is quite annoying, but I think, as with other educational problems, parental involvement is needed.
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I think that a part of the problem is strictly related to the difficulty of writing English: our children have no problems - or have LESS problems- since words are written in the same way in which they pronounce them, and they don't need to imagine or remember the correct spelling.
Anyway, there is another aspect of the problem which seems to be common : it seems that students cannot obtain from the schools a good instruction - or at least skills enough - as before ... years ago...
But we cannot forget that we are making a comparison between very different situations: now we are trying to let everyone have an instruction, then just few -usually rich and/or clever - could.
For example, I am now teaching at the University, while my grand-mother was not even able to read and to write - well, not exactly: she was barely able to write his name - and I have this sweet memory : we were together making exercises - she (75) was slowly writing her name, while I (5) was learning to write my first words..
Emanuela
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Jazz, you said: She says that the problem is that most teachers find grammar utterly boring
This is probably true. It's not the most interesting subject in the world to teach. And pupils generally don't want to learn it, either.
Often, I think, pupils think that because they can speak the language they know all they need to. I think everyone on this board would know better, including you.
A lack of interest in teaching and learning in any subject means that you wind up with a situation where the teacher pretends to teach, the pupil pretends to learn, and honour is satisfied.
The downstream effects are pretty obvious.
When I was teaching business analysis and design, I would not pass any student who couldn't write a sentence, capital letter, full stop, commas in appropriate places and all. I made any student who didn't plan a report do it again. The most dreaded thing I could do, I've been told was to scrawl across the front page of an assignment: "Incomprehensible and illiterate - see me". Not my usual approach to teaching, but most students felt that they were pretty crash hot at writing. It took shock treatment to make them see otherwise.
Since in any given academic year of two semesters I would have had, perhaps, twenty students who were in this category, the Remedial English Department had a lot of customers.
It didn't make me popular, but it means that those students will be less embarrassed in the work place. A lot of them have thanked me since, but there are a few who still snarl when they see me ...
You said further on: The problems that she finds aren't usually spelling (that's fixed by computer spell checks now)
Sorry, disagree. As an example, a spell checker will tell you if you have misspelt a word, but it won't tell you if it's the wrong word - e.g. hare, hair and here to provide a simplistic example. Spell checkers should be banned until the user is able to spot their own mistakes! Did you see Faldage's take on Little Red Riding Hood? That's spell-checking for you.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Hi Emanuela.
I would agree that almost any European language is easier to learn, both syntactically and grammatically, than English. As you say, Italian is spelled pretty much as it is spoken, and that's a real bonus for you. English, unfortunately, does not always, and in some cases, hardly ever, has a one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.
I understand your comments about the contrast between your educational opportunities and those that your grandmother didn't have. Italy had centuries of class division, city-state warfare and foreign invasion to cope with.
In New Zealand, education has been pretty much available to all for nearly 150 years. And apart from the days of the gold rush, most of the immigrants who came here were literate to some degree and prized it highly.
I'd venture to suggest that the standards of written English in New Zealand today are worse than they were 100 years ago. However, I have no proof of this except for the evidence I see on a daily basis.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I think that I have posted elsewhere that affairs here in Edinburgh seem to be taking a turn for the better.
My daughter's school, in common with others in the area adopted a rather "old fashioned" method of teaching spelling, based on lists of words with the same sounds, highlighting words which sounded different but were spelt the same or words which sounded the same and were spelt differently. It was rediscoved because in some schools the children with "special needs" were doing better than the children taught in more "modern" ways. On the subject of grammar, both children seem to be coming home with English homework that is more sophisticated than the work that I was doing at the same age. Let's hope that things are improving.
The way I was taught was not particularly impressive. I only just escaped being taught ITA (Intermediate Teaching Alphabet - waz, sed etc) which I regard as one of the lowest points in the teaching of English!
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In reply to:
years ago
Interesting to read about your grandmother. My grandmother was an interesting example of the possibilities of education. She was born in 1883, the second of six children in a dirt-poor farming family in rural Pennsylvania. (Excursus: the reason they were so poor had to do with a sad romantic story from the time of the Civil War, which I may get to on these boards someday.) She started school at the age of 8. The school was the typical one-room rural school of the time, and it was 9 miles from her home. She only attended school in the winter, since she was needed at home in fall and spring to help with harvesting and planting, and school was closed in the summer. She went to school only 4 years, at which time, having reached the age of 12, she, like her siblings, left home, in order to reduce the number of mouths to feed, and made her own way in the world. (She went to the nearest large city, Harrisburg, and found employment as a housemaid with a wealthy Jewish family who treated her like a daughter until she left them after 15 years to marry my grandfather.) How well was she educated? She know little history, little geography, no foreign languages; she knew arithmetic well and could add up a grocer's bill and balance a checkbook; she could read any non-technical text quite well, and had read through the AV (King James) Bible innumerable times and knew it forwards and backwards. She could write a letter with correct grammar and spelling and in a hand which, while not elegant, was clear and not at all illiterate-looking. When I was in college, she used to write me letters which were as correct as any which I wrote. How to account for this with the rudimentary schooling she received? I suspect that some of the culture and learning of her employers must have rubbed off on her (she had exquisite table manners and knew all about how to set an elaborate table, as you would expect from her old employment), but there must have been a truly remarkable foundation laid in that long ago schoolhouse in the country. We don't seem to be able to recapture that now.
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>>>there must have been a truly remarkable foundation laid in that long ago schoolhouse in the country. We don't seem to be able to recapture that now. <<<
I think that many of the problems with the youth of today stem from a lack of respect. Bob's grandmother was certainly taught to respect her parents, her school teachers and her employer. She learned well from them because she understood the value of language and math as well as table manners and other cultural learning. She respected the need for them. Young people today seem to take pride in their lack of respect. (I can't speak for all locations, of course, but I imagine it's more than just a local phenomenon) I can't begin to count the times I've heard teenagers talking about the way their parents (teachers, bosses, or anyone who is in a position of authority) 'get an attitude' with them. How are these kids going to learn anything from anyone when they see authority figures this way?! If kids have that little respect for their teachers and parents, they aren't going to try to emulate proper speech. In fact, they rebel by going out of their way to speak their own favourite version of the local slang.
Schools are part of the problem as well, if bel's story about her son's second grade teacher is an accurate representation of schools elsewhere. If teachers are afraid (or school boards may be at fault) to correct spelling and grammar, they are teaching children to do whatever they want because it does not matter. The children will learn quickly that it's easy to take advantage of the teacher since he/she doesn't have the authority to correct the pupils. The child writes 2+3=7. The teacher marks the problem wrong. The student goes to the teacher and says that it is right, and if it's marked wrong he's going to hate math forever (insert crying emoticon). In fear of loosing the kid's interest in math, the teacher concedes that 2+3=7. (It's close to the right answer anyway. It's an odd number under 10. It's even a prime!) In a situation where the teacher does not have the authority to correct the students' mistakes, we are showing children that respect for their teachers and the subjects they teach is not necessary.
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BYB talks about his grandmother's ability to rise above her lack of education.
I've heard of a number of similar situations from the turn of the 20th century here in New Zealand - minimal schooling, but what they got really stuck. I think that may have something to do with societal values which are heartfelt rather than simply parroted.
My grandmother (on my mother's side) was born into a wealthy upper class family and received an expensive private education. Boy, could she write. But education breeds free thinking and she was also a very free thinker. My mother, who was pretty open to ideas, looked like a radical conservative alongside her.
On the other side of the family, my paternal grandmother wrote extremely neatly, but couldn't string two words together. She'd had primary schooling only. But then (and I hope to Gawd my father never reads this), she was not a paragon of intellectual excellence.
My maternal grandmother lived with us for a number of years during my childhood and introduced me to all kinds of concepts. The house always seemed much emptier when she went to visit her other children. I credit her with imbuing me with what little intellectual curiosity I possess.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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xara wrote : I think that many of the problems with the youth of today stem from a lack of respect.Bob's grandmother was certainly taught to respect her parents, her school teachers and her employer.
Ah, the differences in a few generations. I think that children were more terrified than respectful in many cases. Teachers could hit you if you got it wrong, well into the mid-1950s. My handwriting improved with practice after Sister whacked my knuckles a few times with a ruler!
But children are resilient creatures and I think the children who did well, my parents among them, had a THIRST TO LEARN. They wanted to know.
As to jobs, you could be fired for looking at the boss wrong. Without a reference from an employer you had a hard time finding another job. There were no ombudsman offices to help.
To rise out of poverty you had to KNOW how things were done, how to say things correctly. You HAD to learn!
With radio very rudimentary there was not the immediate blast of information that we get now on TV.
So you read books, listened to your "betters' and learned!
Books were beyond the means of many and it was through libraries that many learned of the wider world. Libraries and newspapers. Support them both!
It was not until after WWII that there was a more international flavor to every day knowledge. Men came back from foreign places and brought back new words, new foods, new ways of thought. We learned a lot about geography and differing cultures during the war which included both Asian and European worlds.
This ramble isn't going anywhere unless I write a book and I'm sure you're all weary of my going on and on.
I stick with the THIRST TO LEARN rationale.
Aloha
wow
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In reply to:
Teachers could hit you if you got it wrong, well into the mid-1950s. My handwriting improved with practice after Sister whacked my knuckles a few times with a ruler!
Agreed. Back then, "getting it wrong" included using the left hand to write with. When I was in Form 2 (Grade 6?), one of my teachers had personal recollection of such "correction."
On the subject of declining education, I think that most who post here would share similar views on the state of educational philosophy today. I am just profoundly grateful to have been raised by a bookish single Dad, who taught all his kids to read before they started school. My maternal grandparents played their part as well. If I asked "can I have (a lolly, dessert, whatever)", the response was always, "you can, but you must first ask 'may I'."
I guess that what I am trying to say is that I agre with your THIRST TO LEARN theory. I feel parents are still the best educational resource children have, and that when parents play their part well, even those of us without tertiary education need not feel "unlearned and ignorant."
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Max said: I guess that what I am trying to say is that I agre with your THIRST TO LEARN theory. I feel parents are still the best educational resource children have, and that when parents play their part well, even those of us without tertiary education need not feel "unlearned and ignorant."
Max, tertiary education is a system, not a guaranteed path to knowledge. I was an academic for several years (before I decided that filthy lucre was important, after all), and I reckon that I learned as much from my students, who were mostly adult, as they learned from me.
The nice thing about teaching adults is that they are there to learn. You don't have to get them to pay attention. You don't have to keep them in after class to learn their times tables. Many of my students came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Quite a number of them asked me "how do I learn?", since it was the first time since school that they had been in an educational institution as students. I was always pretty hard-put to think of what to say. They had come a long way - learned the need to learn - just to be there.
Tertiary education provides a framework in which to study and the resources to do so. If you can provide your own framework and have access to a good library, you don't need tertiary institutions at all, unless the piece of paper at the end is your main goal.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Max, tertiary education is a system, not a guaranteed path to knowledge.No argument here. My decision to leave the formal education system at the end of 5th form, while provoking much hand-wringing from well-meaning teachers and principals, was a life choice, not a criticism of tertiary education. I simply had other things I wanted to do with my life . The sort of avenues I would have trod had I entered the land of dreaming spires would not have been particularly practical from a career-enhancement perspective anyhow. I do not regret not attending a tertiary institute, nor do I feel any need to be defensive about my choice, as odd as it seems to many people. 
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it was the first time since school that they had been in an educational institution as students. I was always pretty hard-put to think of what to say. They had come a long way - learned the need to learn - just to be there.
[admiration icon]It says a lot about you that you recognized that fact, C.K.
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nor do I feel any need to be defensive about my choice, as odd as it seems to many people.
[Envying independence icon] You're special all right, sweet Max.
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Reasons for the decline of English teaching
On my way to the office this morning I was listening to a radio talk show, the subject under discussion being the recent election fiasco in Florida. One of the "expert" guest panelists, a professor somewhere, who was addressed by the show hostess as "Doctor", said (and I heard it with my own ears), "What Jeb Bush told the press this morning is disingenius." sighing emoticon Maybe education needs to be reformed frm the top down. Used to be that you had to have a pretty good overall education, and you certainly had to know English well-nigh perfectly, to be granted a PhD from any reputable institution.
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Used to be that you had to have a pretty good overall education, and you certainly had to know English well-nigh perfectly, to be granted a PhD from any reputable institution.When I registered for my thesis, I got a flood of flyers from would-be professional proofreaders. How times have changed! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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>I agree with your THIRST TO LEARN theory. I feel parents are still the best educational resource children have ...
My current worry about my own children is that they aren't thirsty to learn. In fact they are "all museum-ed out". When they were younger they had so much cultural education that now they just want to shop and "chill out". They thought that all trains ran on steam, all steets were cobbled, the Vikings were around just a few years ago ...
My daughter's teacher asked if anyone had been to an art gallery. "Yes," yawned my eldest "the Tate, Tate Modern in London, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the Miro and Picasso museums in Barcelona, ... endless Museums of Modern Art, yawn, yawn". She didn't ask again!
Give me adults any day! I wonder if you only start appreciating things when you escape formal education. I'm sure that I took the line of least resistance to good exam results, rather than subjects that actually interested me. Tertiary education (in maths) was, wastefully, just clocking up another paper qualification, rather than making any great discoveries They do say that history and English as subjects are wasted on the young. So many subjects come alive once you get to make your own choices of how you spend your time. I just hope I don't exhaust my own children before they get to that stage!
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Dear Friends, All of you who are parents allow me to tell you a secret! My Dad, a newspaperman, did not forbid me to read any book wherein I could understand the words. He had so many books that my Mother threatened to leave if one more book came into the house...his deft move ?... buy another house! The first thing through the door, carried by yrs truly : a box of books! Back to the secret : Dad had both fiction and non-fiction and he lived by NEWS the ultimate non-fiction, day by day and on deadline but he did not force it on me. He started me with Sherlock Holmes so I learned a lot about Victorian London and logic. I progressed to short stories, Hugo, deMaupassant et.al. learning all the way. He explained that reading a Russian novel wasn't so hard, that it was like going to a party where everyone was a stranger to you.... keep going and gradually the important names began to stick as they became alive to you. Good writers do that, Dad said. I read Les Miserables and Madame Bovary and all the greats....the finer points of the stories escaped me (I was about 10 when I started) but they carried me along....all whacking great reads! The secret is to find interesting ficton and make it available. Fiction that has something new in it. I was in my 60s when I "discovered" Dick Francis and learned a great deal about horses and racing .... later I could impress the hell out of my niece who is a superb competition-class equestrian. Another sidelight : when I got to 8th grade the sisters talked to us about the Proscribed List and named some of the books.. ..I'd read them! I confessed to Sister. My Dad was summoned to school to meet with Sister Superior!!! OMYGAWD ! She told my father she was upset with me because I lied about the books I had read and named a few I had confessed to. "But Sister, she has read them."Dad told her! -Sister. He smoothed it all out of course, he was a tall blue-eyed Irishman who could talk a dog off a meat wagon and charm the socks off any woman even a stern Sister Superior! I also got a taste for classics from those silly Classic Comics. If you REALLY really really want your kids to read, HIDE a few books and let them overhear a remark or two about how they're too young to be allowed to read the book. I found "Gone With The Wind" in Dad's sock drawer while putting away the laundry! Learned a bit about the Civil War (War Between The States). Keep reading wow
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I appreciate what both Jo and WOW say. My literary upbringing was more ad hoc that WOW's - the books were there, no rhyme or reason or direction from my parents. But when someone gave my father a copy of "Fanny Hill" - remember, it was banned all over the shop until quite recently - I was allowed to read it. There was a reference to "Justine" by de Sade in editorial at the beginning and Dad got that for me, too. Required reading at high school was a doddle - I'd read all of the books, some of them several times.
I remember the Classic comics too - weren't they great?
I envy your kids, Jo. Down here in Godzone, kids get to see what's available. The Dunedin Public Art Gallery is better than many in New Zealand, if not the best, but of course they only have what is available. My memories of my first trip to Europe as a young adult mostly consist of hungover expeditions to art galleries, cathedrals, museums, yadda-yadda.
I don't think you can teach an interest in learning, but if you show it yourself, the kids, I would hope, will follow ... eventually!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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>if you show it yourself, the kids, I would hope, will follow ... eventually!
Thanks Cap - I trust you. I'm just a little impatient!
Following Wow's comments, I'm thinking of hiding "Crime and Punishment" in the sock drawer. If they don't find it, I'll consider it a crime and will look for suitable punishment!
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I'm thinking of hiding "Crime and Punishment" in the sock drawer For this to work they should be INTERESTING books  wow
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>My Dad, a newspaperman, did not forbid me to read any book Hello, Mudda, Hello Fadda <snip> .............Lenny Bruce's Reading to us from a novel called Ulysses Seriously, I agree, Ann, that catholic reading is absolutely essential to a good "liberal" education. Not liberal in the political sense, of course. In my household both of my parents were journalists, and we too had a book or three around the house. In my high school annual from 1963, there's a picture of TEd on hall monitor duty, completely engrossed in a copy of Tropic of Cancer. Both my parents laughed uproariously. When they mentioned it to the principal I got in a wee bit of trouble on the school front, but I got out of it by lending him my copy .
TEd
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TEd said: Hello, Mudda, Hello Fadda
Would the next line be "Here I am at Camp Granada" by any chance? Now there's a blast from the distant past!
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>Here I am at Camp Granada
Camp is very entertaining!
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>Camp is very entertaining!
and they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining!
[1963]
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"Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)" - Allan Sherman
(parody of "Dance Of The Hours" by Amilcare Ponchielli; parody lyrics by
Allan Sherman)
transcriber unknown
available on:
original 45, Warner Brothers 5378, 1963 [out-of-print]
B-side of new 1964 version 45, Warner Brothers 5449, 1964 [out-of-print]
My Son, the Nut (Allan Sherman Sings Nutty Things, This Time with Strings),
Warner Brothers LP W/WS 1501, 1963 [out-of-print]
Dr. Demento's Delights, Warner Brothers LP BS 2855, 1975 [out-of-print]
The Best of Allan Sherman, Rhino LP/cassette 005, 1979 [LP out-of-print]
Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Vol. 3: the
1960's, Rhino LP/cassette 822, 1985 [LP out-of-print]
Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty CD of All Time, Rhino 75768, 1988
[out-of-print]
My Son, the Greatest: The Best of Allan Sherman, Rhino CD 75771, 1988
Dr. Demento - 20th Anniversary Collection, Rhino CD/cassette 70743, 1991
and numerous other comedy compilations
Hello mudduh, hello fadduh,
Here I am at Camp Granada.
Camp is very entertaining,
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.
I went hiking with Joe Spivy.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner;
He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.
All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators.
And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.
Now I don't want this should scare ya,
But my bunkmate has malaria.
You remember Jeffrey Hardy...
They're about to organize a searching party.
Take me home, oh mudduh, fadduh.
Take me home, I hate Granada.
Don't leave me out in the forest
Where I might get eaten by a bear.
Take me home, I promise I will not make noise
Or mess the house with other boys.
Oh please don't make me stay!
I've been here ONE -- WHOLE -- DAY.
Dearest fadduh, darling mudduh,
How's my precious little brudduh?
Let me come home if you miss me.
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me.
Wait a minute...It's stopped hailing!
Guys are swiming, guys are sailing.
Playing baseball... gee, that's better!
Muddah, fadduh, kindly disregard this letter!
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Thanks to Jackie for posting all of the verses of the song. I knew them all! [Right-on Emoticon]. Others on the board obviously do, too. Alan Sherman can have had no idea the effect his song would have on a ten-year-old boy in New Zealand when he released it. I first heard it as a live performance on the radio and thought it was hilarious. I asked my mum what the camp in the song was all about. I knew about Boy Scout camps and Health Camps (if you want to know about these, ask privately). She said it was something some American kids did during their summer break, and if I wanted to know more I should find out about it. So I went to the public library (a very good one even today) and learned how to use the index, asked the librarians a few questions and eventually found something (can't remember what, precisely) that explained it all. Very strange, I remember thinking. I also learned that Americans don't have their long school break during December-January, and why. This was the first time that I remember where I actively had to go and find out something that I wanted to know - rather than just ask my parents or teacher. Thanks Alan Sherman - you changed my life!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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where I come from the library was a fast food franchise, where you could also check out crayons, two at a time. I went there late one day, (couldn't recall why stars twinkle... and planets don't) only to be told the information I needed was available on alternate Thursdays, so I had a hamburger and read about barber poles.
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tsuwm one-ups: where I come from the library was a fast food franchise,
where you could also check out crayons, two at a time.
I went there late one day,
(couldn't recall why stars twinkle... and planets don't)
only to be told the information I needed was available
on alternate Thursdays, so I had a hamburger and
read about barber poles.And interesting reading it would have been ... I've often thought I should produce the definitive book on New Zealand barber poles. Somehow, though, the motivation is just, um, lacking. As would be a market for the book, I dare say. My total experience of Minnesota is the Minneapolis/St Paul airport transit lounge. Based on that breadth of Minnesotan local knowledge alone, I believe I can quite fairly extrapolate for the entire state and say that I wouldn't be surprised about your library! Actually, come to think of it, isn't the whole place based on a fictitious town called Lake Woebegone? - read this month's National Geographic for an explanation of this outrageous slur on the Loon State, or go to http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0012/feature5/index.html and have someone better qualified do it ... Cheers, tsuwm!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Well, when I was a child, our liberry was a
bookmobile. And, it wasn't real regular 'bout its runs,
neither. One time, the driver overstayed his welcome at the bar in the next town, and that bookmobile didn't move
for 30 days. 'Nother time, though, we were lucky--he had a flat tire right up the street, so we got to borrow books till the tow truck finally showed up five days later--and then he had to go back and get the right size tire.
'Course, there wasn't just a real big choice of books,
'specially if you were a kid. The kids' books were kept
away up on the top shelf. Gee, you'd'a thought we were
gonna tear 'em up or somethin'! You might have thought
he'd have gotten tired of us leavin' our muddy footprints
on the lower shelves, but no, they stayed up on that high
place. We learned to be careful not to bang our heads on the ceiling. We had to be quick, too--climb, look, and grab, all in however long our co-conspirators could keep the driver occupied. Once we had the books in our hands, we were safe. All we had to do was tell him we found them
on the floor, because we really did find books on the floor,
all the time: young Bobby Joe used to make a killing--he could time it down to the second, practically, how long the
driver could keep it up on two wheels as he came around into the courthouse square. The rest of us lost our money
every time.
We had to be careful with what we picked out, too.
"Charlotte's Web" had a page missing where Billy Sam's
6-year-old brother tried to eat the spider. We all knew to
avoid "Misty of Chincoteague"--Betty Lou's baby sister
threw up on it. A shame, too--we all loved Misty.
None of us minded all the crayon scribbles and animal
footprints across the pages. The occasional dead bug was
no problem, either, though I didn't much care for finding
the live baby snake in the nature book. Somebody'd put it
there for added learning, I reckon.
We used to ask the driver why he always began to shake, even before he shut the motor off in our town, but he just
turned away and drank something from a paper sack and never answered.
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Once, a very long time ago, I was stationed at Hakata Air Base in Japan. I wrote a parody for use by the little theatre group I was directing, based on the Allan Sherman song, which began "Dearest Mudda, Dearest Fadda, Here I am at Camp Hakata." It was set in the Navy barracks, the naval detachment being the smallest of the three detachments in residence. "All the soldiers, hate us sailors, and the airmen, are like jailers." Thanks for the memory.
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Pooh-Bah
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Apologies for comming back on to the original thread after all this time.
I agree with so much of what has been said about the current standards of English - I sometimes despair at the notices that are circulated from University House (Head Office, as it were). If an institution of the sort to which I belong ( established in the '60s - not one of your "New" universities, says he snobbiishly) can't get it right, what hope is there?
I also remember quaking in my shoes when hearing, at the age of nine, that I was going up into Miss Treweek's class -she had a reputation as a Dragon of the first order. I soon found that she was an excellent teacher who rewarded effort just as surely as she punished slackness and grew to love her dearly. (Hers is the only name that I remember from my primary school days, which says something - even if only about my memory) It was her teaching that gave me reasonably good spelling and an instinctive grasp of correct grammar.
But her efforts to instil the rudiments of language, inter alia, were built upon a foundation of work by other competent teachers and, above all, on the help and encouragement that I received at home, which is so important.
A not insignificant number of people from the working-classes in the C19 learned to read (far more than learned to write) because they had parents - particularly mothers - who taught them their basic letters, and who then used this as a means to further education.
However, just to put this whole debate into some sort of longer perspective, I have to tell you that, when researching into something quite different, I came across a letter in one of the Manchester area newspapers - the Bolton Herald, I think - by a local employer deploring the standards of spelling and grammar amongst the young people that applied for jobs at his firm. These standards had dropped alarmingly over the past twenty years, he siad. The date of the paper was 1874.
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Rhub said, inter alia: I also remember quaking in my shoes when hearing, at the age of nine, that I was going up into Miss Treweek's class -she had a reputation as a Dragon of the first order. I soon found that she was an excellent teacher who rewarded effort just as surely as she punished slackness and grew to love her dearly. (Hers is the only name that I remember from my primary school days, which says something - even if only about my memory) It was her teaching that gave me reasonably good spelling and an instinctive grasp of correct grammar.Yes, I had one of those, Mrs Taylor. But it was the times tables which were my bete noir and the cause of her (assumed) displeasure. As with you, my hat is off to her even now. A good teacher was a thing to be treasured! Incidentally, our resident SC AEnigma has "bete noir" as "beetle noise". Could this be a legitimate synonym?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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mfa expounds: I used to get mad at my school,
The teachers that taught me weren't cool.
You're holding me down,
Turning me round,
Filling me up with your rules. *John and Paul
Well, I opened my heart to the whole universe,
And I found it was loving.
And I saw the great blunder my teachers had made--
Scientific delirium madness. *from "5D," J. McGuinn
"Kenny and his brother had a game out in the back -
Let's make the water turn black." (Frank Zappa)
Says it all, really, doesn't it?
-CK
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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-dunno, ck, if that's how you really feel, it may just
go "to prove that there's nothing you can do with a really dedicated misfit" [or two]. (credit: the writers
for "Lost In Space")How about "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!" from "Space Family Robinson"? From memory it was the only line that anything spoke in that show that made sense. And the robot got to use it. Damn, now I'm going to have to go and dust off my old "Mother's Day" LP to listen to the rest of that song ... if my turntable still turns at anything approximating 33.33 rpm. 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Pooh-Bah
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But it was the times tables which were my bete noir Yes, CapK, I always had problems with those - espec. the 7 times, for some reason! But learning by rote really works for that exercise, and I have, like you, been forever grateful that I was made to learn them. I also discovered the other day that I can still calculate in Ł-s-d - including division (!) - in my head. Now whether this says anything for my early training or just proves what a sad bastard I am, I'm not sure 
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Question...
What on earth is calculating in LSD. The only LSD I am aware of is the stuff the hippies used to take in the 70`s that made them trippy.
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What on earth is calculating in LSD.Ooh, bel--what an invitation! 
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belM
What you interpreted (cleverly) as LSD, are actually the symbols for currency in the UK, pre-1970: Ł(Pounds), s (Shillings) and d(Pence - from denarii, don't ask, we were very influenced by the Romans). The reason why Rhuby is proud of his ability to use it is not because he was hippy-trippy in the '60s (though he may well have been - given the tale of his car and its decorations), but because the currency, not being decimal, was virtually impossible to calculate in - almost as bad as doing multiplication and division in Roman Numerals.
cheer
the sunshine (glad to have lived primarily in decimal times) warrior
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Yes, but trying to calculate in LSD while nicely stoked on LSD would surely be an interesting way to pass the time. One of my younger colleagues informs me that she can't do anything involving mental effort while on ecstacy. She seemed unimpressed with my rejoinder that I often have problems with or without mind-altering substances - with the sole exception of caffeine. Still - what's wrong with twelve pence to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound and twenty-one to the guinea? It was only 1967 when we changed in New Zealand. I remember it all very well ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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If you've seen my profile you'll know 2 key things about me - I'm a wordaholic AND I'm a Recruitment Consultant for a company similar to your Sheffield Consulting I believe. So, for the past 7 years in this job I have been tormented daily by this matter.
I place around 50-60 people per year, representing around 2,500 applicants per year. Add to this a substantial number of unsolicited enquiries & CV's and we're talking 3,000 CV's per year over my desk.
Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.
The crunch comes when doing referee checks - I doubt if there's been more than 1 or 2 final candidates over the past 7 years whose referees praised their report writing skills. Most referees tend to be 40-60 years old and thus, like me, place weight upon spelling and writing skills. However they almost all inevitably sigh and say (after giving me the bad news), "Well, that's the way it seems to be these days".
Unfortunately Cap K, IT seems to be the worst hit area. I've no doubt that this is due to the overwhelming percentage of IT specialists that have English as a 2nd language. Inevitably it is not rated as a serious problem by the employer though - they are more interested in the candidate's technical skills and their "Abstract Reasoning" (ie problem solving) score. Pleasingly, most lie in the top 10th percentile - they are bright cookies.
Simply speaking, I believe the weight you and I place upon literacy is a dying thing an dthat nothing can or will be done about it. Pessimist no, realist yes.
And now, more recruitment humour....
Irrespective of their programming ability, I for one get all heated up when the page designer puts poor English onto company web pages. When I was looking to sign up with an ISP, I researched the pages of the local companies to compare rates etc. One Perth-based company was signing its own praises loudly and promoting itself as "your partner is small business" etc for ISP, web page design and so on. Well, the splash page alone had 13 howlers!! I couldn't help myself so, with tongue firmly in cheek, emailed the Managing Director (who'd thoughtfully provided his direct email address for the purpose). I pointed out the errors one by one (no small task!!) and then suggested that, seeing I was in recruitment, maybe we could talk about recruiting a proof reader for the web design aspects of his compay's service.
Never heard from him - BUT the site was fixed within the week!!
stales
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I wouldn't class myself as a wordaholic (a view probably resoundingly seconded by the rest of the crew on this board), but I do have standards. My firm uses a form of the VIT which is, I believe, not standard. It actually makes people consider the syntactic and semantic content of what they are responding to rather than just allowing them to scan for the general sense. Don't ask me for details; I don't have 'em - that's our HR people's job and one which I'm quite happy to leave them to. Obviously, nothing in what you say surprises me, but thanks for the corroboration that it's not just a local problem. My problem is that I get involved in recruitment of people who must have a good mix of technical (for content) and written (for presentation and clarity) skills. In other words, we're hiring them for their ability to write reports as much, if not more, than for their ability to write programs, design networks, write HTML or whatever. As a matter of fact since I started this thread off I've persuaded the general manager that a dedicated technical writer/proofreader with good mentoring skills is a necessary addition to the team, and that getting the right skills will not be cheap. It's going into the 2001/2 budget and I'll be putting the JD out to our preferred recruitment agencies at the beginning of February. The process takes about three weeks once we have identified the candidates. Note that most of our candidates are native English speakers. Or English writers gone native in most cases, unfortunately ... We've been tossing around ideas about how to raise the general standards of literacy (any suggestion would be MOST welcome). One suggestion was that we should use our training department to do the work. However I pointed out that the standards of literacy among the trainers (including the ones "teaching" business writing) were none too solid. This is a work in progress, unfortunately, with no agreed approach determined yet. My ISP (ClearNet) is actually very good. They obviously have someone who can read and write without difficulty managing their site content. But, like you, I have seen some real doozies. Unlike you, I couldn't give a rat's a--, and haven't bothered trying to change them!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Depending upon the way you present your proofreader, you might be able to give him a secondary role as teacher. For example, if the proofreader simply corrects other people’s work nobody really learns anything. But if the proofreader underlines the things that must be corrected and has the person correct his own errors, then, that tends to stick in a person’s mind (remember your school days).
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That had crossed my mind, bel. However, we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury. Well, we'll see!
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we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury.Dear CapK, Our newspaper took the approach that a two-hour meeting every other week was do-able and an English teacher came in and shredded our egos -- no, not really, -- by the simple expedient of reading some of the stuff we wrote then telling us why it was wrong and how not to do it again. Long involved sentences : recast. Long words : simplify. etc. etc. He was strong and cut to the bone but never named a name or placed blame. We all improved. What tickled the reporters most was that he presumed headlines were fair game, too. Some  red faced editors who had thought they were safe were quite taken aback. I was so impressed I talked him into doing a savaging of my deathless prose once a month and paid for it myself. It was great! In his defense I must say my prose has deteriorated since I left the biz and no longer have available his pithy observations on my current efforts. This any help? wow
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As a newly "renaissanced" (my euphemism for "retired" :-) high school English teach, boy-oh-boy, do I have lots to say on this subject! ... lst, from my perspective, things are getting better due to the public awareness that they have to or we're all in trouble: parents are on notice, teachers always have been (imho :), & so are the students themselves. We haven't, unfortunately, quite reverted to the old days when kids could read the classics in "grammar school" (as my own mother could, e.g.), but I think we'll eventually get there. So, in a word, there is hope. Take the Chicago Public Schools, my bailiwick -- we have a great CEO who has had fabulous success in getting our system back-to-basics in a few years (with thanks to the Mayor for appointing him & to the CTU for working with him, &, oh yes, to us teachers behind the proverbial throne :-). Of course, as with any innovative process, a lot of mistakes get made, but they do get corrected, & , of course, if they would ever get around to asking us teachers what we think, all of the literacy problems would be solved! One thing I do know, do assure you, is that the majority of teachers are wearing themselves out trying to teach: their hearts are in the right place (definitely not in their pocketbooks), but because of the problems with things non-educational (like guns, e.g., ahem), their job has become Sisyphus-like, difficult in mythological proportions, &, truly, I'm not exaggerating. [Btw, I'm not worn out, but I was good & tired when I renaissanced, & have nothing but empathy for those of my ilk still trying to roll that ol' boulder whatever up the hill.] In case you might be interested in another teacher's methods... I would make editing (of grammar, usage, orthography, etc. :-) another lesson after my students handed in their writing [the rational being that "after" lessened the worry about making errors during the creating process]. I'd tell my students that I was their editor, the kind that professional writers have the benefit of, & that the items I'd correct (whether red, blue, or fuschia penciled) were not admonishments ("You made a mistake!") but rather tips, gifts of my time & expertise, additional learning tools. I think -- I hope! -- it helped them. (One of the "aches" in teacher [that there was an "ache" is something my teacher-mother wrote decades ago] is that you don't always know if your students are truly getting what you want to give -- some things can't always be measured by tests.) I loved "teaching" writing in all its aspects. The trouble is that we also had to teach required literary selections, & most of these became reading lessons, they were so challenging in vocabulary, ad infinitum, and therefore, they took an endless amount of time to cover -- if we wanted our students to understand what they had to read. With all my heart, I wish there had been more humor in the required literature, something the kids would enjoy spending time on, rather than the seriousness of social &/or historical issues. Even though we would try to make it challenging & fun in some way, much of it was dreary & depressing, rather than uplifting & inspiring. So that is a curriculum change I would recommend -- if I were ever asked. :-) Uh oh, I'm getting off the soapbox now, & my apologies for getting pedantic. :-) My main point is that there is hope for the future, that students will again want to learn, are wanting to (at least from my observations), & meanwhile, parents like yourselves are doing just what they should be doing -- it's obvious from your posts to this forum: One has to care first, right, & it's to be applauded that you certainly do. If only some of my wonderful teenagers had had parents like you, they would have had a much easier time of it. Wispy (a.k.a. Renaissanced :-)
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If you could do as WOW suggests-- i know being here has helped me--nothing quite like having an idea, or poorly phrased sentence ripped to shred-- and i sense everyone is looking for them--not to criticize me, but to have some fun, and if i provide the fodder– well all the better. It will be some day before i never get to open my mouth just to change feet... not that i want to do it on a daily basis.
i make much worse verbal bloopers--
when i first started to work for Xerox, i fixed the machines. One day the timing on a machine was off-- the 7mm(head size) by 15mm long screw had sheared the timing disk was slipping on the shaft. I had lots of 7mm by 10mm screws--standard equipment but no screws the right size..
I called up a supervisor, and explained my predicament. He called back right away, and was still laughing.. he said i left him the best voice mail message he ever got.. I couldn't understand. later that day, he made me listen to what i said to him..
"I need a screw--and i was wondering if you have one long enough? can we meet at the parts center, as i am just about to take a break for lunch, and could give me the screw. (i then went on to explain i needed a 7mm by 15 mm screw...)
Until i heard what i said.. i hadn't thought about how it sounded...
Wow idea is a good one, since its not like school --punitive-- but it is instructional.. done right, it could help..
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I've been reading these posts and not commenting. Wow's idea seems reasonable, but would take a major feat of organisation to implement (we have people spread all over the show, and not all of them work for me or my boss). I'll run it up the proverbial and see who salutes. It would appear that the idea of a proofreader/technical writer may yet fly - it didn't get slashed during the second budget focus meeting. I'll also recommend to my female colleagues that they don't ask for screws over the phone. After I get out of hospital, I'll see what I can do. Thanks, but keep the ideas coming, please!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
nothing but empathy for those of my ilk still trying to roll that ol' boulder whatever up the hill.]
In case you might be interested in another teacher's methods... I would make editing (of grammar, usage, orthography, etc. :-) another lesson after my students handed in their writing
Okay, I can't pass this one up, especially as you go on to say my apologies for getting pedantic. :-) So I'm sure you'll take this in the right spirit.
There is no such thing as an ilk: it's not a kind or kidney or class. The word means 'same' and exists only by virtue of the expression 'of that ilk', where 'that' is an oblique case of 'the'. It is used in territorial designations of Scottish families: where there is a place called, say, Hamilton, giving rise to a surname of Hamilton (or de Hamilton). If this family then spreads it is necessary to differentiate the Hamiltons of Strathcona from the Hamiltons of Hamilton. These latter are called Hamilton of that Ilk, i.e. Hamilton of the same.
As this is a technical term of heraldry or land tenure, I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.Rather begging the question. The imposition or withholding of sanction isn't our call, it will be taken by the misusers. The end result may or may not be a permanent change which becomes the "accepted" usage. You been reading Cervantes again, NicholasW?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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stales:
you said: > Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.
If you are testing them among themselves, the great majority cannot fall into the upper 50th percentile, can they? If I remember my stats course correctly, exactly one half will fall into the upper 50th percentile and one half will fall below.
TEd
PS
What's a tertiary qualified person? From the context I assume it's someone who is qualified for education above the secondary level, i.e., a person who would be accepted at university.
TR
TEd
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
It's a fair cop guv.
The original text lacked the percentile bit and thus looked a bit wishy washy. Didn't think through all the ramifications of my partial rewrite.
Very surprised that you are unfamiliar with the term "tertiary qualifications". It's one of those that are are taken for granted and in everyday use here in Oz. We refer to primary (school years K-6 or 7), secondary (6 or 7-10 or 12) and tertiary (University, college etc) education. Thus tertiary qualifications are degrees, diplomas etc. Trade qualifications on the other hand, are typically commenced at the end of Year 10, in lieu of Year 11 and 12.
stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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NicholasW states: I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.
CapK retorts: The imposition or withholding of sanction isn't our call
If Humpty Dumpty was wrong to assign a definition to a word arbitrarily, would he be wrong if he were also to deny a definition to a word arbitrarily?
This particular misuse is, at least according to the AHD, over one hundred years old.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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W3 - which is admittedly a snapshot rather than a history - gives ilk a separate entry as "family, sort, kind", a synonym of type, and has the following citation:
<determinists, materialists, agnostics, behaviorists and their ilk -John Dewey>
(must be part of the Dewey classification system ;)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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>"tertiary qualifications"
Yep, we use it to. It tends to be used when discussing the kind of job which assumes that the majority of candidates have achieved a degree or equivalent, without having to go into extensive lists.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 8 |
"He and all his ilk" is the example given for an idiomatic use according to my Random House Webster's College Dictionary . So, am I forgiven?
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