Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

Maybe we should just get rid of all the "teachers/academics"? That would make me ecstatic.

I havent had any formal trayning in spelling Or grammer, and it hasn't affected my employment prospects one bit.

Would u like fries with that?

“Firstly, my phone corrects my spelling..."

Then it is not "your" phone, Mr. Mitra. You are its (or it's? boy, it's (or its?) so confuseing) button-pusher.

"...one less thing for teachers to be held accountable for."

And in Ontario, it will give them more time to teach 8 year olds about the joys of perversions.

Wow, imagine the careers these kids will have? I mean, how many people exactly do they need to sell oranges by the freeway? Talk about setting your children up for a lifetime of struggles! FIRE THEM ALL!!!

Hilarious!

The greatest human advance that universal public education accomplished over the last 150 years was to dramatically increase the literacy of the ordinary person.

If tedious subjects like spelling and grammar ("readin' and writin'", as it were) are abandoned, the class literacy divide will re-emerge pretty quickly because you can be sure that private schools won't lower their academic standards.

Hail the new era of texting peons!

Sugata Mitra's an idiot.

Sadly, there are too many teachers today who can't spell and don't have the first clue about English grammar. They hardly need to be let off the hook.

Dumbing down is the new -- well, not so new -- order of the day. All the better for the ravening wolves to put one over on the low-information, low-education rabble, which will go along with anyone who offers them free stuff.

Literacy is key to intelligent decision-making. Without it, the underclass grows and is easier to hoodwink. I smell a conspiracy here.

"...one less thing for teachers to be held accountable for."

Hmm...

Why is it I get the impression - certainly here in Ontario - that teachers are already accountable for precious little as it is?

JJM

U can thank Billy Davis for the start to a slide into stupid in Morentario

Hey, no one has to comprehend text books, instruction manuals, warning signs or technical drawings anymore do they? Let's go back to the middle ages when only the elites were literate; things were so much better back then.

Sugata Mitra is proof that a university education does not confer wisdom.

You know,sitting back and thinking about it,I can tell you the square root of 1444(it's 38),without using a calculator.Yet my 23 year grandaughter,who is in her third year of "university",truly does not know the difference between "to","too",and "two".Where have we screwed up so badly?

What does shuuughata miestrah care about spelling

Critical thought is not part of the discussion anymore. Removing literacy simply solidifies control. The ruling class can rest easy as their control is unthreatened.

This makes perfect sense, that whole let them have their ebonics in class experiment has up lifted a whole race out of their welfare ghettos.

But this is not news, when my daughter was going to public school in Ontario she got an A on her paper, it had incorrect spelling, improper punctation, no paragraphing, capitalization was haphazard. I went to her teacher and asked how she could possibly have an A for such an effort.

The teacher looked at me as if I was someone to be pitied and went on to explain that her job was to make sure that her students could use "CONCEPTS", that they were able to put their incredible IDEAS on paper. Spwelling and grammer were for people with no imagination or intellectual or abstract thinking. They were structures that limit the intellect.

No need to learn to add/subtract etc either, after all there are calculators in phones these days.

I'm sure it's coincidental that the preponderance of teachers come from the bottom quartile of college graduates. I propose we update the old slur to: Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach.

"...Sugata Mitra has suggested that spelling & grammar no longer needs to be taught to children..."

If the college papers that I used to correct are reliable indicators, I'd say that our teachers are at least twenty years ahead of Mitra on this.

Nah, I thynk that whaevr we wanna sai n wryt shud b acceptbl to evyr1 an if they has a prlblm wif it, two bad. Sew wht if thei dont unnersnd us? Thnx perfessr.

Overt collectivist conditioning - now they want to make kids incapable of communicating effectively - because everyone knows the new utopian collective doesn't need a diversity of opinion or stray narratives - just obedient droids to serve the state and its agendas.

Brilliant comments, everyone!

I keep hearing that younger people these days are "so intelligent" and "much smarter than we were back then". Really? Why is it then that when you talk with most people under 25:

- They can't add or subtract two numbers in their head?
- They can't multiply most single digit numbers?
- They don't know the difference between "it's" and "its"?
- They don't know the difference between "your" and "you're"?
- They don't know anything about history?
- Their political views range somewhere between "Far Left" and "Radically off-the-scale Left"?

If this constitutes "much smarter" people then I have swampland in Florida to sell you!

P.S. They don't know even basic geography either, such as where Florida is on a map!!!

In Ontario, as far as I can see, the responsibilities of teachers are to teach sex. And, indeed, advanced techniques at that.

We already are in a situation where the elites are literate and the proles aren't.

I'd limit the criticism of teachers' unions. Teachers teach what the boards of education tell them to. Curricula tend to be set by floating (flying, actually) consultants (and guru Mitra may well be one) working with the relevant government agencies. In Canada those are provincial. I don't know whether they are state or municipal in the US.

I don't really have all that much use for Mike Harris in Ontario, because he kept worrying away at the teachers' unions without much effect, when he might have solved the worst problems with Ontario education with a short walk from his office to his Department of Education. I don't think he was a CINA, just a d****d fool.

I must admit that I don't really get too concerned about spelling and grammar (yes, I see some of my errors after I hit the submit button). Unfortunately, due to one really awful teacher in elementary school who the was allowed to stay with our class for 3 out of 4 primary years, I missed out on significant amounts of basic LA education and as well as many other subjects. Fortunately better teachers were brought in to teach us math and science for all of those years. Crappy teachers is one of the risks of unaccountable public education, I guess.

Anyway, one other unintended consequence of not teaching proper English Language Arts is that it might put the classics of literature out reach of those students. If you are not required to write properly and read/write/understand complex sentences then reading those classics might become too difficult.

Paraphrased from an article by Herbert Spencer:

Bear constantly in mind that the aim of your teaching and discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being subservient to others.

Link to the full article:
http://mises.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=bf16b152ccc444bdbbcc229e4&id=e9920efe56&e=52761d3e72

Seems to me that writing skills, grammar and spelling are integral to how we respectfully interact with others - eschewing them pretty much guarantees negative social and economic stratification.

Yeah well, I recall an old yarn about a highschool reunion.

The head of the class arrived along in a beatup vehicle and threadbare suit....he was a university professor.

The dropout showed up in a flash car, with a trophy wife and a new Saville Row suit....he owned several restaurants.

The restauranteur explained..."Ya buy a steak for a buck, cook it and sell it fer 10 bucks....ya all'as makes 10%"

An old story, profs these days drive BMWs.....

I concur with Jamie MacMaster (and the papers I'm still marking are no better).

Yes, there are many universities who admit the weakest undergraduates to their teacher education programs (as most universities treat teacher education as a mere cash cow), but it is not true of all of them. I can say from long experience, however, that the best of our graduates -- and there are many of them -- are much less likely to be hired in public schools than our weakest students (and the ever weaker students from some of our neighbours). The best of our graduates who actually got jobs in teaching are working in independent schools, where they earn less money and benefits, have less job security, more extracurricular activities, and most of them wouldn't even consider moving to the public system.

These students learned early on that an "education guru" was something to be avoided Unfortunately, our school boards and provincial departments of education can't get enough of them (at least until they get arrested for heinous child abuse).

"We"? Which "we" are we thinking about, Just?"

Heh. General use of the term "we".Look it up if it wasn't taught to you.(or is that two you?)

Well while we're nitpicking. What's up with people spelling ridiculous rediculous. Is that just a different but correct spelling?

Fearless Leader - you've actually hit on the way to get back at these educational progressives. If everything is relative and there's no definitive right answer to any question, then these educator's paycheques should be whatever makes the author of the cheque feel good. I think it would make the author of the checks really good to leave off a digit each time. Or to change all 9's to the more a more elegant 2. If there is no right or wrong way to spell, or do math, then how could he complain? Especially if his phone has been hacked to agree.....

The results of such academics being taken seriously are apparent to anyone who looks at the product of our education system.

Common sense would dictate that these clowns get laughed off the campus. Instead, they are quoted and elevated to the status of "persons of import".

I swear to God, I've seen a marking rubric for high school students that eschewed proper spelling, grammar and punctuation in lieu of "getting one's point across" (how that would have been achieved I am unsure). This is the benchmark for students poised to go into university.

Human beings have the ability for complex thought and language and now it has been reduced to grunting and LOLs.

We've failed as a species.

My children are educated at home precisely for this reason. While they might not have learned the finer points of the Ontario grooming I mean sex eduction curriculum, they most certainly have learned the important things like language math and reading.

When the world is run by the morons that are being produced by the education system of today, they will need their wits about them just to survive.