Kids don't need to learn spelling anymore....

[Uraraka]

There was this news report today that caught me by surprise. There is this Professor in England who claims that because of Smart Phones, kids don't need to know grammar or spelling anymore.

here is a link to the article for you to check it out: Click here!

  I am beginning to wonder what would happen if computers crashed. In the US, many schools do not teach kids how to add , subtract, multiply or divide without a calculator.  If we stop teaching things, what will kids be learning? 

      If computers did crash, we would be sent back to the dark ages, because no one would know how to write ( I mean, cursive or script (whichever you prefer) is not even being taught!( I know of many high school students who can't sign their own names!) Using this professor's logic, we shouldn't have to learn to read either, because our computers and tablets can do that for us!

    I find it to be absurd how people think we are advancing, but kids are not even learning the basics!

  what do you think?

 (p.s., I hope I did not offend anyone, I wasn't accusing anyone of not being smart or anything, I just don't think our school systems are being smart!)

   If we keep going this way, this may be our future.....

  I AM BORG!

Edited August 4, 2013 by knucklesgirl

[spinny]

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in my life.

 

Smartphones' existence or not, grammar and spelling is a key to life. We still write on paper, dammit. This guy is essentially saying, "oh, you can use spellcheck in English exams now".

 

Forms filled in on paper are gonna become hell for society if this was followed through and seriously, I'd laugh if this guy turned from a professor into a laughing-stock for saying this.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

My thought: He is wrong.

 

Because: If people on the internet, who are presumed to be somewhere between early childhood to  adult years, can still somehow fuck up on their spelling, then learning how to spell and knowing grammar usage is still a big necessity (although granted I'm not sure how many of the worst of the internet would care to learn how to spell anyways, given their attitudes to everything).

 

Thus: This guy is talking out of his ass.

Edited August 4, 2013 by 743 ED Missile

[Burnt Ash]

This is...ridiculous, honestly. Don't get me wrong, I love spell-check a lot when it comes to scrutinizing essays and stuff, but it should never completely replace actual learning of spelling and grammar; it's more like a supplement. There are some foundations that people should probably learn without completely relying on tech like phonics, spelling, addition, subtraction, etc.

[Nepenthe]

Spell Check, Grammar Check, and Auto Correct only go so far simply because they aren't equipped to handle all of the nuances of a naturally evolving language. I mean hell, this stupid thing doesn't know that echidna is actually a word. It is literally underlined in red as I type this in Google Chrome on a Windows 8 operating system.

Yeah no, I'll stick to being smart. 

[Johnny Boy]

So, who's willing to bet that this guy is gonna be a pariah to his fellow professors?

Edited August 4, 2013 by Johnny Boy

[Ultimate Waffle]

I guess we don't need math anymore either, huh? I mean even our phones have calculators these days!

[Chaos Warp]

Admittedly I rely a lot on Spell Check for spelling and calculators for math but this is still really stupid. 

[Frogging101]

What a crock of shit. If this is true then why do we still have people going on the internet and making fools out of themselves with "txt speek lol"? And now we have this guy saying that we don't need basic literacy skills anymore because computers can do it for us (which isn't even the case). That is not progress, that is Idiocracy.

[Tori Himemiya]

Well I will admit I'm a terrible speller and I use spell check to help me out.

However I'm doing my best to learn from my mistakes. I suppose we should all read through a dictionary sometime cause I don't want to live in a life where everything is done for you.

We should talk about how cursive is dying out too.

[Nepenthe]

I'm not concerned at all with cursive dying out. Not only does it have such a limited use in daily life where writing on paper anyway is becoming a little passe, (we use it for signatures and....uhm, signatures!), but most people's cursive is pure chicken scratch anyway. I feel like the time I spent learning cursive in school would've been better spent on either typing or just more practicing of traditional print.

[Blue Blood]

Just a question- when you say cursive, do you mean script like this or simply joined-up writing like this? Cause in school, we were only ever taught the latter. And it didn't matter really how you formed the letters so long as they were legible. Joined-up writing is simply faster/easier if you're accustomed to it. Script is bull, though.

[Uraraka]

Personally, I like cursive, I feel like not only is it a safer tool against ID theft (if you can create a good sig.) , but it is a faster and more efficient way of writing.  If people actually learned it, it would also be legible

Just a question- when you say cursive, do you mean script like this or simply joined-up writing like this? Cause in school, we were only ever taught the latter. And it didn't matter really how you formed the letters so long as they were legible. Joined-up writing is simply faster/easier if you're accustomed to it. Script is bull, though.

  we mean the latter .

[a mystery]

For the ID theft thing... Won't a distinct handwriting/design in a unique style do, really? I'm not very bothered about the dying off of cursive, to be honest.

 

However, about the spelling thing... Darn. We need people to type like they write, not write like they type!

[Blue Blood]

Personally, I like cursive, I feel like not only is it a safer tool against ID theft (if you can create a good sig.) , but it is a faster and more efficient way of writing. If people actually learned it, it would also be legible

we mean the latter .

Righto. Yeah, here in the UK we tend to use the word 'cursive' for script instead of just any old writing that's joined, which we simply call 'joint' or 'joined-up'. The good thing about it is that it makes writing so much fluid to produce. The problem is whether or not you have neat hand-writing. So many kids in school had messy writing right from reception through to secondary school. Having to write joined-up was pure hell for them. But when you write neatly and can master it, it really helps.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Blue Blood

[Nepenthe]

Just a question- when you say cursive, do you mean script like this or simply joined-up writing like this? Cause in school, we were only ever taught the latter. And it didn't matter really how you formed the letters so long as they were legible. Joined-up writing is simply faster/easier if you're accustomed to it. Script is bull, though.

 

The latter. Although in my case, it did matter how we formed the letters when it came to grading our performance; specifically, we were taught this and had to stick to it. That T in the second example you provided would've gotten us marked down.

 

I used to be decent at cursive when we were being taught it, but again, we were under the impression that it would ultimately have just a few uses. So, I fell out of mine, and my signature looks just awful. xP

[Blue Blood]

Wow. That sucks. We had these general rules of thumb:

• Don't join capital letters.
• Write capitals as you normally would write capitals on their own (the capital A, E and Y in your example are no-nos, but the H is fine so long as it doesn't join the following letter).
• You don't have to join 'b, f, g, j, p, q or y', but you can do so if you want to.
• A normal 'z' is fine, it doesn't have to look like a 3.
• Joined-up numbers? lolno.
• ... but you can cross 7s and 0s if you wish.

I suppose our way of joined-writing is basically to make it as close to print as possible without taking your pencil off the paper.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Blue Blood

[Your Vest Friend]

Oh, and there's two completely different ways of writing the number 4. Who knows why.

[Nepenthe]

 

Wow. That sucks. We had these general rules of thumb:

• Don't join capital letters.
• Write capitals as you normally would write capitals on their own (the capital A, E and Y in your example are no-nos, but the H is fine so long as it doesn't join the following letter).
• You don't have to join 'b, f, g, j, p, q or y', but you can do so if you want to.
• A normal 'z' is fine, it doesn't have to look like a 3.
• Joined-up numbers? lolno.
• ... but you can cross 7s and 0s if you wish.

 

 

See, that sounds tons more awesome, lenient, and sensible than what we had to learn. In fact, the second example you have is a lot more pleasing to look at than just strict American cursive. Granted, we didn't have to join up numbers nor were we given the option of slashing our sevens and zeros. But everything had to be accurate to that standard, and every letter in a word had to be joined up.

 

It was awful and I now have a bad signature to show for it. Hoorah, hoorah. xP

[BakingBluePotatoe]

I remember when I was in a private school in my early years. We HAD to use cursive. and I remember being good at it. 5th grade I went to public school, and slowly over that year fell out of it and went to using the normal writing that everyone knows... since it was normal.

Also, that's BS, Spellcheck doesn't work everywhere. My phone doesn't have it in text messages, and I don't think it works of Skype either... and I DO believe in learning how to spell correctly. Of course, I do like spellcheck since it draws my attention if I accidentally misspelled a word, which happens a LOT, or actually forgot how to spell something.

[Milo]

He does has a point.

 

That's why we stopped teaching basic math in school as well thanks to the existence of calculators.

 

......oh wait :U

[Diz]

Obviously kids will still need to learn grammar. Grammar is there to actually let communication make sense, not to look pretty on a monitor. Without grammar, there will be a much higher rate of miscommunication, no matter the manner of distribution.

Not learning how to spell? Depends. However I do think that communication will be a whole lot smoother and quicker if everyone typed the same variation of words. With spell check, I imagine children will learn the corrections over time. Then again, there are probably a whole ton of content that needs to go from the curriculun before even touching grammar and spelling.

Typing post on phone, never again ... xD

[Uraraka]

if we didnt lurn to spel, we mait end uwp riting laik thiz. imajen the complukaitons in riting.

 (Translation: if we didn't learn to spell, we might end up witting like this. Imagine the complication in writing!)

Many years ago, this discrepancy did exist, but a good man, Noah Webster in the 1800's, made a unified spelling system for English because this problem  did exist. People would write however made sense, and what makes sense in your head, may not make sense in other's.

    It also clears up the confusion in homophones, such as their, they're, and there- they could be determined by context, but it could be confusing . for example , "I love synonym!" Do I like words that mean similar things? or do I like cinnamon? ( because we have spelling, this looks stupid, but the point stands, if we didn't have spelling rules, this could mean either.)

   Sorry,  not trying to argue, but I think spelling is important   (It was my best subject, anyway )

 

Edited August 5, 2013 by knucklesgirl

[Old dead account]

Well shit, I don't rely on spellcheck for anything and I still have good spelling. I just assume most people do, but there is always that one person dat takk lyk dis niqqa nat cuz dey b all gangsta n shit but cuz dey stoopid ass ignrint fools fo reelz. This guy is a fucking moron.

[Tara]

I'm pretty sure this guy hasn't even touched a piece of technology since 1979 and then just recently discovered an iPhone with spell check and was blown away.

 

Now, there's nothing wrong with relying on a spell check, but it only works in conjunction with an already-established grasp of spelling and grammar.  Spell check can be a lifesaver, but it can't work miracles.  If you have no idea how you would even begin to spell a work, then chances are the spell check won't even know what word you're attempting to write. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've known I've spelt a word wrong and neither I nor the spell check could figure out the proper spelling, so I'd have to do extensive research to figure out what I'm looking for.  In addition, I only know of one (1) application that actively checks your grammatical usage, and that is Microsoft Word.  Even that, while impressive and extremely helpful, is far from perfect.

 

I think it's fair to say that I am not a grammar Nazi.  If the entire English language devolved to the point where evry1 tiped liek dis I wouldn't be too upset.  Each new generation brings its own shorthand and simplification of language, so it's only natural that it would one day simplify itself to its most basic form.  But the thing is, even when you're typing like that, there is some sort of uniformity.  There is a clear grasp of what sound every letter makes and what words go where to form a somewhat coherent thought.  That is something that no autocorrect or spellcheck technology can teach.  That is something that must be verbally taught and demonstrated.  The key to any language is uniformity, and if you don't have a structured, uniform system of spelling and grammar, then the language will inevitably collapse into a mish-mash of nonsensical utterances that only one person, the speaker, can understand.

 

As for cursive... yeah, I don't really care that it's going away.  I think cursive looks pretty, but it sorts of lacks any kind of non-aesthetic practicality.  I'll be fine if they devote that section of class to typing or computer competence in general.  Or more recess time.  Or more lunch time.  That would be awesome.

 

Oh, and there's two completely different ways of writing the number 4. Who knows why.

Ha ha... I have a deep-seeded hatred for the differing ways to write the number four because of an experience I had when I was in first grade.  I used to prefer writing it with the closed angle, but I guess my teacher missed the memo that there was such a thing.  So I got a "frowny face" (the universal symbol for "you fucked up, you dumb kid") on several assignments, because she thought it was a nine.  Now, bear in mind.  I did not, I repeat I did not, make the four curvy or anything like that.  It was very clearly a closed four, but when I confronted her about it, I got in trouble for "arguing" with her.

 

Conversely, there's also two different lower-case A's.

 

I used to prefer to write the one on the left, but everyone kept asking why I write 2's instead of A's and I would have to explain it's not a 2.  So eventually, I forced myself into the habit of writing the one on the right... which breings me back to what I was saying about uniformity.  Please, professor guy... don't insist on making it an even larger nightmare than it already is!