re: #340 buzzsawmonkey

I don’t like to dump on teachers gratuitously, but I see my nephews, going to “good” schools, totally unable to spell and uninterested in learning how to do so, and using barbarous locutions like “I brang this home” without any sense that such things might be wrong or, if wrong, something that requires correction.

I run into people daily who cannot calculate simple charges even with the aid of a computerized cash register. I find that my students, about to graduate something referred to as college, have no concept of how the society in which they will shortly be theoretically-functioning adults is governed or organized.

I cannot help but deduce from this that basic pedagogy has been wiped from most primary and secondary schools as if it were chalk on a blackboard passed over by a wet sponge.

But I’m sure they’re praised for expressing themselves so well…never mind if no one else can understand them.

My home room kids were answering some cultural questions, and I was appalled at their ignorance—I called them “Visigoths.” I wouldn’t tell them what that meant, so several of them actually looked it up.