[narfstar]

I am a terrible speller and always have been. I get the red line and try other options that turn out red also. I know that I should make the effort to fix it but usually do not. The whole short cut thing is totally me. I am by nature a very impatient person. Getting to the point with a minimum of keystrokes makes sense to me. Please do not throw anything but I actually would have no problem with our language evolving into text message shortcuts. I find English to be so illogical now that it needs changed anyway. There is no logicalreason not to say: I am, he am, she am, we am, they am. Sounds weird because we have been taught otherwise and accustomed to hearing it otherwise. All the world's languages would be easier to learn without those unnecessary conjugations.

[JonTheScanner]

I most programs that underline a misspelled word in red, if you right click it, you will get suggestions as to the proper word.

[JVJ]

I am a terrible speller and always have been. I get the red line and try other options that turn out red also. I know that I should make the effort to fix it but usually do not. The whole short cut thing is totally me. I am by nature a very impatient person. Getting to the point with a minimum of keystrokes makes sense to me. Please do not throw anything but I actually would have no problem with our language evolving into text message shortcuts. I find English to be so illogical now that it needs changed anyway. There is no logicalreason not to say: I am, he am, she am, we am, they am. Sounds weird because we have been taught otherwise and accustomed to hearing it otherwise. All the world's languages would be easier to learn without those unnecessary conjugations.

Here's a trick to try when you get a red underline:
I right click on the word and I get the proper spelling (or spellings, if it's not clear what word I was aiming for). I don't know it that is a function of some setting on my end or if it's a feature of Firefox, or what. But give it a whirl and see what you get.

If you think English is complex, wait until you try French and the is/are/am changes depending on the gender of the WORD - not just the gender of the person begin discussed, but the arbitrary (to me, anyway) gender of the noun (desk, pen, bed, coffee, passport, car, etc. - they all have genders in French.

Stick with English. I wish I could.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

ps. What Jon said.

[narfstar]

Thanks for the tip guys. I found that one time but had forgotten about it. Jim I did take two years of Spanish and noun gender is really stupid. Any idea why it was ever started?

BTW since this is about kids and kids need health care >some segue

On the back of my card that I gave the Senator's aides was a little message they may or may not ever notice. It said:

Do not socialize medicine socialize medical schools to provide more doctors without debt under special contract.

Do not socialize medical insurance, socialize malpractice insurance with caps.

Allow/require doctors to distribute the medicines they prescribe at their cost to avoid pharmacy mark-up.

Of course they have all kinds of "excuses" why it can not be done but the real reason they will not buck the AMA, Bar and pharmacies.

Mine is a real simple plan that provide more doctors to lower the cost of care. I also favor super specialization that does not require as much schooling.

$200K a year for malpractice is passed on in high costs. All medical procedures should be video taped to provide easy evidence to malpractice or not.

Drug companies have some justification (though much of research is paid for by grants and colleges so not as much as they claim_)for high initial prices. But drug stores mark up based on cost from the drug company without them having any risk. I believe the drug companies replace any drugs they may have overstocked and pull off the shelves. Is it any wonder their are two huge drugstores across the street from each other at every corner. It makes no sense to me that the Doc can prescribe it but not give it to you. RACKET

[John C]

Again, jumping around to random items...

Health care:  I also see it as the AMA's fault.  They're a private company that can have a doctor arrested for, basically, not paying them dues.  They intentionally limit the number of doctors available to each area AND fix the prices.  They set the malpractice requirements (thereby setting insurance costs) and are often the sole arbiter in a problem.  But no, the clear solution is to force everybody to pay for medical insurance (and change the insurance business model so as to require an increase in cost), rather than just fix the supply/demand disparity.  (Anybody who's interested in this sort of thing should take a look at the "barefoot doctor" movements in China and India.  That would be my solution.)

Grammar and Spelling:  As they say, language specifications are descriptive, not proscriptive (unless you're French, in which case, l'Academie Francaise has kidnapped your guinea pig).  That said, the further you deviate from formal written language, the less you should be surprised that people aren't taking you seriously.  Working within the rules shows respect for the audience.  That was the trouble with California's "Ebonics" experiment.  It's not that kids shouldn't speak how they wish among their peers, but rather that you're raising a bunch of inner city kids to be incapable of handling a job interview.  You no gots getting it solid-like, but me can gots it assuming your ignorance extend'll beyond grammarz, y'know?

(That's at least doubly true on the Internet.  Any modern writing course should seriously emphasize that, when there are no other social cues available, your treatment will be based directly on what CAN be seen--your e-mail address and your writing style.)

Noun Gender:  For the Romance languages, at least, blame Latin and be thankful Rome collapsed, with all its declensions and other forms.  Gender (and it's only a coincidence that the system's also used for male and female people) is a simplified version of that system, I believe.  I'm not sure where that originally arose, though it seems to be a common trait to all older languages (the northern European languages case nouns as well), so it might just be an artifact of pulling different groups together under a single banner--each has different rules and vocabularies, and those winning out as official are random.

You can see a similar effect in most European languages by conjugating the common verbs.  For example, "to be" in French (etre, with a circumflex/caret over the first letter) has present tense forms suis, et, est, sommes, etes (circumflex), and sont.  That irregularity probably tells some history about three or four tribes with different verbs; you can see relationships between etre/etes and maybe et/est, sommes/sont, with suis hanging out alone...and by the way, since et and est sound the same (/ay/), French requires every sentence to carry a noun, like English ("it's raining") and unlike Spanish, where "soy" is a valid and comprehensible thing to say ("I am").

Sequential Math:  Yes, some books do use different terms, to top it off, though that's usually the "Integrated" curriculum, which is different...somehow.  It's apparently a concession to the idea that kids aren't going to use it anyway, so scaring them with "real" words is silly.  Because that doesn't hamstring them if they ARE going to use it.  Naw.  But don't worry, college kids aren't left out of this excitement, because they have the competing Harvard Calculus, which is a numerical approach based on graphical calculator use.  To be fair, it has some really good ideas like focusing on visualization of function behavior, but the very thought that you can get most of the way through a calculus course and not know what a Limit is or how one might differentiate a function makes it seem counterproductive.

Differential Equations:  I haven't had a professional use for them, personally, but then my career has involved programming trouble management, warehousing, and provisioning software, where the most complicated math is generally subtraction of integers.  However, I have friends in fields like air conditioning design and nanotube applications, so it's typical "dinner conversation."

[boox909]

Nothing will change in the movies or TV because it sells.
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and also believe it lies with the parents to teach that personal responsibility.

Amen to personal responsibility. Lawyers make a living out of making excuses why it should not be so. As John said there is a correlation if not cause with what goes on in the media. Just watch (or not) show like "According to Jim" or "Still Standing" where lieing and drinking are celebrated. You can not tell me that does not affect kids whose parents have not grounded them well. My son was always grounded and knew where we stood on such issues. We also never talked baby talk to him and when he was a kid he would correct our grammer.

A nice thread Narf. 

B.

[John C]

As a little more fuel for the fire, I stopped off at an author's signing at my local book store, last night.  Normally, I skip them, because I really couldn't care less what Pat Buchanan, Bill Clinton, Darryl Strawberry, or even Bruce Campbell (all signings in the last few years) have to say, but this one was a little nearer and dearer to my heart.

The book's David Marcus's "Accepted," for anybody who miight care to check it out, and it's about the college admissions process viewed as narratives centering around the kids' guidance counsellor...who just happens to have been the office director when I was in high school.  I was their student aid for most of my time, there, so I couldn't pass up the trip, even in the pouring rain.  (Also, he wasn't my counsellor, but still got me through the process after many paperwork problems and a last-minute decision that I wasn't going to the originally-planned school.  And when I say "last minute," I mean the end of August.)

Frankly, the book sounds kind of like a dud, due to the author's mediocre writing (there's, like, fakey dialogue and stuff), so check a library before buying it.  But Mr. Smith spoke for a bit, and he made a similar comment that something's gone terribly wrong with the system, where high school has become "about" SAT prep, basically, and with the end goal of not just with the kid going to college, but to a "name brand" college, with no consideration as to whether the school and kid make a good match.

And I do notice that my class was around when the Pre-SAT started showing up, and it did change a lot of things.  And my sister, coming through about eight years later with many of the same people teaching the same classes, absolutely hated high school and most of the staff I loved.

But for what it's worth, Mr. Smith got me a good enough match that I've been teaching there since I graduated, so I'm predisposed to think he's on to something.

[Mr X]

Hi we haven't met before

Quite agree with you on this subject, what is also a contributing factor is too much political correctness thrown into the mix 

[narfstar]

I agree with that also Mr X. It is not politically correct to admit that some kids can not do this or that. The fact that they can not do everything is less important. We throw a calculator in their hands in elementary school to hide the fact they never learned to add let alone multiply. But since they are able to pass the state test with a calculator they are OK. The kids who do not like to read avoid accelerated reader while those that liked to read learn to hate it by having to read too much.

[Mr X]

Thank you Narfstar,

Reading the comment's posted i assume that a lot of the discussion is relevant to the American Teaching system but forgive me if i am wrong, In the EU the political correctness affect's all member states and is governed by the EU commission, here it has become absurd.

A teacher now cannot make any corrections to a pupil's work in a red pen, why? Red is seen as the colour of aggresion.

Also a teacher cannot make corrections to a pupils art by writing over it as it might shatter the pupil's confidence, in that the art work would to them be defaced if not debunked and this might be seen to make the pupil feel humiliated and to lack confidence.

I don't know about you, but when i was at school it was not unusual to have the column at the left hand side of the page full of comments and corrections made in red pen, personally i always found this helpfull as it helped to correct where i had gone wrong, how can kid's learn if they are not corrected?   

[narfstar]

I do not know about Europe but it is still allowed in most schools in America. I am in the conservative south and we still do things the old (right) way on many things that liberals tried to change.

[John C]

Yeah, I'm told by friends that whereas it's simply frowned upon in the United States, across the EU, you can be fired (and arrested) for simply expressing a banned idea.  They're working on it here (which is why Joe Wilson is "racist"), but so far, no go.

Where I teach (a graduate-only campus of an engineering college), we joke about the red pen thing, by the way.  Every once in a while, the management professors come in with some goofy research paper that suggests that red is "too intimidating" and  should at least be replaced by some friendlier color.

I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").

Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.

For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything.  The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.

It's another issue entirely, though, whether it's useful to make kids jump through those sorts of hoops.  I tend to think it is, but only because you can't tell if you enjoy (or are good at) something until you've been exposed to something long enough to potentially fail at it.  But that may just be my own bias at work.

[jfglade]

 I don't care to get into the college bashing portion of this thread, beyond saying that I agree with more than has been written than I disagree. As for the elementary side, I worked for three years recruiting volunteers to work as tutors with children who were having some difficulty trying to learn to read, and noticed a few things (and yes, I did find that three and four panel comic strips can be an effective tool from kindergarten on up). I also worked as a substitute teacher on and off before and after those three years, and I had been around many children who read just fine.  I always asked children who had good reading and spelling skills if people in their family read often (and assuming that every family has two parents is a leap of faith that isn't always born out). Not to my great amazment, I found most of the children who read well came from families where someone read newspapers most every day, and those same people were also likely to read a book now and then, and even take their kids to the public library now and again (even if it was just to check out new video tapes, which they had read in the newspaper had been added to the library's collection). A fundamental truth which many educators ignore is that families are the primary socializing agent in this country, and children who live in families where no one reads aren't likely to become readers, or even see any reason why they should learn to read. Fortunately, there will always be exceptions, and some children overcome being raised by social morons; higher intelligence also doesn't care where it manifests and rich children and poor children, children from traditional families and fractured families, and children from any background have a slim chance of having a high IQ and/or a high EQ. Unfortunately, strong native abilities can be as handy in illegal activities as in legal ones. Believe it or not, many kids will do much better, in school and out, if an adult or two will spend some time with them one on one.

[John C]

I don't care to get into the college bashing portion of this thread, beyond saying that I agree with more than has been written than I disagree.

To be clear, the only reason I focus on college is because it's near the center of my world:  I'm in my fourteenth year teaching at my alma mater, a close friend is up at MIT, and I have other people scattered teaching throughout the country that I hear from once or twice a year.  I'm sure if I had kids, I'd be just as vocal about public school.

I always asked children who had good reading and spelling skills if people in their family read often (and assuming that every family has two parents is a leap of faith that isn't always born out). Not to my great amazment, I found most of the children who read well came from families where someone read newspapers most every day, and those same people were also likely to read a book now and then, and even take their kids to the public library now and again (even if it was just to check out new video tapes, which they had read in the newspaper had been added to the library's collection).

Yes.  My parents were, and still are, outright bizarre in their ways, and both are anti-intellectual beyond compare.  But they both read constantly, usually with me in their laps, and I was reading history books by my fourth birthday.  Less time was spent with my sister, for a variety of reasons, so she started slower, but was still easily at a "fourth-grade level" (whatever that may mean) by the time she hit kindergarten.

A fundamental truth which many educators ignore is that families are the primary socializing agent in this country,

Unfortunately, the trend in teaching (as an industry, I mean, from teacher certification to administrative oversight of ever-merging districts) is that this MUST be ignored intentionally.  There's a belief, apparently originating in the high-ranking teaching schools (cough--Columbia), that parents are an impediment to education, because they don't teach using (and thus interfere with) the officially-sanctioned approaches.

So the parents are made as unwelcome at the school as possible, from an administrative standpoint, and the teachers are left asking why none of the parents seem to care.  (Note:  There's a strong parallel to the loss of child readers of comic books--the stores are set up to scare them away, so of COURSE they don't buy anything.)

Believe it or not, many kids will do much better, in school and out, if an adult or two will spend some time with them one on one.

And not even necessarily in an academic capacity.

Kids (actually, almost all people, in my experience, but that gets further afield) crave acceptance and status.  If they can't get it from trustworthy individuals (teachers and parents), they'll look for it wherever they can find it.  And you get substance (or spousal/child) abusers, gang members, political activists (kidding...mostly), and petty thieves.

[narfstar]

Where I teach (a graduate-only campus of an engineering college), we joke about the red pen thing, by the way.  Every once in a while, the management professors come in with some goofy research paper that suggests that red is "too intimidating" and  should at least be replaced by some friendlier color.

I often use green or purple or anything of different color than the student used. I am not married to red but whatever is handy. I will even use a yellow or orange or green highlighter if it is handy at the time I am grading.

I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").

Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.

I think I have a much better solution. I think most things should be mastery. You master one skill you move on to the next and your report card will simply tell how far you have mastered. I believe in a learning based education system not a grade/credit based education. I believe that grades/ranking should only be applied in the area/s being particularly pursued for scholarships etc. I also believe that many classes should be pass/fail if they are out the students field of interest and this should especially apply to college.

For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything.  The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.

Must say I strongly disagree with that. I think we have natural physical abilities and disabilities. Our brains also mature at different rates and the brain may not be mature enough for some.

[John C]

I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").
Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.

I think I have a much better solution. I think most things should be mastery. You master one skill you move on to the next and your report card will simply tell how far you have mastered. I believe in a learning based education system not a grade/credit based education. I believe that grades/ranking should only be applied in the area/s being particularly pursued for scholarships etc. I also believe that many classes should be pass/fail if they are out the students field of interest and this should especially apply to college.

In principle, I agree, but I'm biased towards apprentice-style education.  The problem, though, is throughput.  It's hard, when you believe that the course needs to cover certain topics (either because those topics must be discussed or because the students aren't going to see the material anywhere else), there isn't a heck of a lot of time to put the students to work, especially when they have day jobs.

What I end up doing is giving "impossible" exam questions just to see how they approach the problem.  If they're making traction or showing good ideas.  So far, it hasn't felt like a terrible compromise, but does still need work.

What I would really prefer to see than any sort of grade (and yes, I know why this would fail miserably or devolve back into a letter-grade system immediately) is a recommendation-based system.  To get into the next course, you need glowing (or merely acceptable) recommendations from whoever taught the "feeder" courses.

That's what I use grades for, at least--when a student gets an A from me, I'm saying that the student has shown me a good enough handle on the material that he or she can definitely apply it in future courses or at work.

For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything.  The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.

Must say a strongly disagree with that. I think we have natural physical abilities and disabilities. Our brains also mature at different rates and the brain may not be mature enough for some.

Different experiences, I suppose.  I'm discounting people with genuinely-related disabilities, of course, and I'm not saying everybody can hack it as a professional, but when I was going through school, we were all required (for example) to run for a mile, play football, basketball, and softball, and so forth.  Everybody had some measure of success.

I know that, centuries past, multipart harmony singing was part of the curriculum, as were other fine arts.  I doubt that these are skills that only rich kids (those in college) could ever achieve, and that those kids were unilaterally talented in the arts.

In every skill, there's an art and a craft to it.  The craft is teachable to anybody, as far as I can tell, whereas the artistry is what defines the professionals.  Well, that, and motivation.  For example, I played the violin many years ago, and probably could have developed well, but it just didn't interest me.