Remember those bumper stickers, "If you can read this, thank a teacher"? Who do we "thank" that students at our universities these days are comparative illiterates?
Who's Schools? Are they kidding? These are protest signs held by students at the University of Washington. I don't know what these students were mad about, and I don't really care. If they don't learn to spell any better than that, then they're not going to have much credibility wherever they end up. Or maybe they will--hell, maybe no one cares that students at an excellent, expensive state university don't know the difference between "who's" and "whose." Good Lord.
8 comments:
Look again. The signs are professionally produced--at a printers; their entire point, which you completely missed, is that, indeed, today too many students cannot write grammatically and spell correctly.
Examine the protest signs with more care than you bothered to lend and you'll see that in each one shown in the photo, they carry "corrections" of the "who's" in the phrase, deliberately produced, "Who's schools?" in order to make a simple point: in whose schools does one find such ignorance of good grammar and spelling? In our schools.
On the contrary, when you browse the web, you'll find that it's at the protests of idiot conservative groups that misspelled protest signs are so often found.
Well, thank you for your bravely anonymous post, Anonymous.
"their entire point, which you completely missed, is that, indeed, today too many students cannot write grammatically and spell correctly."
And you know that this is "their entire point"--how?
Yes, I realize the signs were "professionally" produced. So your point is that the "who's" mistake was made on purpose? And then "corrected" (either incompletely or incorrectly) on purpose? To what end? In order to make the point that ignorance of grammar and spelling is found in "our" schools? Oh. I guess the intellectual nuance was lost on me.
I don't need a lecture from you about college students not being able to write grammatically or spell correctly. I've taught writing at a city college, and I've been as distressed as it's possible to be to find out that high school graduates have NO IDEA how to correctly form the possessive (or even plural). I spent hours with these students teaching them things that I learned in grade school--and also trying to impart to them why it matters whether someone knows the difference between who's and whose.
And on the contrary, show me one example of an "idiot conservative" group with a misspelled protest sign that you "so often" find when brousing the web. Typical Leftist anonymous argumentum ad hominem. But thanks for playing. And I stand by my original post.
Oh, and Anonymous, to correct your incorrect grammar and spelling: in the second line of your post, the word should have been "printer's," as in "the shop of a printer"--not "printers," as in the plural of printer. Duh. Before you come to someone's site "correcting" them, maybe you should take the beam out of your own eye. Sort of ironic. But maybe the nuance of the irony is lost on you. Just sayin'. Have a nice day.
Oh my gosh, how foolish of me, I just "got it": your "printers" error was ON PURPOSE to show that, indeed, today too many bloggers cannot write grammatically and spell correctly. Well, sorry for missing your entire point.
I guess Anonymous has no comeback ... well DO YA?
Correct. You completely missed the point of the protest signs. That you did is obvious from what you wrote about them:
"Who's Schools? Are they kidding? These are protest signs held by students at the University of Washington. I don't know what these students were mad about, and I don't really care. If they don't learn to spell any better than that, then they're not going to have much credibility wherever they end up."
You even admit: "I don't know what these students were mad about, and I don't really care."
and, going on,
"maybe no one cares that students at an excellent, expensive state university don't know the difference between "who's" and "whose." Good Lord."
The "students" pictured didn't fail to understand the difference between 'who's' and 'whose'---they're pointing up the fact that such ignorance is so commonly found in those who come out of "our schools".
It couldn't be clearer from what you wrote, going off half-cocked in righteous indignation at "these students" that you failed to grasp all that.
Okay, then, here's that rare thing, someone admitting a mistaken view. I can't recall when I last saw or heard a Right-Wing-nut do that!
So, on second--or third--thought, I think the signs were apparently printed as ordered and, unfortunately for the Socialist Workers, or, conversely, fortunately for those, like you, who are happy to laugh at their expense, the group of protesters were stuck with using them or faced with paying for the work to be re-done at their expense.
So, yes, I'm now prepared to accept that, in approving the sign order, they missed the grammar error and approved "who's schools?" when of course it ought to have read, "whose schools?".
Given the circumstances, they obviously preferred to correct the signs' main error (what would they do about the apostrophe? "white-out"?) rather than lose what they paid for the work in ordering it re-done.
There. Are ya happy now? Yeah, those "dopey" Socialist Workers activists--yep, certain among them didn't spot the error in the sign copy until too late. And incidentally, the printer's shop's staff either also didn't spot the error or chose not to mention it.
Have a good laugh on them. After all, what's really important? That they're demonstrating against cut-backs in public money for things such as teachers and other school-budget resources? For you, obviously, no. What's important is that some among them couldn't get the "who's"/"whose" grammar point correct when ordering the signs.
Meanwhile, as you laugh it up, your country slides farther down into oblivion from a public which is too riven with mutual hatred and distrust to do anything effective about the really serious problems which confront it. Instead, people would rather get their cheap jollies ridiculing.
You deserve the mess you're in.
The students were "stuck" with using the signs? Oh, I get it, they were VICTIMS! Bah. If they are so unengaged that they have to depend on hand-printed signs to be given to them rather than making their own signs, then I guess they're stuck with what they get. Or, they could use a little white poster paint to fix the mistake. Or--oh please, perish the thought--they could actually MAKE their own signs.
Seriously, I do not get your point of view, Anon (and you obviously still choose to hide who you are).
Which cheap, Socialist, Eurotrash country did you say you're from, again, Anon? Which Socialist country that will have its hand out, expecting the citizens of the United States to come to your aid--again--the next time you have a natural or unnatural disaster?
"Meanwhile, as you laugh it up" . . . . and "get their [your] cheap jollies ridiculing. You deserve the mess you're in."
I find no humor in the fact that students in the United States are graduating from high schools and universities all around this country and don't even know they've been cheated out of an education. I was hardly "yukking it up" in my original post. I could weep over the way these students are being duped and cheated by our school system. If you found humor in my original post, it wasn't something that was put there by me--it was your own snickering take on how this country is being taken down internally.
Go ahead, Anon, yuck it up. Yes, we are headed for some very bad times. Keep laughing, and good luck to you and yours the next time you're looking for the U.S. to bail you out. Look elsewhere, Champ.
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