Now I understand why teachers don't want to correct spelling.

I have a friend, she's in her late 20s now, who can't spell to save her life. She is bright, intelligent and can carry a decent conversation. But I must admit, her lack of basic spelling skills has affected my personal opinion of her.

She has had a privileged upbringing, and there certainly wasn't a lack of education. I personally feel she was more interested in clothes, boys and other material things, than in her education. I will say that I was interested in many of the same things when I was her age, but that did not interfer with my education.

The truth of the matter is that people who lack certain skills, spelling being one of them, are just not taken as seriously. We are not doing our children any favors when we allow rudimentary skills to fall by the wayside.

Want a really simple and effective way to provide an atmosphere of correct spelling? Turn on the Closed Caption feature on your television set. Seriously, it works wonders as the text just enters the alpha-wave induced brain as the viewer is in a trance.

I have enjoyed the privelege over the years to frequent flea markets and book stores to purchase books which are about a hundred years olde. What one learns when digesting this type of literature is that those of this time period who could read were very well versed in the English language. They obviously enjoyed a considerable vocabulary. Much more than is done today.
This command of the English language cannot be obtained without work and effort. Common sense tells us that this is a truism.

Our language skills today have been deliberately downplayed to where we are at the level of the pulps or newspapers..mostlly four letter words.
This leaves much of our population at a base or emotional level in a attempt to describe something from one person to another. Our language abilities no longer suffice to describe something even within our own experiences outside of a emotional description or emotinal jag.

Language is a dicipline. Remove the dicipline and you have wildlife..not diciplined individuals.
If you look closely..if you peel back the veneer of what passes for news it is often presented in a format designed to put people on a emotional string. It is not intended to report the news per se but to put people on a string. Even the language is often at the lowest common denominator.
People who lack much in the language arena can be more easily controlled particularly by appealing to thier emotions. They are more easily lead or mislead. Particulary by the body politic. And remember this important facet...who pays for most of public education...the body politic. They ..not the public ..get that product for which is being paid. The product the body politic wants ..not the public.

People who do not have dicipline in language are limited in thier ability to digest complex multidimensional ideas and concepts. This means they tend to be more controllable or malleable especially if you are able to control the information fed to them. This also breeds a predictable, controllable,malleable, gauranteed voting block for the election process. A public who can be counted on to support more body politic..not less. This system also breeds a populace who tend in their emotional nondevelopment to describe themselves by what they consume..good consumers...rather than individual responsible thinkers.

This system does not tend to breed self sufficient, individual, diciplined,thinking persons but rather persons dependent on the system to make decisions for them. For the system to take responsibility for them.

Hope this helps,
Thanks,
Orangetom

Dear All,

As a Brit (English), working in Germany for a company which uses American English as the official tongue. I hope a visit to the linked site will result in a few moments of light relief.

www.uta.fi...

Originally posted by orangetom1999
I have enjoyed the privilege over the years to frequent flea markets and book stores to purchase books which are about a hundred years old. What one learns when digesting this type of literature is that those of this time period who could read were very well versed in the English language. They obviously enjoyed a considerable vocabulary. Much more than is done today.
This command of the English language cannot be obtained without work and effort. Common sense tells us that this is a truism.

Our language skills today have been deliberately downplayed to where we are at the level of the pulps or newspapers. Mostly four letter words.
This leaves much of our population at a base or emotional level in a attempt to describe something from one person to another. Our language abilities no longer suffice to describe something even within our own experiences outside of a emotional description or emotional jag.

Language is a discipline. Remove the discipline and you have wildlife. Not disciplined individuals.
If you look closely, If you peel back the veneer of what passes for news it is often presented in a format designed to put people on a emotional string. It is not intended to report the news per se but to put people on a string. Even the language is often at the lowest common denominator.
People who lack much in the language arena can be more easily controlled particularly by appealing to their emotions. They are more easily lead or mislead. Particulary by the body politic. And remember this important facet...who pays for most of public education...the body politic. They, not the public, get that product for which is being paid. The product the body politic wants not the public.

People who do not have discipline in language are limited in their ability to digest complex multidimensional ideas and concepts. This means they tend to be more controllable or malleable especially if you are able to control the information fed to them. This also breeds a predictable, controllable, malleable, guaranteed voting block for the election process. A public who can be counted on to support more body politics…not less. This system also breeds a populace who tend in their emotional non-development to describe themselves by what they consume…good consumers...rather than individual responsible thinkers.

This system does not tend to breed self sufficient, individual, disciplined, thinking persons but rather persons dependent on the system to make decisions for them. For the system to take responsibility for them.

Hope this helps,
Thanks,
Orangetom

You, yourself had incorrectly spelled a couple of words.

But on the whole I agree with you. You can see it now, just ask a child to spell phonetics (irony) . Then stare in awe when many of them spell it with an F.

0F

I'm thinking that this whole problem of teachers not correcting students is a offshoot of the education system that endeavours to teach the masses. In the days of olde only those that showed great potential (is that how you spell it) or those that could pay received education, hence the unwashed masses were kept in there place. When education for all was introduced and you could rise above your station in life by being educated the worm started to turn and the government found itself in a whole lot of trouble trying to find all that money needed to train all these youngsters trying to better there lives. Now it doesn't want to pay anymore so if you want you child to be even moderately literate you have to pay for private education or get your child tutored (sounds familiar circa 1800's education) or just let them become literate, blame the teachers, dope em up on anti ADD medication, diagnose them with oppositional defiance disorder and breed the lowest paid workers for the next generation to clean the toilets and mow the yards of those that could afford education (again sounds familiar).

Cheers
crash

This just happened the other day. My daughters were visiting a friend. The friend is at her grandmothers place. I tend to tag along, since I know the grandmother doesn't tend to keep a good eye on them.

They were inside the sun porch. The friend asked them to give her a large word to spell. I was teasing her, and asked her to spell that long Mary Poppins movie word that starts with super. She gave me a look. Since none of my girls gave her a word to spell, I thought ok I'll giver her an easy one.

I said spell ship. She happily proceeds to write on the chalk board sipe. I said that is not how you spell ship. That is sipe, with the I being long (as in ice) since it has the e at the end. Her mom was looking at us, but didn't say a thing though. I told my oldest daughter show her how to spell ship. She did, and the friend said, oh that's how you spell it.

I honestly was suprised, since she will be going into second grade next school year. In a way I felt bad afterwords thinking I should have just spelled it correctly for her instead of having my oldest write it on the chalk board. I also wondered exactly how simple did she need the word to be? Maybe I should have given her the word bat. I think that would be a hard word to mispell.