WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO EDUCATION Since 1895 ?

It seems to me
that high school n college students
r now a lot less aware, and less well informed
than my fellow students were,
in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

U c how Jay Leno demonstrates youthful ignorance
of elementary concepts on his show; ( admittedly, it cud be faked ).

OK: needle me some more
about fonetic spelling.
I need that.

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Not to menton the intellectual gall

Yeah; I had that b4 I adopted
fonetic spelling, to the extent that I have.

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of an advocate for traditional education
expressing himself in pidgin English...

I can be eclectic.

U shud not be so closed minded
u ol stick-in-the-mud conservative !


Despite his vituperative acrimony,
Setanta raises some good points,
which I will address after I return from dinner.

I 'm in the mood for spare ribs.
David

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The problem is, kids aren't carrying guns to school.

Yeah; I 've noticed that too.

However, I DID see,
on Peter Jennings World News Tonight
duing the 1980s or 1990s
an elementary school in the Northwestern US
( maybe around Washington or Idaho )
that the students were required to carry
shoulder weapons to school,
in that handguns were not sufficiently powerful
to defend themselves from predatory fauna.

Thay did not find it to be a big deal.

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They are afraid of bullies.

Thay wud not be,
if thay had sufficient defenses.

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Children learn better in a safe environment.
I suggest a gun be issued to every child starting in 3rd grade.

That 's when I got my first gun
( well, actually, it was in the summer b4 school started ).

However, everyone shud pay for his own gun.
Then u CHOOSE what u want.
I won my first one, a 2" .38 revolver, in a poker game.


Thay shud check all of the students at the door
on the way in to make sure that everyone is
sufficiently well armed,
as thay used to do in Churches, during Colonial America.
( Virginia Colony 1631 )
David

Sorry, OMsigDavid, but you have been debunked:

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm

What is the final exam in Kansas in 2006?

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If rote memorization is the goal of education,

That 's quite a large part of it,
yes. I 'd imagine
that if one did not commit to memory
the fact that we have 3 main departments of government,
and at least READ, the Constitution,
he 'd have trouble in making politcal choices
approaching Election Day.

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then a test like that is a good measure.

It seems like a good start, anyway.


Will u begift us
with YOUR vu of " the goal of education " ?
David

OmSigDAVID wrote:

It seems to me
that high school n college students
r now a lot less aware, and less well informed
than my fellow students were,
in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

U c how Jay Leno demonstrates youthful ignorance
of elementary concepts on his show; ( admittedly, it cud be faked ).

OK: needle me some more
about fonetic spelling.
I need that.

Quote:

Yes, you do need that.
You claim that your "phonetic spelling" is more efficient,

Yes.
It seems obvious to me.
I can concieve of no good reason
to end the word tho with " ugh "
nor can I think of any reason
to jab Ls into wud, cud, nor shud.
Ill considered tradition is not a reason.
That 's like sentencing a child
to carry 10 pounds of useless wate around
with him all of his life, because its an old family tradition.

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but you are consistently inconsistent in the application of that principle.
If efficiency is your guiding principle, why did you write "school," rather than "skool," or "skewl?"

I did that because I don 't want to drive everybody nuts
more than I already have.
I am not 100% insensitive
to the complaints I 've gotten about it; ( maybe 86% ).

I feel a need to keep it somewhere within reason.
To parafrase Jack Nicholson: U cudn 't HANDLE the truth.

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Apart from that, your vaunted "fonetic" spelling can easily lead to confusion
or the failure of comprehension. You write "cud" rather than "could."
But cud and could are not pronounced the same
(except, herhaps by an ignoramus who doesn't know his or her native
language well enough to pronounce it correctly);

I was born in NY, and except for
5 years in Arizona, I have lived my entire life here
( other than overseas vacation travel ).
Over the last several decades,
my ignorance of English has progressively diminished.

I do not write " rite " instead of right, nor write
so as to avoid confusion with a ceremony;
however, it has been my filosofy in this matter
to point to a better way,
without arrogating unto myself
the instatement of a PERFECTLY polished product
of fonetic English. I am satisfied to show that there
is an easier, faster way.

Failing to do that is to be complicit
in PERPETUATING THE PROBLEM of non-fonetic spelling,
as I did for well over half a century,
b4 I began to demonstrate fonetic spelling.
During those years,
I never thought about fonetic spelling
and I corrected my secretaries for any imperfections
of their deviations from the paradigm.

Those who come AFTER me
will be faced with perfecting fonetic spelling.

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additionally, what happens when you want to discuss ruminants, who chew the cud?

I rely upon the infrequency
with which this problem arises.

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You use "r" for "are," but it could as easily be misunderstood for "our."

I do not pronounce the 2 words the same.
Its " r " and "owwrr", as I say it,
and as most folks do,
in my observation.
I acknowledge that there is a similarity.

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Even if it weren't, who is to establish the conventions which make "r" the replacement
for "are," rather than "our?" Who is to decide that "n" becomes
the replacement for "and," rather than the replacement for "an?"

Who determines that one uses "c" to replace see, rather than to replace "sea?"

Teddy Roosevelt unsuccessfully endeavored
to enact fonetic usage rules for use in the federal government;
Congress did not support him.
He was ridiculed, as I am now;
I don 't give a damn.
I doubt that he did either.

Anyway,
in more specific answer to your questions:
I believe that Congress cud enact statutory guidelines
for usage in the federal government;
( maybe even find that fonetic spelling
will help interstate commerce n mandate it
like mudflaps on trucks ).
I do not expect that to happen.
I don 't support that.

Probably, it will come from
elementary school teachers
following the academic leading lights
of prestigeous universities, or appropriate
organizations of scholars of American use of English.

Maybe some respected academic source
will publish a fonetic dictionary.

I have a strong gut feeling
against the metric system
because I grew up with the English system
of measurements, but it cannot be denied
that a system based on 10 is much more convenient,
and regardless of my distaste for it,
Manifest Destiny will propel it to success;
so also fonetic spelling.

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Your "fonetic" spelling is a scam, and a pathetic scam at that.

NO; a scam is something else.

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Quite apart from being disingenuously applied, and inefficient because
of obscured meanings, it abandons all the elegance of expression and
pronunciation which has made English the greatest language in the history of the planet.

This is false.
U cannot justify jabbing Ls into wud, cud nor shud,
nor can u justify adding " ugh " to the end of tho.
That has NOTHING to do with " elegance of expression "
nor with pronunciation.

PROVE ME RONG.
I predict that u will either IGNORE my challenge
to prove me rong
or
u will offer only vague generalities,
referring to tradition.

Prove me rong.

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What a loser proposition.

The children of the future
need protection from useless torture
of being forced to spell the rong way.

The Spanish shud not be allowed to
keep a monopoly on sound reasoning
as to spelling.

Let 's do it for the children.
David

You are peddling horseshit now, David.

The definition of vituperative, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is:

Using, containing, or marked by harshly abusive censure.

I certainly censured your claims about phonetic spelling, and you might be pleased to whine, and complain that i was harsh. But i did not abuse you. For as much as you may not like being told that you are wrong, it does not constitute abuse. Nothing in what i wrote constituted a personal criticism.

Apparently, you use language no better than you write it.

No one is "jabbing" an "l" into could, would, or should--because people who speak this language correctly pronounce the "l" in those words. That David does not or cannot is only evidence of a deficiency from which he suffers--it is not evidence of some higher efficiency and good sense on his part.

His arguments are bankrupt, and his apparent belief that "children in the future" will spell as he does is evidence of self-delusion. In fact, the American language was made distinct by Noah Webster, who did "rationalize" (his term) spelling for American children. Hence, centre became center; colour, humour and honour became color, humor and honor. Those changes were quickly adopted by Americans because they were sensible, and they did not involve doing any violence to the pronunciation of the words. He also changed magick, musick and mystick to magic, music and mystic--and those changes were sufficiently "common-sensical" in the eyes of English-speakers everywhere that they have been adopted by English-speakers everwhere. Once again, they do no violence to the pronunciation of the words involved.

Cud does not remotely resemble the pronunciation of could. David is not only involved in self-delusion to believe that he represents some wave of the future, he is awash in a childish conceit. The young people of today who use such spelling in text messaging are going to be obliged to learn proper spelling later rather than sooner in order to obtain good employment in any literate field. David, from what he has said of himself at this forum, is no longer faced with such a future obligation, so he can afford to adopt his arrogant attitude.

Finally, he declares that i am an angry man. That is more evidence of conceit on his part, and a sad and pathetic technique of online exchange. No one here can get the visual clues and the aural clues of tone which reveal someone's attitude in face-to-face conversation, so it is a cheap, arrogant and puerile tactic to assert that one is angry.

David is the one who insists on large type faces and boldface, universally seen in "cyber English" as shouting. David is the one who appears to be angry all of the time. His conceit is evident--i am not angry with him, because he simply is not important to me. I scroll past 99.9% of his posts, but when he invited, generally, a criticism of his spelling, i was more than happy to oblige.

David needs badly to get over his silly self.