Thursday, March 5, 2009
Where the hell has spelling gone?
OK, my question of the day is this - where the hell has spelling gone? Why does NO ONE seem to care how to spell anything? There is a screwball system in place in English curricula that emphasizes "whole language" which means that anyone can write anything in any style with any type of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and as long as it is "from themselves" it is OK. So "I'm OK, You're OK" has been made into a lifestyle. No matter how little you learned in school, no matter your ability to communicate in writing at a third grade level, you are perfectly OK and do not need to change. Every single night on the news, there is a headline or a tagline that is misspelled - last night on Channel 9 there was a headline that was "Cuting Corners" - what is cuting anyway? The act of making yourself cute? It is not that I mind people making mistakes (ha) but the fact that they seem to symbolically roll around in them as if it is their God-given right to screw up and they are immensely proud of it. Which means that maybe my next post should be "Where the hell has humility gone?"
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This phenomenon constitutes the democratization of language, much like the democratization of the arts and other venues. Anyone can do anything they want, regardless of ability, talent, or intellect. "I'm okay, you're okay." It's the culmination of a society in which every child is told that he or she is wonderful and never criticized or corrected. We emphasize self esteem-building and de-emphasize the cultivation of humility, respect for hard work, and negative feedback at the cost of the loss of quality, empathy, and intelligence. It's a good thing that we have a President who appears to possess these latter qualities, because we're certainly not working now to produce anyone worthy of taking his place in the future.
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