Monday, May 5th, 2008
As I plan my lessons, I came across something that gave me pause.
The reading series we use is Harcourt Trophies. In the teacher’s manual on page 527 I read the following modeling I am encouraged to offer my students:
To make sure I focus on important information, I ask myself: What families is the author writing about?
Huh? What families is? Forgive me, but I am going to use my discretion and eschew this line of discussion with my students. I strive to have them speak proper English.
My goodness, what an egregious error!
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Sunday, April 27th, 2008
My folks sent me away to a fancy prep school. I think I struggled acclimating to an environment where the guy who lived next door to me flew back to school in the family’s LearJet, others whose parents were big wigs in business and government, and everyone seemed to come from a privileged background.
I learned a lot at that school, despite my adolescent insecurities. I am pretty certain that one of the things I learned was that pronouns are to agree with their antecedents. If not there, then I learned it in the “lesser” schools I attended prior to going to St. Andrew’s. I know I currently teach the skill in a public school fourth grade.
That is why I am surprised to have read the following just now:
PLEASE LIST THE NAME OF YOUR GUEST/SPOUSE WHO WILL BE ATTENDING REUNION SO WE CAN PROVIDE THEM WITH NAMETAGS.
THEM refers to the antecedent GUEST/SPOUSE. GUEST/SPOUSE is singular, THEM is plural. Forget the all caps and forget that English does not have a gender-neutral possessive pronoun to use for words such as guest and spouse. His is the traditional possessive pronoun to use in this case. I know, some folks state that does not work either. Fine. What we do have is a plural possessive pronoun whose antecedent is a singular noun. That is incorrect. At minimum, the sentence needs to be re-worded so not to end in a situation where a plural possessive pronoun can be contemplated to be proper for a singular noun.
So much for that subsidized $38,000 tuition.
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Sunday, April 27th, 2008
What makes something official?
I have Fox & Friends on. They tout themselves as the Official Morning Show of the 2008 Campaign or something similar. Um, yeah. Whatever. Where did they go to get that designation?
Groundspeak claims Geocaching.com is The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site.
I know the NFL sells official designations. For a fee, one can be the Official Hemorrhoid of the Big Game, or something like that. Major League Baseball and the Olympics do it too.
Official in those cases at least represent something (paying a fee for recognition). What does it mean when Fox News uses it like it has? Isn’t it a hollow claim? And if so, why make it?
It would seem that businesses and groups that use the official tag are doing so to pump themselves up. In other words to be more than it would be to not be official.
Groundspeak is such a case. For years it claims it is merely a listing service for geocaches. Sure, it sets the rules for listing caches on its site, but it denies it is ruling the game.
The Merriam-Webster definition of official is:
one who administers the rules of a game or sport especially as a referee or umpire
That doesn’t sound like merely a listing service.
I just find it interesting when groups attempt to hoodwink customers. I think I’ll try that out. eCache is now the:
- Official Blog of Truth, Justice, and the American Way
- Official Blog of Righteousness
- Official Blog of Buick
- South Jersey’s Official Blog
Oh, I’ll come up with something . . . official.
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008
Sigh . . . folks love being proud of their alma maters. That’s fine, but it isn’t me. Mostly it stems from the fact I have no association whatsoever with my college. While it was a fine experience, a good school, etc., I have no ties to it. None of this is surprising, I didn’t even attend my graduation.
For the last decade or so, however, I have read the school’s newspaper online. They finally got with it and offered an RSS feed.
Every now and then something is written that catches my attention. Such was this week’s checklist for Spring Break. Not surprising condoms were on the list.
Pack condoms. We’re not implying that you’re going to have sex with strangers; we’re just going along with what MTV Spring Break has taught us since we were nine.
Plus, you don’t want to be stuck in a foreign country where you can’t read the label and end up buying a box of Wet Naps instead of Trojans.
Cute. Of course, what the hell are they teaching at this Luthern school that condoms are acceptable? Anyhow . . . after the advice of not flashing boobs I read:
Of course, if you’re trying to reverse that double standard where girls can’t be players, then the less names you know the better.
The use of less is problematic. Is there no editor? That’s not it, there’s a whole page of editors.
As I have noted before, fewer is used for things that are finite, less for those that are measured.
One of the things I teach my students is to listen to how the sentence sounds when spoken aloud. I gather Ms. Grinenko and Ms. Kaczmarczik are unfamiliar with this lesson.
When I attended Muhlenberg, Dr. Thornberg taught Freshman English. He was a crotchety old man. I liked him. While all the first years napped during his class, I recall him stating that he was talking at us. During a conference I reminded him that some of us (me, anyhow) paid attention and participated, therefore, he was speaking with us. He reminded me of my grandfather. I am certain he would be disappointed to know that less was used in a school publication in this fashion.
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Many are writing about Michelle Obama’s senior thesis from Princeton. The quote that seems to have folks’ attention is:
“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before,” the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. “I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”
I understand the fascination with that quotation. For me, however, I am alarmed. Not at Mrs. Obama’s alienation as a black woman at Princeton, but rather that a senior thesis is written in the first person.
I have been unable to find the requirements of the project, but no thesis I am aware of permits first person prose. A thesis, as I understand it, tests a hypothesis and reports the findings of the experiment conducted. Having written a few theses myself, that is certainly the standard I was held to.
Writing a thesis is difficult. It is dry writing and one that most are not accustomed to. Nowhere in the document should the word I be found (I suspect a direct quotation from a subject could include that word, but that would be a special case.). Scanning the thesis, I have noted the words try (and its derivatives) and probably used quite a bit. Those are other personal words that should not be used in a thesis.
Just what were the requirements for this thesis that permitted such passages?
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