Is spelling old fashioned?

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by Robh

This is part of a larger trend away from factual memorisation (e.g. rote learning) towards freedom of expression and creativity.

Children today quite often do not learn their times tables or for that matter memorise totals for simple addition combinations like 8+5 or 5+8.
There is no emphasis on correct spelling.
They aren't taught the syntax of grammar and don't have a clue when to use a comma, colon or semi-colon. They don't even know when to begin a new paragraph.
They aren't required to learn basic mathematical or scientific formulae and are usually given all the necessary formulae as part of the exam paper.
And their geographical knowledge is lacking.

The end result. Nobody puts anything to memory anymore and the brain is under-trained. Many people find it hard to even remember their mobile phone numbers.

Regards, Rob.

OK, since this thread seems to be predominantly one way I thought I should make it interesting by continuing to agitate my position.

First. Thank god for freedom of expression and creativity. Its the road to discovery.

How is it that all these "young" people dont know (or choose not to apply) the basics of spelling and grammer and yet seem to communicate very effectively. And I can hear you say "You call that effective, he wrote 'to' when he should have written too". But you understood didnt you! And as for the minds of the young being "under trained". Oh please! We were all well into our adulthood before we started dealing with the concepts that the young deal with today.

Frankly I think we all need to grow up and not bother ourselves with trivia any more because theres too much out there to learn to occupy our minds with whether someone should have written "then" instead of "than".

See you on the other side when hopefully it wil all be revealed.

And regards to you all

[bojan]

Claude,
I do not agree with you.
If young people communicate effectively among themselves, this does not necessarily mean they communicate accurately.
Their messages will be interpreted more or less correctly by others, belonging to the same subculture.. but this is not accurate communication according to my books.
Someone mentioned earlier (Chris Omaroo I think..) computer language..
I will try to repeat his remark here: Just try something like this when you are writing a program or script and see what you will end up with.

OK, computers may be dumb.. but so are the people (at least some ).

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

What I think is wonderful about this thread is that I can make as many spelling and grammatical errors as I like and still be consistent with my position, yet those on the other side of the debate have to be very carful and lets be frank, there have been quite a few spelling and grammatical errors emanating from that side of the debate. Without meaniong to sound too smug I think in many ways it makes the point.

Sorry I'm bored this morning and this thread just so happens to deal with a pet subject of mine so hope I'm not offending anyone too much.

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by bojan

Claude,
I do not agree with you.
If young people communicate effectively among themselves, this does not necessarily mean they communicate accurately.
Their messages will be interpreted more or less correctly by others, belonging to the same subculture.. but this is not accurate communication according to my books.
Someone mentioned earlier (Chris Omaroo I think..) computer language..
I will try to repeat his remark here: Just try something like this when you are writing a program or script and see what you will end up with.

OK, computers may be dumb.. but so are the people (at least some ).

Thanks for you're reply. I think effective communication is accurate communication. True its not accurate to you but then again nothing about how you communicate would have been accurate to Shakespeare and he would have wrongly, in my opinion, concluded from the way we communicate in this day and age that we are all stupid.

Which brings me to another pet subject of mine that you struck on. The one about people being stupid. It constantly amazes me how people freely say that people are stupid. You need to surf the net more and speak to people with an open mind more. I am constantly amased at how really really smart we are. Increadibly smart. Dont let the fact that we all come from different perspectives, different interests and different lives fool you. People are smart

[bojan]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

Sorry I'm bored this morning and this thread just so happens to deal with a pet subject of mine so hope I'm not offending anyone too much.

You are leaving us now? When you start to feel the heat of the discussion on yourself ?

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

OK, since this thread seems to be predominantly one way I thought I should make it interesting by continuing to agitate my position.

First. Thank god for freedom of expression and creativity. Its the road to discovery.

How is it that all these "young" people dont know (or choose not to apply) the basics of spelling and grammer and yet seem to communicate very effectively. And I can hear you say "You call that effective, he wrote 'to' when he should have written too". But you understood didnt you! And as for the minds of the young being "under trained". Oh please! We were all well into our adulthood before we started dealing with the concepts that the young deal with today.

Frankly I think we all need to grow up and not bother ourselves with trivia any more because theres too much out there to learn to occupy our minds with whether someone should have written "then" instead of "than".

See you on the other side when hopefully it wil all be revealed.

And regards to you all

You call the scrawl most of these kids come up with creativity??!!!. I could write better than most them do these days when I was 7 or 8 years old!!!. Let me give you an instance of this so called "freedom of expression and creativity". I walked into the the Biological Sciences building at JCU, one day, to go see my lecturer and get back an assignment I handed in the previous day. When I walked through the main door of the building, I could hear someone going right off about something. As it turned out, it was my lecturer. I knocked on his door and stuck my head around the corner to see if it was OK to come in. He asked me to come in and sit down. He then handed me my assignment, saying I was one of only 5 students who had actually passed.

Know what he did next?? He showed me example of the other people's assignments and asked me what did I make of them. I couldn't even read half of them!!!!!!!!. Most couldn't spell simple words like "was, didn't, and, etc", quite a few didn't even get their own names right and the legibility of the writing...forget about that completely. These people were supposed to be good enough to enter Uni, yet they were functionally illiterate!!!!. I even checked up on their maths. Now I'm no maths genius, but I can count to ten without having to use all my toes and fingers. Some of these people couldn't even do that, by the looks of their assignments!!!!.

That's not creativity or freedom of expression. None of them would be able to express themselves creatively at all if they were made to do so. Also, on another point, the oral expression of most of these people was atrocious. It's the same with most students at school these days. Many can't even string along a simple conversation without resorting to profanities or "pidgin English". What creativity I have heard resulting from this wouldn't even make good reading if it were at all possible for them to write it down without the help of a computer and spell checker (which, by the way, are fairly hopeless).

These children aren't communicating effectively, except to those of their own generation and even there they manage not to get the point across all that well because they change the rules of speech like they change their underwear. These children have poor communications skills. Most can't put their ideas down on paper (or on screen) because they have less than adequate reading and writing skills, even less so when it comes to basic mathematical skills. They need "props" to even get by when using computers, which, by the way, are a tool not a panacea to poor learning.

This society is heading backwards....back to the times when there was a social elite that could rule over the masses because they could monopolise and manipulate learning, making it easier for themselves to pull the wool over people's eyes. If you don't think it's happening, then take a look at when politicians make pronouncements and put most of their garbage out into the media. Most people just fall for the spin because there's so many out there who can't understand what they're on about. Most people have attention spans as short as a gnat's...ask them a week later what "xyz" was on about and they won't know.

Education in general has a lot left to be desired.

[Baddad (Marty)]

Hi FredSnerd and All,

A good thread this.

I once was puchasing three items at a large store. Each about a $1 plus a few cents. The checkout chick (DCC) rang it up and demanded $32.

I blew a poofer valve. "How much is that?"

"$1.05",
"And that",
"$1.09",
"Last one",
"Er, $1.06".
"So how can that total $32?"
"Ooh, the till is right. Its $32."
The manager was called. Now DCC tried to blame the register. "The till is wrong sometimes".

DCC was incapable of comprehending that three one dollar items do not come close to $30.

Another incident:

I needed a statutory declaration written up. I explained the details to a solicitor. Two days later I recieved the stat dec. Spelling errors and grammatically error infested.

I returned to the offender and refused to pay. I left it laying in front of him and wrote my own. It was quite acceptable.

I was disgusted and flabbergasted at the poor product quality from a professional.

Spelling and maths is very important. We used to have a Federal Treasurer who failed high school maths. He later became Prime Minister.
The Nation's finance status suffered greatly at that time.

Cheers Marty

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

You call the scrawl most of these kids come up with creativity??!!!. I could write better than most them do these days when I was 7 or 8 years old!!!. Let me give you an instance of this so called "freedom of expression and creativity". I walked into the the Biological Sciences building at JCU, one day, to go see my lecturer and get back an assignment I handed in the previous day. When I walked through the main door of the building, I could hear someone going right off about something. As it turned out, it was my lecturer. I knocked on his door and stuck my head around the corner to see if it was OK to come in. He asked me to come in and sit down. He then handed me my assignment, saying I was one of only 5 students who had actually passed.

Know what he did next?? He showed me example of the other people's assignments and asked me what did I make of them. I couldn't even read half of them!!!!!!!!. Most couldn't spell simple words like "was, didn't, and, etc", quite a few didn't even get their own names right and the legibility of the writing...forget about that completely. These people were supposed to be good enough to enter Uni, yet they were functionally illiterate!!!!. I even checked up on their maths. Now I'm no maths genius, but I can count to ten without having to use all my toes and fingers. Some of these people couldn't even do that, by the looks of their assignments!!!!.

That's not creativity or freedom of expression. None of them would be able to express themselves creatively at all if they were made to do so. Also, on another point, the oral expression of most of these people was atrocious. It's the same with most students at school these days. Many can't even string along a simple conversation without resorting to profanities or "pidgin English". What creativity I have heard resulting from this wouldn't even make good reading if it were at all possible for them to write it down without the help of a computer and spell checker (which, by the way, are fairly hopeless).

These children aren't communicating effectively, except to those of their own generation and even there they manage not to get the point across all that well because they change the rules of speech like they change their underwear. These children have poor communications skills. Most can't put their ideas down on paper (or on screen) because they have less than adequate reading and writing skills, even less so when it comes to basic mathematical skills. They need "props" to even get by when using computers, which, by the way, are a tool not a panacea to poor learning.

This society is heading backwards....back to the times when there was a social elite that could rule over the masses because they could monopolise and manipulate learning, making it easier for themselves to pull the wool over people's eyes. If you don't think it's happening, then take a look at when politicians make pronouncements and put most of their garbage out into the media. Most people just fall for the spin because there's so many out there who can't understand what they're on about. Most people have attention spans as short as a gnats...ask them a week later what "xyz" was on about and they won't know.

Education in general has a lot left to be desired.

Hi

Its a bit hard to respond to this because its all your conclusions about the papers you read. I understand that you concluded that the papers did not communicate effectively but thats based on your traditional way of assessing these things and thats really what we are debating.

But if there was anything in your post that seemed way out of line to me it was your lecturer giving you other peoples papers to read and critically appraise. Frankly I think that was digusting. Very poor performance indeed.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

Hi
But if there was anything in your post that seemed way out of line to me it was your lecturer giving you other peoples papers to read and critically appraise. Frankly I think that was digusting. Very poor performance indeed.

Very politically correct statement.

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by Baddad

Hi FredSnerd and All,

A good thread this.

I once was puchasing three items at a large store. Each about a $1 plus a few cents. The checkout chick (DCC) rang it up and demanded $32.

I blew a poofer valve. "How much is that?"

"$1.05",
"And that",
"$1.09",
"Last one",
"Er, $1.06".
"So how can that total $32?"
"Ooh, the till is right. Its $32."
The manager was called. Now DCC tried to blame the register. "The till is wrong sometimes".

DCC was incapable of comprehending that three one dollar items do not come close to $30.

Another incident:

I needed a statutory declaration written up. I explained the details to a solicitor. Two days later I recieved the stat dec. Spelling errors and grammatically error infested.

I returned to the offender and refused to pay. I left it laying in front of him and wrote my own. It was quite acceptable.

I was disgusted and flabbergasted at the poor product quality from a professional.

Spelling and maths is very important. We used to have a Federal Treasurer who failed high school maths. He later became Prime Minister.
The Nation's finance status suffered greatly at that time.

Cheers Marty

Hey I got a billion stories I've collected over the years of the dumb things people do (esp the dumb things young people do - you ever in your whole life do anything as silly as that DCC - be careful how you answer because remember we need to believe you for your story to be credible)

[PCH (Paul)]

Originally Posted by Fossil

And here is why you cannot trust your spell checker!

I have a spelling chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye cannot sea.

When eye strike a quay, right a word,
I weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar wright
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
I nose bee fore two late
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely, rarely grate.

I've run this poem threw it
I'm shore your pleased two no,
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

That is an absolute cracker Fossil, a ripper.

Actually, I would of thought it would of appeared sooner

So many people these days say 'of' instead of 'have'. It gets on my nerves in a "couldn't care less" sort of way.

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by bojan

Very politically correct statement.

Hi,

Not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that I am silly to be critical of the fact that a lecturer gives his student's work to other students to criticise. In your world where there is no "political correctness" would you allow that?

[bojan]

Yes, I would

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

Hi

Its a bit hard to respond to this because its all your conclusions about the papers you read. I understand that you concluded that the papers did not communicate effectively but thats based on your traditional way of assessing these things and thats really what we are debating.

But if there was anything in your post that seemed way out of line to me it was your lecturer giving you other peoples papers to read and critically appraise. Frankly I think that was digusting. Very poor performance indeed.

It's more than that (just those particular papers). I've also taught at high schools and I've seen the standard most of the children in the classes I taught had reached. I've also seen plenty of other examples in normal life. The levels of reading, comprehension, and writing are woeful. Thankfully there are some which have reached a reasonably satisfactory level, but most haven't.

How in all of history are you supposed to be able to effectively communicate a scientific (or any other) concept if you can't read and write to the level of being able to do so?? It's impossible, and it doesn't matter how "creative" you are or how well you can "express" yourself "freely", if you're functionally illiterate then you're pushing a lot of cow dung up a very steep hill.

The reason why he showed me those papers is because he was so exasperated at what he was seeing. Many of his colleagues that he talked to also agreed. I can tell you now that the reaction of the students, the looks on their faces, after he came to the lesson and basically told them all that if they didn't rewrite their assignments complete with proper grammar, spelling and in a legible structure, that he'd fail the lot of them, had a lot left to be desired. Most thought it was funny???!!!!!! Frankly, if that is the reaction of people these days to something as serious as this, then I don't see any real reason why they should even bother to go to Uni. Or, why the lecturers should even bother to teach these people.

They should either go back to school and relearn their basic English and maths, or go find a job digging ditches for the council, because that's all they're good for...simple manual labour.

[bojan]

And yes, even if it is my work.
Otherwise, how people would learn, if not told about their mistakes, or exposed, if nothing else works.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by renormalised

How in all of history are you supposed to be able to effectively communicate a scientific (or any other) concept if you can't read and write to the level of being able to do so?? It's impossible, and it doesn't matter how "creative" you are or how well you can "express" yourself "freely", if you're functionally illiterate then you're pushing a lot of cow dung up a very steep hill.

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

Hi,

Not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that I am silly to be critical of the fact that a lecturer gives his student's work to other students to criticise. In your world where there is no "political correctness" would you allow that?

And if it was your work and your children's work that the lecturer could shared with others whenever he chose, including for the purposes of ridicule that would be ok too?

[FredSnerd (Claude)]

Originally Posted by bojan

And yes, even if it is my work.
Otherwise, how people would learn, if not told about their mistakes, or exposed, if nothing else works.

Well you might want to ask some teaching professionals about that style of teaching method. I think most people would be very reluctant to be taught by a method by which a lecturer can disseminate ones work to peers in the way suggested.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by FredSnerd

And if it was your work and your children's work that the lecturer could shared with others whenever he chose, including for the purposes of ridicule that would be ok too?

Your point is bit stretched..
But yes.
If it is my work, it is entirely my fault if I did it wrong.
As for my children (one daughter actually.. and she is math teacher at high school at the moment), I am (was) protective.. but only if the situation she found herself in was not her fault.

[rider]

No one has ever stopped language evolving. Language experts predict that international English will sound and have similar diction to Indian/English within the century. To our great-grandchildren our manner of sentence construction and spelling will sound as unintelligible and outlandish as Chips Raferty or Bradman sound to us today.


When we get frustrated with documents that don’t conform to our own way of communicating, it may be well to remember that the average person in Shakespearean days had a vocabulary of 500 words and they were not certain to have the same letters twice in the same manuscript. Today the average person knows 2000+ words and we largely conform to the similar spelling processes.
rider