Aha, a fine demonstration of the reverse spelling error greenlite gambit.

Bring back the 3 R's. That'll do it.

CrispFlows: I hate that phrase.

Me too.

xl5150: CrispFlows: I hate that phrase.

Me too.

3rdid

The solution is to pay teachers more and prevent them from being held accountable. And dope up the boys more, they're being boys.

more than one in five (22%) could not use the correct version of "they're", "there" or "their" in a sentence

That's actually better than i would have expected.

I don't need learnings'. Gots me teh internets!

You know what would fix this? If they just eliminated business degrees. You could no longer coast all the way from elementary school into a bachelor's without any actual knowledge.

I never memorized my times tables because there never was a need to. I'll never be in a life or death situation with the Joker where I need to know what 12*7 is or else I'll be dead in 3 seconds.

Teach them how to perform the functions manually then hand them a calculator for finding what 12.7*4.567 is because no adult does that by hand unless they really hate themselves. As for spelling there really isn't an excuse given how prevalent internet access is. If you can read you can easily see how to spell properly and implement it. I'd imagine it is a lack of people making it difficult to be a poor speller.

But seriously, we had spellcheck back in 1994 and now its in every worthwhile web browser.

/mathematicians aren't human

How else do you think you make strippers?

It's a good thing we all have smartphones with calculators and autocorrects, isn' tit?

APE992: It's 84.

APE992: I never memorized my times tables because there never was a need to. I'll never be in a life or death situation with the Joker where I need to know what 12*7 is or else I'll be dead in 3 seconds.

Teach them how to perform the functions manually then hand them a calculator for finding what 12.7*4.567 is because no adult does that by hand unless they really hate themselves. As for spelling there really isn't an excuse given how prevalent internet access is. If you can read you can easily see how to spell properly and implement it. I'd imagine it is a lack of people making it difficult to be a poor speller.

But seriously, we had spellcheck back in 1994 and now its in every worthwhile web browser.

/mathematicians aren't human

You left out an apostrophe in it's...

OnePoll surveyed 1,000 parents and 1,000 children on behalf of mytutor.co.uk in December 2011.

Last line reveals all.

xl5150: Bring back the 3 R's. That'll do it.

And by 3 Rs you mean corporeal punishment right?

Despite this, parents only manage to spend less than 10 minutes a day helping their children with their learning, according to online tuition service mytutor, which commissioned the survey.

Maybe they don't help them because their parents are just as inept :p

More than a quarter (27%) of children surveyed could not add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85; more than one in five (22%) could not use the correct version of "they're", "there" or "their" in a sentence; almost a third (31%) could not pick the correct use of an apostrophe from three simple sentences, and more than four in 10 (42%) couldn't spell the word "secretaries" correctly.

I can't stand when people do this, it makes me want to shake them violently.
...Which, of course, means about every 10 minutes on the internet.

APE992: I never memorized my times tables because there never was a need to. I'll never be in a life or death situation with the Joker where I need to know what 12*7 is or else I'll be dead in 3 seconds.

Teach them how to perform the functions manually then hand them a calculator for finding what 12.7*4.567 is (missing comma, phrase ending in preposition) because no adult does that by hand unless they really hate themselves. As for spelling there really isn't an excuse given how prevalent internet access is. If you can read you can easily see how to spell properly and implement it. I'd imagine it is a lack of people making it difficult to be a poor speller. (I have no idea what that sentence is trying to convey.)

But seriously, we had spellcheck back in 1994 and now its ( I think he meant, "it's") in every worthwhile web browser.

/mathematicians aren't human



Does your spell checker tell you when ending a sentence with a preposition you is to on?

Maybe writing is more than spelling.


/mathematician, by trade, Society of Actuaries.

Deep intelligence and original thought are a threat to the empire, people might start thinking they have a right to govern their own existence.

If anything, kids should be BETTER at spelling since they're surrounded by text all day, be it the phone, internet, or school. Oh, and even phones have spell check, not that it helps the "your the best!
Math I can understand, though. Yes, it's useful and awesome, but it isn't necessary in most lines of work, and it's little more than a speed bump pre-requisite for most degrees. Does ANYBODY use math outside of the science and adding-up-monays fields?

We can train rats to push a lever, but we can't teach kids math and English skills?

What the hell kind of reason are people taking Education as a major in college anymore these days?

So British schools are just as screwed up as American ones?

xl5150: Bring back the 3 R's. That'll do it.

Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic for the win!

fusillade762: So British schools are just as screwed up as American ones?

It's probably worse over there. The teachers can't even speak proper English.

I suggest we appoint a "blue ribbon" panel of experts, with a huge budget and tons of perks and padded expense accounts, to look into it. They would all have to have political connections and PhDs in education. They could travel the world, staying in five-star hotels and eating in the finest restaurants, to study what works in other counties. When they turn in their recommendations, which will undoubtedly include spending lots of money in the home districts of the Congressmen on the panel's appropriation committee, they should be implemented ASAP. We would, of course, hire more people with political connections and PhDs in education for each and every school district, and pay them handsomely, to carry out the recommendations. Hire even more people to compile statistics and shuffle the tons of paperwork that will be required to monitor the progress.

Oh, wait... that's what we've been doing every few years for the last 50 years, as our schools have gone from some of the world's best to some of the world's worst, while cost-per-pupil has gone thru the roof.

Silly subby, there should be spelled their because the children are possessed.

How many of you actually read the article and know that this is about British schools?

Is are farkers reading?

AverageAmericanGuy: What the hell kind of reason are people taking Education as a major in college anymore these days?

Because they're either too lazy or too stupid to go for a real degree.

/this is also the reason people major in Sociology.

xl5150: Bring back the 3 R's. That'll do it.

Wait a minute, Writing and Arithmetic don't start with R's!

I saw a Texan newspaper article from 1919 railing against that generation's children idiocy because they though Mexican-American war was ended when Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, and that Russia had just overthrown Genghis Khan.

This just in: Children start learning when they stop being children.

APE992: /mathematicians aren't human

I'm not a mathematician, but I've had to learn a lot of math, and I can tell you, mathematicians don't spend their time doing things like 12.7*4.567 in their heads. Most of them probably couldn't. That's arithmetic, not math. It's what calculators are for. Hell, I never even memorized my times tables.

Mathematicians spend their time thinking about the prime distribution problem, or the properties of various topological spaces, or other esoteric problems of logic (which are frequently visual rather than purely numeric in nature). In fact, actual numbers don't happen that often in "real" math. They aren't really needed, except for certain very important ones (like pi, i, or e). Mathematicians always want to prove relationships, and you can't prove something by using a specific case (a circle with radius 7.39), you have to prove things using a general case (a circle of radius 'r').

boobsrgood: Almost a third cannot use apostrophes correctly.

Oh, it's much worse then than that.

FTFY :)

Calm Down You Spaz: xl5150: Bring back the 3 R's. That'll do it.

And by 3 Rs you mean corporeal punishment right?

Nah, excommunicate the little shiats, that'll learn em.

Gawdzila: I can't stand when people do this, it makes me want to shake them violently.
...Which, of course, means about every 10 minutes on the internet.

Meh, people typing quick replies on sites like Fark are going to make simple errors. It doesn't mean they don't actually understand the difference between "their" and they're," but that the fingers often type faster than the brain can proofread it. My personal peeve isn't so much the misuse, but that people use such a mistake to discredit a post without referring to the overall content. HAHA U CAN'T SPELL THEREFORE MY UNTENABLE ARGUMENT IS SOMEHOW VALID!!1.

Now if I were a professor and you turned in a paper - which you ideally had labored over and proofread - yeah, I'd shake you violently. There's no excuse for that, but the internet is just a bunch of assholes talking to each other at 80 wpm.

Of course they can't spell in England. Have you ever heard them people talk?

They even think the Atlantic Ocean is a farking pond!

Little.Alex: Does your spell checker tell you when ending a sentence with a preposition

This is the sort of English up with which I shall not put. English is not Latin and does not follow the rules of Latin. Prescriptive grammar be damned.

APE992: I never memorized my times tables because there never was a need to. I'll never be in a life or death situation with the Joker where I need to know what 12*7 is or else I'll be dead in 3 seconds.

Teach them how to perform the functions manually then hand them a calculator for finding what 12.7*4.567 is because no adult does that by hand unless they really hate themselves. As for spelling there really isn't an excuse given how prevalent internet access is. If you can read you can easily see how to spell properly and implement it. I'd imagine it is a lack of people making it difficult to be a poor speller.

But seriously, we had spellcheck back in 1994 and now its in every worthwhile web browser.

/mathematicians aren't human

Meh. Disagree. Doing basic math in your head is handy. E.g. going to the supermarket, figuring out which brand is the better value, looking at nutritional information, etc. Spelling will IMHO always be useful. Spellcheck will likely not be perfect in our lifetimes. If you can't spell reasonably well without outside help, if only just to sanity check your spellchecker, you are a moran.

Jesus Farking Christmas. If the English cannot speak English, will we all die?

dickfreckle: Meh, people typing quick replies on sites like Fark are going to make simple errors. It doesn't mean they don't actually understand the difference between "their" and they're," but that the fingers often type faster than the brain can proofread it.

That's true. I guess I was thinking more of people for whom it is obviously not a mistake.
You can often tell those people by their vocabulary, punctuation, and rate of typographical errors :p