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Okay, college professor, Guess What? Kids don't decide what they will learn in the shitty public schools they have to attend. It's really not their fault. They just go along with what they are told to go along with, and they do their damndest to learn the crap that is ladeled on them, Why? Because they trust the shitheads who are in power, that's why. I really get pissed when the higher ups in education denigrate the incoming freshman class. Do something about it if you're so unhappy about it. Okay????

That is what the man said.

Let me stress that I'm not talking about stupid kids - though yes, as painful as it is to acknowledge, there are in fact stupid kids. But in this case I'm talking about bright kids, talented kids, curious kids - kids who will occasionally concoct ingenious, if wrongheaded, theories to compensate for what they don't know. Several years ago, for instance, a student of mine suggested that a semi-colon got its name because it drew attention to the words around it. She thought the spelling was: "See me colon." Clearly, if she's clever enough to come up with that, she's clever enough to learn the proper use of semi-colons; it's just that no teacher ever bothered to correct her punctuation.

He is not denigrating the kids; he is slamming their teachers. Personally I think that their parents should be smacked as well but that is only my opinion and not to be taken for that of anyone who matters.

a.cricket

It's really not their fault.

Oh really?

There are public libraries just about everywhere, filled with books. These books can be checked out for free. If the children read some of those books, they would, practically by osmosis, figure out what a semicolon is and how it's used, among other things. Even if all they read was fiction they'd learn a lot.

I wonder why these children don't read?