(aka Bike) Part 1398 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad
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Fish and chips over, and the washing up in the machine, I chatted with the girls as they did their homework, helping them as I could–usually not. Billie continues to struggle with her English–they make them write stuff longhand to avoid use of spell checkers. Her writing is quite juvenile given she’s three years older than Trish and Livvie, her writing looks very similar, large and rounded. Mind you, I’ve had twenty odd year old students who wrote the same way and while legible it often unfortunately carried an immaturity of thinking as well.
My own scrawl was upright but small, with none of those affected 'I's dotted with hearts or feathery tails to my 'g's and 'y's, nor does it lean backwards, and only occasionally forwards, when I write quickly.
I looked over Billie’s essay for her and spotted three mistakes in the first sentence. I corrected them and explained where she’d gone wrong–including that awful one, I could of done something rather than, I could have...
We worked for an hour and the finished product was passable, at least the spelling was now correct and the use of punctuation more correct as well. She hardly used any save two full stops and one comma in a piece of about five hundred words.
At first she thought I was just picking on her, but we went into my study and I explained the basics of punctuation in giving sense to a sentence or emphasising a point. Eventually she realised I was trying to help her and she asked if I could help her do her English homework again. We hugged and I promised I would.
I then got her to show me her other stuff. It was equally difficult to read and the teachers had written snotty comments about punctuation. We looked at History and Geography. Her ideas were fine but were lost in translation to the written word. I told her I was going to get a tutor for her during the holidays. The response was a long face.
I told her that Danny was going to do some as well, he didn’t know it yet, but I would have someone coach both of them in English. Two reasons why: they’re probably better at it than I, and strangers often have more power than familiar figures.
I’d seen a name mentioned in the local paper when I’d read my reviews of the play, so had phoned the woman and she sent me her details–a genuine English teacher, with ten years of experience in coaching and classroom teaching. Her rates were quite reasonable too. I hired her to commence when the holidays started.
Billie after a little sulk was okay, she accepted her fate because she could see how it would help her in the long run and even to some extent in the short term too. Danny was an entirely different kettle of fish.
“Coaching in English–no way, Mum. I do enough during the year, I’m not doing it in the holidays too.”
“I’m afraid you do as I want, and in this case, it’s coaching in English.”
“But I don’t need no coaching.”
“That means you do.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“It’s a double negative, so it means you will do the opposite to what you thought you would.”
“No it don’t.”
“No it doesn’t, is the correct phrase yours was incorrect.”
“Football coaching, okay; English–what a waste of time and effort.”
“Show me your English exercise book,” I insisted, he pretended he’d left it in school but we found it when we looked through his pile of schoolbooks for the second time–he’d looked the first time by himself.
His writing was slightly better than Billie’s but his spelling and sentence construction was woeful. I wondered at one point if he split one more infinitive, he could boldly go to the Star ship Enterprise and I’d pay for the rocket.
We sat down and I asked him what he was going to do as a career–assuming he wasn’t good enough to turn professional as a soccer player, notwithstanding–he wanted to be a game’s teacher.
“Does your games teacher teach anything else besides sport and PE?”
“Don’t think so.”
“They usually do, even if it’s only sport theory.”
“Nah, he does sport science an’ geography.”
“Geography?”
“Yeah–you know, capital of America is New York, that sort of thing.”
“Would you care to reflect on what you just said?”
“No, why?”
“Well Washington was the capital of the United States when I was in school and I suspect geography is a bit more complex than simply not knowing your state capitals.”
“I was only jokin’, I just wanted to see if you was awake.”
“Were awake, and I was. What’s the capital of Australia?”
“Um–Sydney?” he blushed when I looked aghast at him.
“That’s the capital of New South Wales, Canberra is the federal capital.”
“Ask me another one, I knew that really.”
“Okay, let’s look a bit closer to home, what’s the county town of Wiltshire?”
“Wiltshire?”
“Um–Salisbury?”
“Try Trowbridge,” I suggested, “What about Dorset, that’s an easy one?”
“I don’t know, bloody Bournemouth, I suppose.”
“It’s Dorchester: and Hampshire is?”
By now he was getting very cross. “I don’t give a shit what it is.”
“You might if you lived in Winchester.”
“I don’t do I, so there.” He stamped off upstairs and I was left feeling very frustrated and worried for his future. He was good at football but possibly not that good and one bad tackle could end his career in an instant.
I let him go, he had to recognise his own failings before he would do anything to change them. His end of term exams would show some areas of concern, assuming I actually got to see his report. This being a parent is hard work.
I put the girls to bed and read to them, Billie was a little quiet compared to the others and was last out from the bathroom, waiting until the others had finished before she started to wash and clean her teeth.
I had to read them from Horrible Histories which would have terrified me as a child, especially one of Mima’s age, but they all seemed to love it. So much for my judgement.
I spoke with Simon about my concerns for Billie and Danny. His response was that he was rubbish at Geography at school, but he survived. If he needed to go anywhere he’d look it up in an atlas–he’d even found Hell when told to go there–it’s in Iceland.
“There’s Hel in Poland.”
“Well that’s next to Iceland.”
“Since when?” I challenged.
“Told you I was rubbish at geography.”
“So it would seem.”
“Okay, miss clever dick, I know clitoris isn’t a Greek island,” he smirked running his hand over my thigh.
“Ooh,” I jumped taken by surprise of his change of subject.
“An’ my sense of spacial awareness is excellent too, because I know this fits somewhere as well,” he placed my hand on his swelling groin.
As if on cue, as he touched my nipple Catherine woke up crying and he nearly wept himself when I went to sort her. Oh well, his anatomy is better than his geography but he’s still finding it difficult to get where he wants when he wants it. That kept me sniggering while I fed Catherine and changed her–by then he was asleep and I gently removed the book from his lap and slipped into bed.
I know general knowledge is something which changes from time to time, but I did wonder about the so called dumbing-down effect which some writers in quality newspapers mention, and which comes up as a topic on Radio 4 regularly, where it seems half the twelve year olds in England and Wales haven’t heard of Mozart, Dickens or Nelson–what chance my collection of Vaughan Williams CDs?
Comments
Thank you Angharad,
ALISON
'Danny had managed to become affectionate with his Mum but now that boyish rebel has surfaced,but I am sure
that Cathy will work it out.
ALISON
English classes
English was the subject in school I hated the most. I had no difficulty with learning all the archaic rules for the English language. However, because I am mildly dyslexic (I was probably moderately dyslexic back then) I had extreme difficulty with completing essays and compositions for my class work. I attended school before personal computers became so prevalent and had to do all work in longhand. If PC's had been available back in the 70's I might have actually done fairly well in turning in my essay's. In fact, even now, I really can't compose my thoughts on paper if I have to do it longhand. Oh, and while I might be dyslexic I have always been able to determine if I mispelled while writing. Two of the most difficult words I ever had problems with only contained 2 letters, if and of. Some of my teachers would even be pissed with me when I finally did turn in papers that already had my spelling mistakes already circled with red pencil. Yes, I know, I could have tried to look up the words in a dictionary. However, that gets difficult when you can't find the word to look up because you can't figure out if the first letter of the word is correct or not.
Oh, on a sidenote, my dyslexia really only affected me when I attempted to write. I am actually a very good reader. Good enough at reading that I am a speed reader with excellent reading comprehension. And yes, to this day, I can automatically spot misspelled words in anything written in the english language. It makes it a pain for me when I am writing anything because I don't like making mistakes. I don't really have a problem with other people makeing spelling mistakes unless they are deliberately being sloppy because they are lazy (such as leet speech, lazy emailers and texting, yes, I don't text.)
edit: Oh, I forgot that my English Teachers would also ding me on my grade for being too wordy or too much detail (that is, when I actually turned in an assignment...)
not dyslexic
What you are describing is not dyslexia. Dyslexia is a vision-processing problem where you see letters in different order than what is actual there. More commonly it is a reading problem, where you mistake words like was for saw or my personal problem seeing igloo for logo.
What you are describing is a condition known as dysgraphia. This is a problem with physical writing that has all the elements that you've described. Many people who are dyslexic are also dysgraphia people commonly think they are the same thing. They however are not. If you had a decent teacher, they should have allowed you to do your work through other venues, such as oral reports or drawings.
Well- now you know and knowing is half the battle.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
English and geography
two topics other than science and math that kids have horrible trouble with. Hmmm... If they have trouble with all those, what don't they have trouble with?
Really?
Throw in History and you have my three favourite subjects! I also did very well in the sciences, but hated Physics. Math I agree with - absoultely hated it ... or is it more accurate to say 'it hated me'....
PB
Devizes?
Greetings
I was under the impression that the headquarters of Wiltshire Council was located in Trowbridge. While long ago, even before my time, the original county town was Wilton.
While in Australia the original capital was located in Melbourne, until they created Canberra.
Thank you for the story.
Brian
Oops!
You spotted my(un)deliberate mistake, it is Trowbridge.
Thanks Brian.
Apologies to anyone I misled.
Angharad
Angharad
Education
I've been listening recently to a character who boasted about his education:
History: the Kings of England, historical fights (categorised)
Maths: both simple and quadratic equations, the binomial theorem, pythagorean trigonometry, integral and differential calculus
Biology: scientific names of a selection of animals
English: the legends of King Arthur and Sir Caradoc, acrostics, paradoxes
Plus lots more besides. Then again, the tale also featured law enforcement personnel who were finding it difficult to accept that criminals enjoyed the same kinds of pleasure 'ordinary' members of society do when they're not engaging in their criminal activities...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
I Understand Where Cathy Is Coming From
Sorry, again
Accents are just accents, they have nothing to do with education. Jeff Foxworthy is a comedian, he says outrageous things to be funny. Did Vincent Price sound uneducated? That was an East Tennessee drawl he spoke with, you know. And yes, he could bray and hee-haw with the best of the good ol' country boys when it suited the character he was playing. William Shakespeare spoke with a West Country rasp that even he thought was funny. Abraham Lincoln had an Ohio Valley whine that reminded some people of a colicky mule, sort of like Buddy Ebsen on helium.
Being prejudiced against someone because of their accent, mine is Arkansas hillbilly, is just silly.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Considering that we come from different parts of the world...
I sometimes wonder that we can communicate at all! I mean, we have writers from Canada, England, Japan and Mexico, not to mention the different dialects all over the USA. I try to just read past all of that, and focus on the story. I do enjoy a story that tries to explain the differing terms, like Kaho's Little Fox Tale, or a lot of Cyclist's Welsh-oriented stories. It just makes things more fun to see how different people can see the same phrases. I truly enjoy it (Okay, some of Steph's Welsh can be a wee bit difficult to read. I'll keep trying, though!) Celebrate the diversity!
Just my thoughts!
Wren
The Bard of Avon
"Wist Countroy", Irrin? Oi'll ave yow now thit Will was frum Wist midlunds, loike!
Double negatives etc.
"Them steaks were awful good" is not a double negative - there's only a single negative (awful) in there. What that is an example of is a typical colloquialism - partially sloppy language (them / those) and partly using what is perceived as a negative as an adverb.
Even then, it's not really a negative, as if you think about it, awful = awe + full. So the modern trend for using it as a colloquialism for very / extremely is unintentionally taking the word back to its roots!
-oOo-
The classic example of the double negative is "I ain't done nothin', sir!"
Well, if you haven't done nothing, sheer logic dictates you must have been doing something (and in that particular case, almost certainly the something was rule-breaking of one form or another!)
-oOo-
Written English narration should generally be standard English, unless it is the writer's wish for the narrator to have a specific background. When it comes to speech though, if the writer wishes to convey a speaker has a particular accent, dialect, regional or colloquial form of speaking; the spelling and grammar guides can go out of the window. As a classic example, look at the latest episode of D.L.'s "Simone" (mercifully the author has provided translations for those of us not familiar with broad Norfolk accents!).
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Are we being lulled?
Are we being lulled into a false sense of all things being well? I am sure it is not over between Cathy and her Goddess. It is surely going to hit the fan, someone dearly loved by Cathy is going to be near deaths door and she is going to blue light them and find it is not there, will the Goddess withhold her power?
I've been thinking that too
... afraid to mention the thought.
methinks
Tis about time a certain headmistress got a bit of a shake. For serious bucks those kids should get a bit more attention, bet they know all the damn saints (is that a double negative?). Danny is different, school, and he's a boy..ohh icky. Pretty common attitude I imagine unfortunately that, 'what does it matter'. Mind you I thought much the same about calculus.
Kris
Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 1398
In school, I was/am a whiz at spelling and science, but terrible at math.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
I do wonder sometimes...
Cathy seems to be, well, not asexual but really a tad frigid. I mean, I get the busy life part, BTDT. To a degree I even get the frigid part. It just seems like maybe Cathy has become a bit too adversarial with her husband. I know she has a lot on her plate and Simon is as much a doofus as any normal guy, But seriously, she needs to let him have a little room to be what all men are at heart, little boys.
I think Cathy has a bit of growing up do to herself. She's not that far from grad school, and now she's got this brood!
I hope the family survives them growing up together...
Schools
At least the schools there are still teaching the children to write. I have spoken with 6 sets of parents in the last three days, and none of their children are being taught to write. They either print what they have to, or they use a keyboard. Cursive is not even on the roster anymore in at least three school systems around here. My handwriting is not the best, but I can still write and it is legible. My hands cramp up so bad, I seldom write anymore, and after 35 years playing cop, I got out of the habit of writing, as everyone wanted to be able to read documents, that we had to print everything anyway. The lack of basic knowledge displayed by the people Leno finds for those segments, is not hard to locate. The "dumbing down of America" has been razed for years, but is becoming more and more apparent. These people are functionally illiterate.
I have 5 teenagers at home
And we have very similar arguments on a regular basis. "Why do I gotta learn this stuff?" seems to be their favorite whine. Argh! I was never like that!
Mom? You okay, Mom? Someone help her-she's gagging on something!
Wren
english
was not one of my finer subjects..and anyone reading my comments that typing isnt either. i generally do ok on spelling. math, most of the sciences stuff, history were all fortes' of mine.
.
english just wasnt my cup o tea, and I was prob worse than danny in my dealing with such. i also suspect...that certain teachers whom i disliked always were often the same ones that taught various english classes had someting to do with it also.
.
well to the americans here ...as i'm gonna be away here for a bit...happy pre-4th of july celebrations. hope to be back reading near end of month :-)
My pet peeve is the split
My pet peeve is the split infinitive thing. There's nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive. It was a rule invented by, IIRC, a Victorian grammarian (not even an author) by analogy with Latin, but English isn't derived directly from Latin.
Dumbing down.
Dumbing down is simply a ploy to make politicians look successful at 'Improving Educational standards'. Believe it or not, a child can get 'A-level' mathematics in the UK now without ever having opened a book about Calculus. And children don't even learn four part harmony for 'O-level' music. It's frightening.
Third world countries are leaving the UK and, for that matter, the US far, far behind in education.
20% of British children, (That is 11-years-old,) leave junior school functionally iliterate.
25% of US high-school graduates cannot locate an outline of The United States on an unmarked globe.
British education standards are like the 'Soviet wheat harvests'! They get better every year, that is of course, according to British politicians. Statistically, this is absolutely impossible but the lie gains credence year on year until it becomes a 'truth'.
Once the bulk of the population are functionally and educationally disparate it is a simple job to disenfranchise them and create a stratified, latter-day, 'Animal Farm.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Bev.
Growing old disgracefully.
you said it
I was reading at an eigth grade level when I was in 4th grade. Ridiculous how children do not want to learn; no curiosity. Plus I was already learning Chinese at home and was reading children's books.
Gimme a break!
Kim
What really bugs me about schools is
you say (and I believe you) "20% of British children, (That is 11-years-old,) leave junior school functionally iliterate."
Question is, if they are essentially illiterate, how do they greaduate from school? One of the big issues with school systems is that they "graduate" people who don't even come close to minimum graduation requirements. It's supposedly less stressful on the kid to move them along than it is to hold them till they actually learn the material. "Wouldn't want to subject them to the stigma of failing..." so you just move them along getting farther behind every year till you shove them out the door not qualified for anything.
This practice makes the whole school a joke. If you can't depend on a graduate to know how to write a complete sentence, you end up considering the graduation certificate trash.
Schools
There is no such thing as "graduating" in UK schools. Children simply leave when they are of an age to do so. They are set exams (of a sort) at 16 and 18, if they stay on. There is no qualification for 'passing' secondary school.
As Bev says, the proportion of A-star grades in the exams goes up each year, which is drivel. Many of the children awarded that grade in French, for example, are unable to conjugate the verb 'to be' in the present tense. Doesn't get much more fundamental than that. What has been done is a series of experiments, in which the kids are set a modern exam and an older exam. Both exams are graded as they would have been in real life, and then the modern exam is graded the old way. The results are interesting.
Graded modern style, loads of top marks.
Graded old style, very few. We knew that...but: the proportion of children who get th etop mark under the old grading system is the same as it always was, as is the proportion getting top marks for the old exam. That shows three things:
Top grades are awarded for poor performance as well as for excellence. That cheapens the achievement of bright/hard-working pupils.
The ability of children is as good now as it ever was.
The education system is as good now as it used to be; it is just the rewards in terms of grades that have been cheapened.
Here goes
Haven't done this for forty years:
Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont, elles sont
Angharad
PS Can I have my A* now - hope I spelt it correctly.
Angharad
Now...
Present subjunctive?
My point was an important one: children remain as varied, talented and delightful as ever, their teachers remain as skilled and dedicated, but the politicians are selling both short.
Call me a soppy old tart, but things like that matter to me.
And yes, oll korrekt!
The age old fight,
kids and their homework. You really do have to buckle down and force them to do it sometimes.