Posted on 05/16/2011 8:07:36 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
I was in the gym yesterday. No sound. Im reading the screen. The first three readings didnt makes sense. What is there to do in Miami? I tried to force the sentence into that mold. I focused on each letter...Oh, they meant THEIR.
Maybe its a small thing but I admit my head was spinning a little. This is Fox News. The world is watching. Supposedly a conservative network, so they should care about language. Presumably they hire only the best editors and writers. But these poor bumblers cant write basic English. OMG!
First, lets congratulate the Education Establishment. Ive always suspected they hope to turn American civilization into a giant Babel. Clearly, they are doing it. (You want to see what the future looks like? Go to YouTube, look at the comments that younger people leave. Its gibberish, Its what you get from an education elite that always defends slang, fuzziness, bad grammar, guessing, close is good enough, the non-teaching of everything, and the never memorizing of anything.)
Its just a fact of life. We have these three words (there/their/theyre) that sound alike but theyre quite different. Each word tells an interesting story. Its the kind of trio that kids can easily learn by the fifth grade. They simply have to memorize the differences. Thats precisely what our batty Education Establishment forbids. (Item #6 on my "Top 10 Worst Ideas In Education goes: "NO MEMORIZATION -- This is standard operating procedure in all grades and in all courses. It is an excellent policy if you wish to ensure cultural illiteracy and societal amnesia.")
There are many Americans who think they can turn their back on bad public schools, and escape into private schools and homeschooling. Maybe theres no escape. Public schools are writing those headlines on Fox News!
I submit that the so-called writer went to a bad public school and an undemanding college, and now that person can spread the intellectual corruption. How can parents tell their kids to study? The kids can reply, Look. The big networks cant spell. What difference does it make? Thank you, Fox News.
As I say, congratulations are in order. Our education professors know their stuff. The dogma -- more and more dominant -- is that every child must have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). Roughly translated, that means every student learns something different, and nobody learns it well. Welcome to Babel.
I know there are good teachers who will prevail if at all possible. But the game is stacked against them. They are actively maneuvered away from being good teachers. For one small example, a gimmick called Whole Language has been saying for 50 years that if you just let children handle books, HALLELUJAH, they will read, know how to spell and punctuate, and be able to write copy for TV stations. Not much teaching required! Just a little. Give the kid another pretty book. They will pick up those words right through the pores in their skin. Or there skin. Whichever.
So whats the first order of business? Lets shame Fox News into doing a better job. Second order of business: could we possibly shame the Education Establishment into trying to do a better job? Well, Im trying.
Third order of business is to constantly lecture the kids that they have to get involved in their own education because a lot of people in charge of their education do not give a damn. The link goes to A Speech To Teenagers About Their Education, which makes that exact point.
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For more about the grammatical side of life (e.g., Lets kiss Gertrude is not the same as Lets kiss, Gertrude, see 13: Precision Worth Preserving, on Improve-Education.org.)
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http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/a-speech-to-teenagers-about-their-education-744773.html
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Ditto on the voice recognition software. For some fun, tune to ESPN and turn on captioning. You’re guaranteed 10 or more of these gaffes per minute. Good times!
Ha! My 9 year old autistic son knows the difference between there and their. But, then, we homeschool him. :)
Why would they use the possessive form to ask what activities are available in Miami?
Not surprising to me that a Freeper wrote this. So many seem to have a problem with the spelling of three words that sound the same:
"there"
"their"
"they're"
This should have been picked up by the 8th grade.
P.S. And don't get me started on "it's" and "its".
Sounds like you are describing the results of today’s liberal education system. If that is what you are trying to do, bravo...
The spell check is why the presstitutes can’t spell anymore.
my pet hate (off topic slightly) is the word text-—ded.
there is no such word. the past tense for texting is ‘texted’ not textded.
Not blaming FOX news but it seems the latest dumb buzz word
News outlets outsource their writing and editing to non-US countries like India. They don’t care to do any job correctly, IMO.
“Would it be bad form for me to point out a typo in the article?”
***********************
I recall my mom getting a letter asking for the family business to advertise in the local paper - 1969 or so.
She went through the letter with a red pen and edited it - it was pretty bloody. She returned the edited letter with a note explaining that they would not be using their paper for any advertising.
Mom was a huge help in my term papers as well!
Well said. Teachers should be paid by the free market, but there is no free market. Maybe we’ll see one after the default.
OldPossum -=> “P.S. And don’t get me started on “it’s” and “its”. “
What do you mean? Its as easy as hi’s and her’s!
My favorite are the folks (few or none here, thankfully) who write as if “I’ve ended a bunch of word’s with “s” and no apostrophe, so I’ll just throw a few on the next couple word’s because...well...its about time.”
(I had to go back and put the errors in! Typos I can do easily; errors not so easily.)
A good point but it wasn’t on the crawl. It was type on the screen for 20+ seconds. So I could really study it. Interestingly, I Googled “there chances for employment” and found another guy who reacted the same way—
“What is wrong with that title? Well I got this on FOX News, another case of poor spelling or understanding different meanings of words that sound alike. Shouldn’t it have read What Are THEIR chances of employment? OK, so I am being picky, but with all the unemployed and underemployed, seems to me FOX could at least hire someone who has better understanding of English language.”
bttt
RE: the IEP.
I didn’t mean to say it was common, but to point out that the Education Establishment is pushing to make it common.
Many people will embrace this idea as an improvement. They think it means their kid gets a custom-made education.
My worry is that we’ll have further fracturing of the culture. Each kid will be in his own little cul de sac.
Additionally, it puts really huge demands on teachers. I talked to a guy teaching fifth grade and he said he had given up text books. Every day he prepared something unique for each kid! Sounds crazy to me.
We’ll burn out our teachers even faster. And ordinary citizens still won’t have what Hirsch called “cultural literacy.”
..
“Every day he prepared something unique for each kid! Sounds crazy to me.”
Sounds like homeschooling to me ;-).
You are right that an IEP for each and every student would burn teachers out quickly.
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