UbuntuCat

There are two instances in which I have had this jumbled-word paragraph brought to my attention:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(The original source is here, but the server appears to be done right now.)

The first time was when I was still an English teacher. One of my students, after having gone through a rather rigorous unit on grammar thought it was amusing. When I shared it with my co-planning teacher, he said he’d rather have shards of glass stuck in his eyes than read papers written that way.

The second time was on the Ubuntu Forums, and a forum member thought a few of us (who occasionally correct others’ grammar or spelling when we just can’t take it any more) were being pedantic, so she or he saw fit to show us that spelling doesn’t really matter.

Here’s the thing, though: as my former colleague pointed out with his exaggeration about shards of glass, just because you can read something doesn’t mean you want to read it the way it’s presented.

After all, I can watch fuzzy black-and-white television on a four-inch screen while I constantly push the antennae around in futile attempts to get better reception, and still hear all the dialogue and understand what’s going on in the movie or television show I’m viewing. I can also listen to third-generation mix tapes that have had two decades of deterioration and still “hear” the music I’m listening to.

Nevertheless, I somehow still like clear pictures in HD on large screens that have digital surround sound and also still prefer to listen to CD-quality recordings of music. The same goes for language and communication. Grammar and spelling conventions and rules don’t exist just to make your life miserable—they actually are around because consensus gives meaning to words, phrases, syntax, and punctuation. If you follow the established guidelines, you don’t leave it up to your reader to make meaning of what you’ve said; you convey the meaning to your reader. Good writing is like an HD-quality movie or a CD-quality song.

That doesn’t mean we have to fly off the deep end and nitpick grammar points that don’t matter (split infinitives or misuse of the terms compose and comprise, for example), but it does mean we should strive to be understood most efficiently, with the fewest words, and with the least amount of work on the part of the reader.

I recently have had the opportunity to help assistant-coach my school’s track team, and it has been a wonderful experience. A wave of nolstagia has swept over me as I’m constantly reminded of the pain and fun of my own training in high school. All the workouts these students are grumbling about as they sweat through them bring back fond memories of my own grumblings. I just wish they knew what a rare opportunity they have—a chance to have physical training built into their pre-5:00 PM day. I think the lack of such a program is the reason why most adults (even ones who were serious athletes in high school or college) are out of shape (or don’t work out “enough”). All the working adults I know work at least nine-hour days, if not longer. That means if they want to exercise regularly, they have to wake up extra early to work out before their commutes or work out late after work and then have an even later dinner, both options being less than ideal if your workout is an outside workout (as it’ll be dark when it’s not during the work day).

So even though I’m not able to do all the workouts with these kids (I have to supervise them or time their splits), it’s great that I can use part of my work day to get some exercise. I just have to keep reminding myself not to tell these kids too many “When I was your age, do you know what we had to do for our track workouts?” stories.

There’s a lot of pressure out there. It started when I was in ed school, studying to be a teacher. The professors and my fellow student-teachers raved about Harry Potter. When I finally got a full-time teaching gig, all the teachers there raved about Harry Potter. My wife raves about Harry Potter.

Am I the only one who hasn’t read Harry Potter? And does that make me a bad person? After all, there are plenty of great books I’ve read that most Harry Potter fans have never read or even heard of. Are they bad people for not appreciating those books? Why do people give me strange looks when I say I haven’t read Harry Potter?

It’s not as if I never tried to read Harry Potter. I did. I really did. When all the big hoopla in ed school was going on, I thought I’d give it a shot. I picked up Sorceror’s Stone (also known as Philosopher’s Stone) and tried to read it. The first 100 pages were painful. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the writing style. The characters didn’t feel real to me. I stopped. I haven’t started again ever since.

Some people will say this is heresy, but the movies are a lot more exciting to me. Usually I like book versions better, but not in the case of young Mr. Potter.

If you genuinely enjoy Harry Potter, good for you. If you’re one of the flock, who read Harry Potter just because it’s the “in” thing, then shame on you… but at least you’re reading something. And if you want to know what books a non-HP-reader would recommend, try Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover, Hardcore by Linda Williams, Femininity by Susan Brownmiller, On Writing by Stephen King, or The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. I guess I should have mentioned I favor non-fiction. Could be one factor in my lack of enthusiasm for Potter books.

Further Reading
Pottermania and other random ramblings

Maybe this is symptomatic of the kinds of social circles I run in, but I often hear friends and acquaintances saying that they are sending their kids (current or future) to public school because they “believe in public schools.”

I’m not sure what this means exactly.

All the people I know who say this, well-intentioned though they are, seem to still reinforce the class system in United States education. None of them sends their kids to underfunded or physically dangerous public schools. Instead, they send their children to charter schools or rich public schools. And then they encourage their children to go to private post-secondary schools.

I don’t see what right these people have to lord it over those who supposedly don’t “believe in” public schools.

I’m a case in point, though my parents were never snobs about “believing in” public schools. I grew up in a rich suburb and went to a very well-funded public school. Then, I went to a private university for my bachelor’s degree and another private university for my master’s degree. So what makes my parents different from those who “believe in” public schools—at least the “believers” I’ve met? Not a whole lot.

I’ve taught in both private and public high schools. I don’t see any practical difference in terms of funding source, but I do see a lot of differences in terms of funding amounts, even within funding sources. Is there some kind of ideological integrity that comes with having loads of money come through taxing rich individuals and then being funneled through the local town or city government… as opposed to having loads of money go straight from the rich individuals to the school itself?

Even if you are a true idealist of this sort and send your kid to a poorly funded public school, what does that prove? What do you gain from that? Will that serve to balance the inequities in our educational system? Are you also going to insist your child go to only public universities and work for only government-funded jobs?

Public is not inherently better or more idealistic than private, and there is no reason to feel you are better than others because you send your child to a public school. I’m so sick of this “I believe in public schools” crap. Am I the only one who hears this? Am I the only one sick of hearing that phrase?

Recently, I read an article in Newsweek espousing single-sex education. The following week, the magazine published a slew of letters arguing for or against single-sex education. The original article itself and all the subsequent published letters all missed two major reasons it’s dumb to argue about whether schools should be single-sex or co-ed:

1. Arguments about whether students get distracted by the opposite sex don’t make any sense and are heteronormative. As a former teacher (of five years) who taught in both public and private schools, I can’t remember a single instance in which I noticed a student not paying attention in class because she or he was distracted by the attractiveness of the other gender. People tend to get embarrassed about that sort of leering being noticeable—young student or adult, in an educational setting or any other setting. People get distracted by their own friends, regardless of gender. They get distracted because they want to whisper to each other and write notes to each other. They get distracted because they’re bored.

More importantly, LGBT students feel marginalized enough as it is. We can’t even acknowledge that, in a single-sex environment, they might be subject to these same theoretical “distracting” longings for the objects of their affection? The argument about whether or not single-sex or co-ed environments distract people has no bearing on practical pedagogy. I’ve sat in far more faculty meetings than I would have liked to, and not once did we talk about a co-ed environment distracting students. We did talk about dress code, but I didn’t see any violations of that dress code actually distract a single student in class. Dressing inappropriately reeks of unprofessionalism and doesn’t suit any school environment—co-ed or single-sex.

2. Arguments about single-sex and co-ed schools tend to make the assumption that it’s either one or the other. Whatever happened to “To each her own”? Can’t we say that some people would better thrive at single-sex schools? Can’t we also say that other people would better thrive at co-ed schools? Arguing single-sex v. co-ed is about as dumb as arguing about whether people should have cats or dogs. Let some people have dogs. Let others have cats.