Sp, gr, & punc.
DemonSpawn
Date:
11/07/2005
You know, I have to apologise for Coolmac's spelling, grammar and punctuation, which I have to constantly check and correct, even when he doesn't tell me he's posted another column. Fortunately for our site, I've recently embarked upon my first holiday in quite a few years, and I managed to spot his indiscretions, although not quite in time. I mean, it's one thing to write like a complete illiterate, and it's another to write using colloquialisms, as well as correct grammar and spelling.
Do you realise how many university students we have, who cannot even string a grammatically correct sentence together? And I'm not talking about the second language speakers – they, at least, have an excuse. I'm talking about first language English speakers, who use the language every day of their lives, and yet write like complete fucking illiterate assholes. They can't even tell the difference between their and there, or its and it's. And that's something they should have been taught in Std. 4, (or Grade 6, for all those cretins who belong to those completely dysfunctional systems of education which are to be found all over the world these days).
It's this type of language use which should guarantee a lower-grade pass for English as a first language subject, and thus exclude them from our hallowed halls, but does not. I have to complain about this, because it is precisely these types of people who lower the standard of our education. Thus my degree means fuck-all to anyone except my parents, and I have to do at least Honours or Masters to be able to get a decent-paying job.
Which, by the way, has become an issue for me, since I realised that I have to fork out more and more for my bike, as she slowly disintegrates.
I suggest that schools begin to teach grammar again, as a remedy to this problem. That way, we can subvert this whole “LUV U 2 B 4 ME” system of sms-speak. I think once kids started to use this type of crap in their exams, teachers actually gave up marking them wrong because they would have to keep the whole class back a year. And let's be honest: who the hell wants the same class of brats again for a second year running, plus another bunch as well? No-one, and that's the truth. If they got it early, and only had to keep a few back per year from the primary grades upwards, the kids should learn their lesson, and if that doesn't do it, then they should bring back corporal punishment, and beat it out of them. Mwahahaha!
No, actually, as an alternative for those politically-correct freaks out there, (not their, as you may think), maybe they should just make those kids who insist on using sms-speak in their schoolwork do lines. Not just the ones they can choose, with the numbers and letters substituting words, but grammatically-correct sentences. If it's (not its, as you may write) not informative for them in an instructional way, it should torture them to the point of compliance. At least within schoolwork.
You see, I don't actually give a shit what kids do outside of their school time. Quite honestly, they can drink, smoke, do drugs, and fuck around. They can get addicted and end up spiking themselves to death in a gutter somewhere, which is probably what they deserve, if they want to do shit like that, or get AIDS from fifty different people and die in agony in some lower class government hospital. Like I said, I don't care – everyone must satisfy themselves in their own way- but when they go to school, teachers must make sure that they do their jobs, and at least teach the kids how to read and write correctly in their own language – just in case they don't spike themselves to death or die of AIDS, and maybe make it into Parliament. I mean, we've already seen what happens to Cabinet Ministers who make it there without a proper education...
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