Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Really Bad News
Today’s kids don’t have to walk to school sixteen miles in snow up to their bellybuttons, uphill both ways, they don’t have to spend all their free time doing household chores and odd jobs like I did, and now they don’t eaven halv two wurry abowt speling.
Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks.
The rule, issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, means that pupils could spell every word wrongly in the most significant piece of writing that they are required to do and yet still receive full marks.
There are two really obvious things to point out here.
One, I can’t say a single word about this without sounding like a really old man. To everyone, save for those who already realize what’s wrong with this without me mentioning a single word. It’s a case of tyranny-of-majority, and dumbing-down; the “Let’s Ignore Bad Spelling” ruling was handed down after too many of the kids taking the test, failed to get the spelling right. They got the content right, I assume, because the administrators figured something out. Quotas are not being met, but if we discount spelling, we can meet the quotas. So the kids have some brains. Trying to use those brains to get words spelled right, has yielded substandard results, so hey, let’s take spelling off the table then we can meet our quotas.
It all comes down to, the God damn kids don’t have to do what I had to do when I was a kid. And get off my damn lawn.
Two: To those of you who, on another subject, will argue that school is all about developing social skills, the FACT that this is a huge mistake should be beyond any dissent. Just think about the social aspect in terms of situations where you have to convince the other person of your intellect.
You want to sell me your motorcycle. It’s a chain drive motorcycle and I’ve got a real thing about shaft drive motorcycles so I’m not willing to buy. You send me an e-mail saying “Hay, their ain’t nuthing rong with a chayn driyv, it’s wurked for me!!!” You think I’m going to stop and read beyond the first sentence of your thesis, let alone change my mind about shaft drive motorcycles? You don’t have as much of a chance as you would have if you spelled things right.
Or let’s say I’m a liberal and you’re a conservative and you drop me an e-mail saying “Yoo liberalz shuld stop ragging on George W. Bush about wepunz of mas dystrucshun, yoo no our troups did find a hole bunch of them owt their in Iruq.” This is a case of trying to convince me of something that, due to my biases, I’m not initially willing to believe. You think you’ll get far by misspelling things? Nonsense. The mind of the liberal looks for any excuse it can to stop listening to an opposing argument. Throw in a few misspelled words, and you’re wasting your time.
Not that conservatives are any better. One of the things liberals have tried repeatedly to throw our way, is that our current president was selected, not elected. How do you think it would go down if a liberal wrote to a conservative and said “It may suprise you to gno that their wuz a lots of balot boxes hidan in floruda that were votz for algore.” It would just be further evidence that these conspiracy theories are aimed at, and consumed by, people who aren’t that bright and therefore the theories are not in need of any serious attention. I’d skim through just enough to get a little bit of a laugh for the day.
As a society, we do not write things down as much as we used to. A few of us have to correspond through e-mail in order to do our jobs; there are phone numbers, e-mail addresses, maybe a shopping list or two. The rest of the writing we do, I’d say, is stuff aimed at other people who do not initially agree with us about something, meant to change the mind of the audience. That’s probably a good eighty or ninety percent of everything we write, if you count word for word. E-mail, blog entries like this one, posts in rapidly lengthening and incendiary threads.
So three-quarters of everything we write is written to change the mind of a hostile audience. And when you try to change the mind of a hostile audience, your efforts fail a hundred percent of the time if you don’t spell everything right. We learn to spell correctly when we are held accountable when we go to school, and our schools are going to stop holding children accountable. Therefore: The medium of the written word will soon cease to be a viable and worthy forum.
You know, a few years ago this wouldn’t even be necessary. The little shits can’t spell, you just go ahead and flunk ’em. If NONE of the little shits can spell, then you start flunking EVERYBODY until they learn how to get the job done. But now we have all these learning disabilities and with that, we have lost our ability to hold the children accountable for the work they do. So this has actually been inevitable for years now.
As far as that goes, are you ready for another rude surprise? Try looking at some blogs and reading some of the threads posted under the hottest news stories out there. This problem with spelling is nothing new. What we have been losing, and continue to lose, is craftsmanship, which ultimately is the notion that the quality of work says something indelible, good or bad, about the person who made it. With that, we are losing our ability to communicate.
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