So, apparently we don't need to spell correctly

[DarkWarrior]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article4698949.ece

The blatant stupidity in this article is beyond words, yet somehow, the following sarcastic statement is totally appropriate:
"Hey guys, let's stupify the English language because the "internet generation" is too lazy to spell properly!"

[HeavyDDR]

The English language is unnecessarily complicated and a lot of kids do get held back for stupid stuff like this, so "stupifying" it would be a smart idea but some of those changes are just fuck-tarded.

[killshot]

The first thing I noticed was that the article misspelled "memorize." I thought the internet was supposed to make the world smarter. English may be complicated, but not unnecessarily so. I'm surprised Professor Wells didn't call for capitalization and punctuation to be abolished.

[Titan50]

I never found learning English hard and I'm quite thick

[Tatterdemalion]

The first thing I noticed was that the article misspelled "memorize."
The article spelled "memorize" with an "s" because the Times is a British paper, and one of the main differences between Commonwealth English and American English is that while American English the suffix "-ize" is spelled with a "z," in Commonwealth English "-ise" with an "s" is also used. So no, it's not a misspelling.

But this article does seem to be ridiculous. You can't call for the mass phoneticization of a language simply because you find the current spelling to be too difficult. You would essentially be destroying the entire English writing system, its rich origins, the culture attached to it, and devaluing the entire English language written tradition.

In all honesty, this reads like a parody article. In fact, it reads like a very clever parody (kind of like the snopes.com article about the school board in Misissippi that was planning to change the curriculum to do away with fractions). In fact, if I didn't know any better, I would assume that this is a parody.

But if we're really aiming to make things easier to learn, why are we still speaking English at all? The grammar is so complicated it's ridiculous. If we're really trying to make things easier for kids to learn we should all just switch to Spanish and call it a day.

[lilliejean]

The apostrophe can't be abolished- it can change the meaning completely. It might lead to the other punctuation marks being dropped. The spelling can be a bit odd sometimes but you get by.
Has anyone read "Eats, shoots and leaves"?

[Tatterdemalion]

Very true. "It's" means "it is" whereas "its" is posessive.

I noticed that too...

[Fenrir502]

Great...
The only reason people would have to stay behind, really, is if they had just been lazy and not done the work...
So instead of a bunch of lazy, stupid people, this act would make them all lazy, stupid, illiterate people...
I don't see many positives there...

[Tatterdemalion]

Now, that I don't agree with. Don't equate spelling, or any academia, with work ethic. The proposition in the article is ridiculous, yes, but suggesting that if you 're not "lazy" and "do the work" you're not going to have any problems understanding the material you learn in school is just ill-informed and presumptuous. The "work" is something that can help some people in learning, yes, and serves the primary function of reinforcing what's already been learned, but the initiative to complete schooln assignments is useless if you don't understand the material, and just "doing the work" is rarely enough to understand things that are conceptual, especially phonics. So no, people don't have difficulty with spelling and reading simply because they're slacking off, but rather they have difficulty because it can be very difficult material when it is first learned, and because the "do the work, end of story" approach taken by educators in the modern world does nothing to help with this difficulty. So in the end, if material is difficult, the "work" does more harm than good.

[Fenrir502]

...
Perhaps I phrased that incorrectly.
I don't know about where you live, but here, understanding the work is part of the work. Questions or Google are always a good way to understand. As is looking back over notes, or as happens to be a favourite game of one of my friends: take my notes.
You see, my point was that if you do not understand, and make no effort to understand or pay attention, you can hardly be surprised when you do not know the work, hm?

[Tatterdemalion]

Yes, but young children who can't spell aren't going to have much luck using written notes, are they?

I mean, if you're talking about secondary education, then what you're saying could perhaps be applied (although still only in part). But if we're talking about spelling here. Spelling is conceptual, and I don't really think it's fair to say that those who have difficulty learning spelling, even beyond phonics, have this difficulty because they're too lazy to make any effort to understand and pay attention. I mean, it can help, but in reality all of the effort in the world doesn't guarantee that you'll have that understanding.

[Fenrir502]

No, no, of course not.

However, I must point out that the people who try and fail are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who never try at all. My English class contains maybe five people who try, One who can not get the work, and all the rest just don't care.

That, however, could be coincidence.

[Tatterdemalion]

If you think you've got it bad, my school is worse. My English class is filled with students who don't care, but try anyway. And let me tell you, that is almost infinitely more depressing.

Still, at the same time, when you're talking about primary school, I don't really think the same frame of mind can be applied (at least, I assume you're not in primary school). Once you get on to secondary education then you can expect people to not only have much more individual responsibility, but to be in a position to make the decision as to whether they care or not. But at the lowest, most basic level, you really can't break it down that way.

[Fenrir502]

In primary school, however, you have one teacher for all of your subjects, giving more opportunity for one on one learning, Which I believe helps immensely.

And you assume correctly, I am in 10th grade.

[magick]

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

[WillPhanto1]

I'm tired of things getting dumb down for people. It's one thing when someone has a real problem with language, like difficulty reading or spelling, but dumb-ing it down is just well, dumb. Personally, I'll find it more confusing if we did that. If we remove the apostrophe and turn words like "Their, there and they're" into a single word, you would have to base the meaning on the context. And in my experience I've see people mistake the context of what was written on a page even when proper spelling and grammar were used. If the problem here is that too many kids are being held back for it, just hold them back for that one subject, and let them move forward with the other subjects, and give them individual attention for what they're having trouble with. And give them some real motivation. I didn't give a damn about spelling until I was twelve, but when I started putting my stories to paper (I just stored them in my head before), and started getting active on the internet, Then I started caring about how I spell.

[KuroStarr]

. . .
Next thing you know the words 'B4' , 'frum' and 'lik' will be apart of a dictionary...
That's it, I'm home-schooling my kid. :/

[WillPhanto1]

Wait, you didn't tap the 2 swamp, and 3 other lands, to play that sorcery "necro'd thread".

But yes, the way public schools are getting, you probably better off teaching your kid at home. Kids are taught what to think at public schools, not how to think. They make kid memorize things for the test, instead of actually teaching something, (and yes, and aware of some exceptions). And I think people are just losing the ability to think all together, which why they need to spell like they're text-ing so they don't hurt themselves.

[Tatterdemalion]

Oh dear, not the "it's the public schools" argument. What you're saying is in part true, but it's the symptom of an overall unhealthy societal attitude towards education as a whole, and until that's corrected, nothing's going to improve. Don't blame the "public schools," because for the most part "public" has nothing to do with it, it's the complete disregard for the notion of value or substance in education as an institution, in favor of a sort of industrial-style efficiency and economic pragmatism, that makes itself apparent in American education in virtually all areas, down to the most fundamental level.

[MrsSallyBakura]

Memorization isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, that's how you learn how to spell... plus it takes discipline to fully memorize vocabulary and math formulas so it exercises the brain that way too.

However it's true that it isn't all that needs to be done. It still really irks me that kids aren't taught much creative writing, or that they're not learning how to write well in general.

In Michigan, public school students have to take the MEAP. They score high in Math, but they score terribly in writing. Is anything being done about it? We'll have to wait and see this year, but the past couple years I looked at the scores and it's just... it's terrible.

[KuroStarr]

In Michigan, public school students have to take the MEAP. They score high in Math, but they score terribly in writing. Is anything being done about it? We'll have to wait and see this year, but the past couple years I looked at the scores and it's just... it's terrible.
'MEAP' ? what does that stand for?

Since Texas is a big state, I have concluded this: some school districts do really good in math in our state, but bad in writing; while other districts are the opposite. I go to public school and its really sad because I know really smart people, and there are also people who should still be in the 4th grade because their lack of ability to spell correctly, like the word 'our' spelled as 'are'...:/ . Sad right? But, I suppose it depends on the school district.
I have a really big Exam coming up right before the holidays! :/ And I haven't studied at all.[although I should]...

Ultimately, it depends if the kid really wants to apply him/herself or not. Due to the internet, media, ect. this is becoming a problem. Kids are distracted to easy. If the kid wants to act like a total douche for the whole year, then fine, let him fail and get held back numerous times so he can work at places like 'MC.Donald' his whole life, or at least get held back until he gets it right...I really don't care either way. But the problem is-if kids had the motivation they did about 40 years ago then this really wouldn't be a problem, now would it?
Usually, other languages aren't as complex as the English language. But hell, I still think its a good idea to keep things the way they are. The person who wrote that article is just mad probably because he was held back about 3 times in the 2nd grade...

[Tatterdemalion]

In Michigan, public school students have to take the MEAP. They score high in Math, but they score terribly in writing. Is anything being done about it? We'll have to wait and see this year, but the past couple years I looked at the scores and it's just... it's terrible.
It's a similar thing in New York, where students generally do better on the Math Regents Exam that the English Regents.

What it all boils down to is two basic problems regarding math and science. First off, at least in New York, at the higher levels Math and Science are almost always given priority over the Humanities. Why? Because even though in terms of eductional values the Humanities are just as, if not more important, Maths and Sciences have a greater range of application in economically lucrative fields, in terms of engineering, medicine, research, and the like, so if a country pumps its students full of nothing but Science and Math then they're making a good-looking financial investment, while at the same time they're denying their population their right to an actual education.

The other problem is, of course, that Math is inherently easier to learn through memorization. There's this ridiculous notion that somehow the harder a student works, then the smarter they'll become. Like this:Ultimately, it depends if the kid really wants to apply him/herself or not.
The problem, however, is that when you have this sort of rigid, work-based, mechanical memorizational structure, people are invariably going to do poorly in English/History, because these subjects simply can't be learned that way. Kids can do well at Math by memorization, because if you can do basic arithmetic/have a calculator, you can pretty much do anything, so long as you remember the processes associated with particular areas of mathematical problem solving.

With English it's not so simple. As far as reading comprehension, and interpretation, and the like these are relatively difficult skills that require an understanding of abstract concepts, the ability to perform critical analysis, the ability to not only identify elements of literature/writing, but to draw conclusions based on their usage, as well as a whole mass of other things...You can't just memorize a mathematical formula for that, you have to actually understand what you're doing, and that's something schools have yet to learn how to teach.

On top of that, there are plenty of essential aspects of English that simply aren't taught, involving things such as grammar and linguistics. It's amazing how rarely a formal, detailed, comprehensive study of grammar, involving syntax, structure, parts of speech and the like are taught in schools. They start at "noun, verb, adjective," and end it there. Sometimes you get "adverb," but that's pretty much it. Is it any wonder that students can't properly use the English language when the structure and usage of the language itself isn't part of the curriculum?

Basic writing skills are also often forsaken. That is, even with regards to academic writing, basic things like the ability to construct a thesis are given little importance.

So really, it has little to do with applying oneself. People like to jump and say "the internet" or "the media," but all that does is distract from the real problem, which is the education system itself. A student can apply himself all he wants, but if the schools themselves aren't teaching some of the most important aspects of a field of study, what do you expect will happen?

Oh, and one more thing:The person who wrote that article is just mad probably because he was held back about 3 times in the 2nd grade...
The person who wrote the actual article is probably just looking for a story that will outrage people, regardless of the fact that it's just a fringe view, of the sort that pop up in the academic world, which everyone has a jolly good time discussing the implications of, yet which clearly will never have any significant effect on the rest of the world. If you're referring to the person advocating the change, John Wells is an accomplished professor of, you guessed it, Phonetics...don't take things so personally, this is the way academia works, someone has a crazy idea, people talk about it for a long time, and write very angry essays at one another, until eventually people end up agreeing on something entirely different from what anyone started out arguing. (For the record, do you think it's surprising that a phonetician would advocate making a language completely phonetic?)

[MrsSallyBakura]

From 3rd to 8th grade, I went to a small independent Catholic elementary/middle school. Grammar was shoved into our brains from start to finish, though it didn't get that complicated until 7th and 8th grade when my dad was the teacher.

Learning all that grammar was excellent preparation for learning a foreign language, but unfortunately there was hardly anymore grammar taught when I was in high school other than what was taught in foreign language and could be connected to English grammar (namely infinitives). This is with the exception of my Junior year when my teacher decided to take a little break from the Literature curriculum and just had us write and he taught us a few grammar/punctuation rules along with the writing.

I know my grammar has suffered because we didn't go much further in the whole grammar thing. As an English major I should know more rules but I just don't know the more complicated ones, or I forget certain minor details/word orders. I should take that grammar class they have at my university... I could blame the Internet for my laziness plus the fact that I'm a creative writing major and I have the authority to bend the rules for stylistic reasons, but it's become a bad habit and I need to be more careful when writing papers; I get little grammar comments all the time nowadays. >.>

[killshot]

When I was in grade school, our grammar curriculum consisted of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and pronouns. We learned this in 5th grade and it was repeated again and again, all the way through my senior year. All the progress we would make in one year was meaningless and we would pretty much start all over the next year. I may be exaggerating a little, but I can certainly remember thinking to myself that we had covered all of the material several times. Repetition may be good for learning some things, but I think that too much time is spent backtracking to get any real progress made.

[MrsSallyBakura]

5th grade to senior year is WAY too repetitive.

You know what I think the issue is? People treat art and science like binary oppositions when they shouldn't be. So the schools focus more on the "objective knowledge" (science and math) and let the "subjective knowledge" (English and humanities) slide through the cracks without anyone caring. I think we're getting to a point where people think that we can only learn about things we can calculate and materialize, when that is not true. I think as people we need to learn how to appreciate both what we can materially grasp and what we have to rely on our imagination for.

Most people can't write for shit these days. It's terrible, really. Unfortunately it's not getting any better seeing as that standardized test scores in that area are still plummeting around here. They say in the newspaper, "Improved scores in math!" and mention a little bit about the crappy writing but don't elaborate much from there. Do people seriously not care about the importance of knowing how to write?

[Noroi]

I think the guy who wrote this has a bit of a point, but came up with the completely wrong solution. Tying to change spelling so that all the rules are completely backwards is not a good idea. That'll just get the kids more confused. But I will admit to school stressing too much on little details. Come on, we have spell check, dictionaries, and things like that for a reason. How many times in real life is some going to be writing something without being able to look at a resource of some kind? It goes beyond grammar though. Exactly what was I suppose to learn by cutting up a dead frog?
Though I will admit some of the rules are a little backwards already, and can't blmae some kids for getting confused. For example:
E after I, except after C, unless its in it words like neighbor or weigh.
...
Or if its just weird.

[Tatterdemalion]

E after I, except after C, unless its in it words like neighbor or weigh.
First off, if you say it as "I before E except after C, or when sounded like "A," as in neighbor or weigh," it rhymes, and is thus a hell of a lot easier to remember. But regardless, no matter how popular that mnemonic is, it's completely wrong. That is, it's in no way a rule of spelling in the English language, just something that is fairly common. If you dobn't believe me, look at words like foriegn, or science, or soveriegn, or ancient, or...their. They would break this "rule" if it was a rule. Luckily, it's not a rule, so the English language remains not broken.Come on, we have spell check, dictionaries, and things like that for a reason. How many times in real life is some going to be writing something without being able to look at a resource of some kind?
I hate this argument. That is, the notion that "real life" is somehow a distinct entity from school (perhaps a dream?), as well as this notion that everything you learn in school is absolutely necessary to function in day to day life. That assumption itself is nonsense, so the argument is moot. Technically speaking, other than reading absolutely nothing you learn in school is something you're necessarily going to "use" in "real life."

Mathematics are pointless, because unless you're going to be working specifically in finance or the sciences, which most people don't do, you're rarely going to need to do anything mathematical. On top of that, the most basic mathematical functions can be done on a calculator (it's the conceptual things that you really need to learn). They'll tell you you need to do things like calculate sales tax and interest rates, but at the same time, when you go to the store the cashier always calculates the tax for you, and your bank tells you how much interest you're recieving whether or not you figure it out yourself. Mathematics are, in day to day "real life," pointless.

Science is even more useless. How often are you going to need to know anything about the circulatory system, or the water cycle, or continental drift, or Newton's laws of motion, or cellular respiration, or aby of that nonsense? Again, unless you work in a specialized field, which is still incredibly unlikely, all of that information isn't necessary for your survival.

And what about English? That's even more unnecessary, because anything relating to writing or reading comprehension is only applicable to people who read books. And in real life no one is going to make you read books, are they? Besides, most periodicals, magazines, and the like are written at a very low reading level, so if you have a basic grasp of the language, you're set.

And History? Well, just remember, it's all crap that already happened. Need I say more?

I used to try to persuade people of the value of academia to the individual, but I find most people don't listen. So now I tell them to, if they're in school, drop out immediately so that the resources they're wasting can go to people who actually have use for them. Interestingly enough, no one ever does...

Although for the record, being able to spell words without using a spell-checker is one of the few things that is actually very, very useful. That way people can read your writing and understand it, without people thinking you're an idiot (keep in mind that most of the writing you do in "real life" isn't going to be done on a computer).

[MrsSallyBakura]

Sometimes if I'm working with something that has a spell checker, I end up learning how to spell the word eventually.

Do you know how long it took me to spell Renaissance? I couldn't spell it for the life of me until this year when I actually had to type it a lot.

I guess my point is that spell checker and dictionaries are useful as sources to help you learn in case you forget, but don't just use them as an excuse to not learn how to spell.

[Noroi]

Oh, definitely, learning is the most important. If someone is a bad speller, they should try to improve, yes. But school has a tendency to take it to an odd degree. The problem mostly I think is they stress the wrong things.Mathematics are pointless, because unless you're going to be working specifically in finance or the sciences, which most people don't do, you're rarely going to need to do anything mathematical
I'm afriad I don't quite agree there though. Algebra and anything higher than that? Yes, it is a little pointless to most people, but basic math is and always will be important. Everyone deal with money one way or another, spending it or handling something as common as a cach register. Just the other day I was at a restraunt where the cash register was broken (still would open but little caculator or whatever wasn't working). The girl ended up giving me a dollar too much that I returned to her. Not a big deal in itself, but if the mistake was made repeatedly, I don't think she'd keep the job for long.

[MrsSallyBakura]

I can't necessarily speak for Tatter, but I think you missed the point of his post.

It's hard to verbalize, but it' something along the lines of how he was probably being extreme about how you can prove that anything important is actually pointless. There are some people out there who complain that math is pointless, while there are others who complain that English is pointless. He was most likely taking all those arguments, stretching them a little, and putting them together.

But that's just how I read it. Mostly because of what was said at the end about how when you complain about how school is pointless, people don't drop out, so therefore there's still a part in all of us that finds school as a whole to be something worthwhile.

And it's not like you have to go to school either. There are people who drop out who can get jobs. It's just easier to find them if you have a college degree.