First a disclaimer: I hated, no, I absolutely loathed elementary school. I think it was one of the most horrifying and scarring episodes of my life. So when I heard that my son was going to the same place I went, I tried not to panic too much. I mean, it was a few years since I had gone. And I noticed many, many changes. One happy change was that there was a new principal. No more Big-Butt-Berret (yes, I still remember her).
The school is better. But they push the kids too hard. I mean, my son is in Kindergarten. He has homework! Tests! Daily assignments! OK, I get the reason for some of that. I mean, he can now do simple addition and subtraction. Plus, he may soon be able to read (he recognizes many words and may even be able to read a simple book by now).
It just kind of annoys me how the teacher says that he cannot stay on task very well. Hello! He's 5 years old. He's doing pretty darned well. He's a smart kid. Yes, he's a little antsy and energetic. But he's a 5 year old boy. I'm just glad she hasn't suggested Ritalin for him. Because if that ever happens.. well, I don't want to talk about it.
OK, enough of that rant. On to the sadder part. See, the teachers often send home things for the kids. Little fliers on fun things the kids will be doing. Like, say, valentines day cards. Or end of year parties.
I made a game with the first one I got. I got out a red pen, and searched for typos and grammar mistakes. And boy, did I find them. Now, I have very little problem with spelling mistakes or grammar problems in most places- I'm not a big grammar nazi. But this is a piece of paper that the teachers obviously have to spend time on. With official things like that, they are representing the educational quality of the school. I can understand small mistakes; hey, they happen. But Kindergarten teachers ought to have proper grammar on papers they hand out. Because if they cannot utilize proper English on those handouts, than they will have even worse grammar in every-day classroom situations. And what good does it do for the kids?
I do not keep these corrected handouts. I usually gloat a bit over finding the mistakes (seeing as how I am not teaching kids English, and am not an English major in any way. I mean, if I can find these mistakes, there are probably more obscure ones present as well), misplace the paper, and eventually the paper gets thrown away. I have found many things wrong. Some are nitpicky, yes. One was the fact that a comma was used when semi-colon would have worked better (semi-colons, by the way, connect two independant clauses (among other things). Commas really should not be used that way, unless, I guess, a conjunction is used to bridge the two clauses along with the comma). Also, there was one case where the word "good" was used instead of "well". Good is an adjective; well is an adverb. (Side note- since I am thinking so much about semi-colons, I am finding myself wanting to use them. Sorry for the digression). Oh, and I also saw "to" used when "too" would have been the proper word. It was in the context of a sentence like: "there are too many typos". I remembered the poor little "too", and was sad. I remember adding on the little "o". One of the most frequent mistakes was in noun-pronoun agreement. PSecifically, the handouts had some variation of "they" when "he or she" would have been the proper way to go. I saw many sentances much like: "Send your child to school with their homework". "Send your child to school with his or her homework" would have been the correct sentance. Until rather recently, even "Send your child to school with his homework" may have worked, but I guess that that has been deemed sexist.Yes, I know in colloquial English, "they" is becoming the singular neuter pronoun. People say "their" when they mean "his or her". That does not make it correct.
But many of these things were indeed nitpicky. I once even tried to edit a paper by using more parallel structure and better word choice. I almost tried to correct a sentance that had passive voice in it, but could not because I like the passive voice. Passive voice is nice to me when writing Chemistry labs. In any case, I forget all of them now. But ever paper had at least one genuine grammar mistake.
And, just to re-iterate for those of you who may say my grammer sucks, and who am I to judge, note that this is a web-page. Not an official handout for a school. For real papers and such, I write much better. And if I were a teacher handing out stuff to parents, I would make sure the grammar was the best that I could make it. There is no excuse for them. There is an excuse for me. Most of my grammar lapses are intentional so as to be more conversational. Plus, I type this directly into yahoo. I do not spell or grammar check it on Word or anything. Some of the mistakes on the school ahndouts were just out-right typos. And hopefully they use some sort of spell-check on these handouts.
Now, the other day, I recieve something that blew me away. Maybe it is not the worst mistake I have seen. But I now have the time and energy to scan it for all to see. Just take a look.. I mean, come on. You can see my little pencil correction. I didn't mean to correct this one. I was mostly over trying to gloat. But it was just too painful and obvious. Yes, they really did write "under there clothing". I wrote in the cross-out and the "their". Is that not sad? Pathetic, even? I expect this from, maybe, a lazy 12 year old. But a kindergarten teacher? With a college degree? On a handout to parents, who will be seeing this? This is somewhat typical of the quality of papers that I recieve. Gah. Oh, and yes, I did blank out phone numbers and last names. I'm not that upset at them. It just seems that every little handout I recieve from them is more concerned with looking "cutesy" than with having proper grammar. They use stupid little fonts. And those lady bugs-ugh. But, I could live with cute.
Maybe I'm just trying to find reasons to not like this school. I don't know. But in any case, I just had to post this for everybody to see. Well, anybody who would bother looking at my site. Which isn't many people, but still..hmm..
Update! Ok, so that you don't think that I am exaggerating, I scanned in the reminder which came in after the other paper. I don't have much to say. The "there" should be "their". There is a superfluous "a". And "Enrichments" needed an apostrophe. You may notice the question mark I put it. I'm rather hesitant to say that that sentance is wrong. However, it could be re-written to create a less awkward sentance. But it could just be me. Here it is.
