Why cant sum teacher’s spelling right?

So, a couple of days ago I dropped my kids off at school. I went upstairs into the open-plan grade 5/6 area to talk to my daughter’s teacher. Projected onto one of the walls there was a page of text, presumably for the teacher to work through with the students that morning. It was entitled “What are Hero’s?” I stopped in my tracks to stare.

Hero’s.

Not heroes.

This was not, thankfully, the work of my daughter’s teacher. Nevertheless, I did find this grammatical and spelling boo-boo quite alarming.

This person is supposed to be teaching our children. How is a teacher going to teach our children properly if they don’t know how to do something this utterly basic themselves? Misuse of apostrophes is rife in our increasingly, it seems, illiterate society.

Just to be clear:

An apostrophe is used in a contraction in place of missing letters (ie. do not = don’t) or when signifying ownership (ie. Michael’s blog…).  Not when making a word plural!

Additionally:

The plural of any word ending in O has an E before the S. For example: heroes, potatoes, dominoes, banjoes, etc.

Why is this hard for so many people to understand?

The real problem here, as I see it, is that teachers are severely undervalued in Western society. Seems a rather big claim, no? But it’s true. Every day, we entrust teachers to educate our children. They teach our kids facts and figures and how to do things, but most importantly, they are supposed to be encouraging and teaching children how to think. Rote learning won’t get you too far, but knowing how to use your brain, processes for working things out and understanding the world, these are the tools that will get you through life. The better you are at it, the better stead you stand in to live a fulfilling life. We all agree, at least in principle, that education is vitally important.

But this agreement in principle doesn’t often translate into action. Teachers hold what should be one of the most respected positions in society, but they are underpaid, overworked, and are rarely provided with all of the resources they need to do their jobs well. Class sizes swell; schools, particularly state-funded ones, are always underfunded; teachers find their work hours bleeding out beyond school hours into their evenings and weekends. Governments at both state and federal level prattle on about the importance of education but don’t put enough resources into it. More often they are seeking ways to cut back.

Don’t they realise that the future of the state, the nation, the world is in the hands of today’s children? And if those children are not smart, the world is buggered?

From the highest levels, education and educators are not seen as very important. So not enough people want to become teachers. It doesn’t look all that appealing. This means that when it comes to teacher-training courses, lower demand means that tertiary entrance scores for the courses are lower. Which means that some dimmer bulbs get into the course. Which means that some really bloody stupid people are entrusted with teaching the new generation of fresh young minds.

Do you see the problem here?

I am in a position to pontificate about this because I studied alongside such people. In the early to mid Nineties, I completed a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) at one of Australia’s most highly-regarded universities. And believe me, I knew some complete and utter morons who were in that course. (No, I’m not looking at you, “Nana”.) Some of them were incapable of spelling their own name legibly. And these people are expected to bring out the best in our children?

A good teacher and especially a great teacher can inspire a child to go on to amazing things. A great teacher can change a student’s life, setting them on a path that takes them through the rest of their lives. Alternatively, a bad teacher can ruin a student’s experience, rob them of drive and confidence and change their lives in a detrimental way. Our kids deserve the best, don’t they?

My argument now branches out in two directions…

Firstly, it seems sensible for our teachers to know what they are doing. So they should be fully and comprehensively trained. My course was a four year one, and by the time I’d finished (after five years) I still didn’t feel all that confident in what I was doing. Maybe that was just me. These days, teaching courses seem to be shorter. You can get another unrelated degree and tack on an extra year to become a teacher. This seems inadequate to me. Would teachers who get qualified this way be prepared for the responsibility, and do it well? And if the most basic of things, like spelling, is not addressed in these courses (it certainly wasn’t in mine), then are we doing the right thing by our kids?

Then there’s the question of how well educated are the students who will become teachers in the future? Spelling is one area in which they are failing. The prevalence of TextSpeak has ruined the written word. Just look at any teenager’s profile on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Incomprehensible! It’s bad enough that the words are lost – I do understand the abbreviations – but the syntax is buggered beyond all belief.

When I was interviewed for my last job, the recruiters had to specifically bring up the issue of the use of TextSpeak in business. As in “it has no place in any professional communication yet half the people here can’t help themselves; we hope you can do better, having a degree.” It quickly became apparent that a higher level of literacy was expected from me. By higher, I mean at about the level I was writing in Year 7. My team leader put it quite succinctly when he said “if you can write two sentences without making a spelling mistake, you’re doing better than most.”

All of this is avoidable! Let’s encourage better education. Let’s expect a better standard from students. Let’s give teachers the respect (and pay) they deserve and better equip them to do their jobs. Let’s take the pressure off them and let them get on with the teaching. Let’s make sure only the best and brightest are entrusted with that job. We owe it to the good teachers, and to the students, and to our future. Demand better!