Is our children learning?

[cornermouse]

Gee, given the following example from the AP, why would they even bother?

Teen Beated to Death at Milwaukee Bus Stop
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-bus-stop-beating,0,904181.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

Beated? Sort of makes you wonder if they've outsourced the spell checker.

[Mythsaje]

1. Editor's job...

And, yeah, any spellchecker should've caught it. If it was a straight typo, it's a weird one. 'D' is nowhere near 'N.' I could almost see 'Beateb" or "Beatem."

Very odd.

[China_cat]

2. I've seen a LOT of improper past tenses

lately in newspapers and books published in the last 3 years. Especially where the word is supposed to change instead of just adding an 'ed'.

[mtnester]

7. Here is one I always wondered about but never seem to have click

correctly....

is it "plead guilty"

Or "pleaded guilty"

every newscast I have ever seen has used "pleaded" and it just sounds wrong to my ear

[Mythsaje]

11. Apparently both 'pled' and 'pleaded' are correct...

Weird as that sounds.

[mtnester]

13. Thank you...my ear always seems to scream when they use "pleaded"

because it does not sound quite right to me...I appreciate your help on this

[Mythsaje]

12. Disturbing...

Then again, look at our overall literacy rate. Not as much of a surprise as it should be.

[nicknameless]

3. I think our children *isn't*.

More and more bad grammar, poor spelling -- and not just nit-picky stuff -- glaring errors.
We see it in ads, newspapers, magazines, etc.

There was a guy running for some school board position in San Francisco, maybe 5-7 years ago. His bio was filled with grammatical errors. Not surprisingly, he was a rethug.

[LWolf]

4. When the nation embraces illiteracy, that happens.

When people admire GWB for his folksy "speech," when my middle school students ask why we always have to use such big words when little ones will do, when they can't edit their own writing because they honestly don't recognize grammatical errors when they see or hear them, when we are moving mountains to produce one grammatically correct sentence each week, and 60% of the students can't do it on their own without my one-on-one coaching, what do you expect?

Anti-intellectualism is in fashion.

[nicknameless]

5. That is very sad.

Considering all of the places where they probably hear American English spoken (in the media, at home, at school), for them to not be able to recognize errors is truly sad.

I know that anti-intellectualism appeals to right-wing adults, so it probably does to their kids as well. But I wonder if it appeals to progressive kids too.

[LWolf]

6. Not in my experience.

Having taught in conservative regions all of my career, I can tell you that there are highly capable kids from more educated republican families. The independent thinkers, though, come from the more progressive families. They stand out in the crowd when most of your students' families are republican. There seems to be a strong class division among conservatives; the few "intellectuals" who use their intellect to encourage anti-intellectualism among the masses. They want obedient sheep.

[nicknameless]

10. They probably don't want people around who can outsmart them

or see through their BS. It's sad to see so much misanthropy. It seems that's fashionable too.

[RebelOne]

8. Someone caught the mistake. It's changed to beaten.

[Deja Q]

9. That's not the first time I've seen such embarrassing typos.

But these days they're a dime per dozen.

Just like any given career choice.