thanks for the example. I (thankfully) have not observed that. Note to self, check out 3rd grade GD's worksheets closely. :)

I remember a wonderful teacher my son had in first grade. The worksheet asked the kids to circle all the images that started with the letter P. There was a picture of a fish in one of the squares and my son circled it. Rather than mark it wrong, she asked him why he had circled it. He told her because it was a perch. She marked it correct.

That was my boy!

I don’t know if a teacher would have the time now to discuss each paper with a pupil.

“Well what troubles me is not only is the teacher often misspelling his/her corrections, but the worksheet also has misspellings in it. Is this me being an old lady?”

I won’t call you an old lady, but sometimes more mature people don’t realize that they are being offered videos and stories about subjects to view because they viewed one. If you watched one video of a teacher not up to par, you will be fed others. What you describe is not the norm but the exception.

Spelling tests and Spelling Bees still happen.

maddielee, it's not that these videos are highlighting the teachers' mistakes, they are highlighting the children's clever answers to the worksheet questions that are marked wrong. The typos and misspellings are incidental to the video, but something I notice. So that part is not affecting the feed. Only that I'm viewing them feeds me more of them.

I would dispute that the opposite of ”original” is ”artificial”…

”it's not that these videos are highlighting the teachers' mistakes, they are highlighting the children's clever answers to the worksheet questions that are marked wrong.”

Yes, the videos may be highlighting clever students. The thread name of;

”Troublesome….on education” makes it seem that you feel children are not being educated.

Yes, that's correct maddielee, I am concerned that the teachers themselves are making misspellings and typos, so how is the student to learn? Their errors are incidental to the main point of the videos. It's not that the videos are being made to highlight the teachers' errors so that's not why they appear in my feed. So what I'm suggesting is, I don't know how "exceptional" these errors are or if they are the norm just because they appear in my feed.

How boring a video of a perfectly corrected test would be. You are seeing a few test answers of the billions of test answers. A few mistakes by teachers that are worthy enough to make a reel. Much like the Jay Leno man on the street interviews when only dumb answers made the segments.

Sorry maddielee, we are not connecting.

The purpose of the man on the street interviews is to highlight the inane responses. If the videographer were to trip during the filming it might be, ok, the videographer tripped. But it would not be the reason for the video, so one might say the trip is incidental and not the main purpose of the video. But if in many of the man on the street videos the videographer tripped, one might then be concerned that the s/he has been tippling or has some other issue, completely aside from the inanity of the interviewee which is the primary point of the video.

Are we connecting yet?

The man on the street segments were purely for entertainment and the viewing audience knew that. Chances are the person was explained that and signed a waiver to that understanding.

Annie, what I am saying (poorly it seems) is that heading this thread

”Troublesome…on education” when the thread was about a few teacher mistakes puts it in the category of ‘outrageous headline for a thing that happened’.

If the thread was about school vouchers for highly priced private schools

”Troublesome….on education“ would be fitting.

Meanwhile, in real life, my 2nd grader got to the point he did not want Mom to see the weekly spelling lists his teacher sent home with the kids. I regularly had to correct HER spelling. And of course I always looked them up first, to be sure *I* was right. No, they were not typos, they were errors in spelling.

Back in 5th grade, we were studying Gallileo. On the unit test, one question asked how many moons Jupiter has. Kenny and I both answered 12 (the known number in 1968). It came back marked wrong! We both shot our hands up into the air, and a spirited argument with the teacher ensued. ”The correct answer is 4.” No, Gallileo discovered 4. There are 12.” ”Well, we are studying Gallileo. Everyone else got the answer right.” ”No, that was the answer to ’How many moons did Gallileo discover?’ That is not the question on the test paper.” The teacher ended up throwing out the question. Grr. We did not feel we received justice.

Isn’t it Galileo?

I guess spelling artificial correctly didn’t draw enough attention, so someone decided to build it into a better story.

Crazy how two separate kids wrote China, huh?

If there’a anything to be concerned abont here it‘s that seemingly intelligent adults give this facebook type nonsense the time of day.

I know when my kids were in grade school, my daughter showed me a story she had written and I was going over spelling errors with her. (Back then I could actually spell correctly lol) She told me it didn't matter, she was being graded on the content not puncuation or spelling.

Roxsol, I am clearly out of the habit of looking things up! Fifth grade was a very, very long time ago. Thanks for catching, and I will be more diligent in the future! (looked up diligent, too, just to be sure)

😄 I had to look up Galileo just to be sure before I beaked off.

The apples question isn’t even a clear question. ”What do you have?” What are they even asking for? The answer is nost likely ”nothing” because it didn’t really happen.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t legitimate concerns with our education system. But to concern yourself about something ”making the rounds” in this format is a little naive IMO. Next thing, we'll hear that immigrants are eating neighborhood pets for dinner.

How does that saying go?

If you are not paying for the product - feed - service -

Well then you are the product. Or YOU are being fed. Something like that. Super computers in everyone’s pocket and potential agendas just makes me want to unplug.

Except for you folks ; ) I believe most of you are real and mostly agendaless. LOL

There is educational value in learning how to figure out what poorly written questions on tests are about and therefore the most probable answer. It is sort of like normal life.

I generally assume that these cute answer things are fake.

As a spelling impaired person I did notice that the spelling errors of the teacher were both sins of omission, as in the leaving out of obviously necessary letters which I found odd.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but based on what I know about it, Facebook is not a prominent forum where issues of societal or even human importance are intelligently discussed by people with credentials to do so. If something you happen upon seems odd or out of kilter with your own views, simply move on.

Annie, I assume you know this so forgive me if I'm stating the obvious... :)

What you see on your FB feed is based on what you've previously viewed on that feed. FB tracks your usage and interaction with their site, and then deliberately tailors your feed to encourage even more usage and interaction.

There is a lot of AI garbage on FB, and every single one of us who uses FB is likely viewing many pages of fake, false, or misleading information. All of the social media platforms do that, so before anyone comes out of the woodwork on that point - they're ALL filled with AI generated garbage, and otherwise filled with fake, false, and misleading information.

Posts from people you know in real life are - usually - actually real posts from someone you know in real life. Anything else you see, it's best to assume it's garbage in one way or another.

Ally De, yes I understand that, but see my earlier discussion with Maddielee.

I've asked for three years. I work in a room where kids behind in Math come to try and cathc up. The teacher presents her lesson daily. She averages 3+ errors as she works through problems, daily. Her answer keys have errors the students find. Finding replacement teachers is work. When teachers are poor or bad it's a direct reflection on administration. Lazy principals keep these teachers. It's a tough gig to become a teacher. Student teaching does not lend itself to teaching the rigors of the actual job. I don't know how many chances a person should get but I also don't see our education system showing improvements.

My 12-year-old found an error in a Kaplan test prep book from the library. Math portion, but I don’t recall if it was ACT or SAT Prep. We slipped a post-it note inside but we got a call from the library telling us not to do that. I suppose anyone could slip in erroneous or whatever notes of any kind, but still. This was not a typo, the explanation of the answer was flawed.

Annie, let me try a different way then...

I love tennis. I follow some players on FB. One day a vaguely cornographic (deliberately misspelled to avoid the filters) photo of a tennis player who I don't "follow" on FB appeared in my feed. I was surprised to see such a photo bc the photo didn't comport with her known behavior.

I did some digging. It was AI generated.

From there, my FB feed became populated with what I would still call "vaguely" corn photos, sometimes of tennis players and when I didn't click on those, over the next few days it started branching out. I never clicked on any other photos on FB and slowly my feed eliminated all such further photos.

There is a band I adore. I follow their official page. There are also unofficial pages, some of which are legitimately run by fans, and some of which are run by bots which post recycled stories and photos and try to get you to click and engage, for their own purposes...as Joan noted above -

If you are not paying for the product - feed - service -

Well then you are the product. Or YOU are being fed.

What I am saying is that whatever you are viewing is being created for a specific purpose. You are being shown reels with misspellings deliberately embedded in them. They are not real, they are spambot reels....

If you are not paying for the product - feed - service -

Well then you are the product. Or YOU are being fed.

Ally De, con games and purveyors of full slit (also disguised) have always been around in human existence. Today, the media are different but a con is still a con. They continue because there are always people who are gullible.

Totally agree that the apples question is meaningless. If you have 10 apples in your 2 hands, you have 10 apples. If they wanted the answer to be 20 apples, the question should have been worded, ”If you have 10 apples in each of your 2 hands, how many apples do you have?”

I'm skipping down to note that cute kid answers to teacher questions is a popular and perennial topic of humor. I've enjoyed a good number of listicles with similar examples - like the 'very big hands' punchline.

Here's a question I've had for three years: How many math errors is acceptable for a teacher teaching math to students who are designated 'lower math' students? The school I work for hired a teacher a near by state black balled. I am a para in the room. Students are finding errors on her correction key after they and I have tried and tried to get the answer she had. I am correcting her white board work two or more times per lesson. If you think five or less is ok then I will quit complaining to DH about her.

"I am correcting her white board work two or more times per lesson." This is unacceptable to me.

The problem with education is not the teachers it's the principals that hire then tenure these poor teachers with little or no observations. Lazy administration is where the issues begin!!

It doesn't help that the new Secretary of Education. (the World wrestling lady) called repeatedly at a presser about AI, only she called it A 1(one)

" it's the principals that hire then tenure these poor teachers with little or no observations. "

Are you saying that principals where you are set the policy for which teachers receive tenure and which don't? That suggests it varies from school to school within a given district? Unlikely.

PS, I hope you're not correcting written work:

"How many math errors is acceptable", and

" hired a teacher a near by state black balled. "

Since we're being picky about grammatical correctness, I would point out that

"If you think five or less is ok" should be

"If you think five or fewer is ok".

But I work in a school and missives from one deputy principal in particular often have misspellings, despite spell check [eye roll]. And it just amazes me that the official education department term for an event where some visiting group comes to the school to give a talk (or similar) to students is called "an incursion". The first time my daughter came home with a permission slip for me to sign so she could attend an incursion, I called the principal and said, "I'm OK with this in principle, but who are you invading?"

" Since we're being picky about grammatical correctnes "

Misspelling "correctness" is right up there with my misspelling the word "misspelling" a few days ago.

I have a B.A. in English, and when I was writing research papers for English literature classes, my professors would red-line any grammatical errors and mark down accordingly. I rarely made any, but when I did, the professors caught them.

While at the university, I checked out a first edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (which shocked my professor), and I found grammatical errors in that, which have been edited out of subsequent editions. Many of them were improper usage of reflexive pronouns, and I still hear British people (as well as Americans) making the same mistakes. Maybe grammar rules were different in the 18th Century.

I agree with Colleen that one should say "five or fewer" instead of "five or less." The word "less" is the comparative form of "little" and therefore means "littler" or "smaller."

My grandmother was an English teacher, and she was very strict about proper grammar, but she did not learn English until she was seven, and German was her first language.

my grandson has been reading since he was 4 years old. his kindergarten teacher had a worksheet where the kids were to match a word to a picture. he had one word and one picture left to match, "cut" and "cat". since he knew he had all of the other ones correct, he drew a little line of sutures on the cat's leg to make "cat" match with "cut". his teacher asked him to explain and when he did, she gave him a 100.

I have often thought those school memes were just for fun. I mean, the handwriting looks caricaturistic, for instance. Hyperbolic. Not real in any way.

"Maybe grammar rules were different in the 18th Century."

Well, of course they were. Language changes constantly and the changes are still happening. Boswell's usage may well have been different from modern English but I wouldn't consider it to be full of 'mistakes'. That view assumes a set of rigidly fixed, unchanging and universally agreed rules which isn't how real languages work.

I'm curious about these 'improper' reflexive pronouns. Can you give some examples?

Language use differs between the US and the UK as well.

One example has to do with what I'll call nouns that may have a plural or collective reference but which itself can be singular or plural. I'm speculating here as to the reason for a difference and welcome redirection from someone who knows better than I do. I'll cite one example I've heard:

In the US, "team" is singular word, "teams" is plural.

But in the UK, the notion of "team" (or "company", or any single group composed of multiple individuals) apparently has a collective sense. So perhaps that's why words like "team" in singular form (or other similar) are treated as being a plural and use plural verbs.

US form:

They've had a run of poor results and the team is working hard to improve.

UK:

They've had a run of poor results and the team are working hard to improve.

Reflexive pronouns require a pronoun or noun to refer to and cannot be used as the subject of a sentence or clause, except for emphasis following the noun or pronoun that they refer to. The sentence "Robert and myself went to town" is incorrect, but "I myself went to town would be correct." If someone asks "How are you?" and you respond, "Fine, and yourself?" that is incorrect because the response is actually saying "and [how are] yourself?" People sometimes begin a sentence "Myself and my family went on vacation" because they realize that putting "I" first is incorrect, but they want to put themselves first.

People speaking languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, and German tend not to make mistakes with reflexive pronouns because their use is more common in those languages and the speakers understand that better.

Boswell's grammar was not consistent, and so he did not follow strict rules, but I'm sure that's how people spoke back then, although that does not make it proper for formal writing. I've noticed this in other books I've read that were printed back then. I have an 18th century copy of Edward Gibbons in multiple volumes that I bought from a used bookstore in London, and the grammar in that is quite different from modern English.

People who studied Latin back then probably understood reflexive pronouns better.

" People speaking languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, and German tend not to make mistakes with reflexive pronouns because their use is more common in those languages and the speakers understand that better. "

Very true. But sometimes using forms that are different from English.

One of my favorites in French

To say "I miss you", where the subject is in the first person singular, becomes

"Tu me manques", where the subject and verb are second person singular with a first person reflective pronoun and translates literally as "You are missing from me".

"We miss you" would be "Tu nous mangues", or "you are missing from us", again second person singular for subject and verb and first person plural reflexive for us.

Lars the examples you give, while perhaps varying from strict old fashioned grammar rules are not what I would term 'incorrect'. The 'team are' example is more or less universal usage here now and to worry about it would be considered pedantic. As for 'myself' 'yourself', they are simply examples of living language change, although I think you'd find the 'and yourself' usage current from at least the 19th c. Languages are not preserved at some particular state of perfection from which they should never alter. There's nothing one can do to halt their dynamic development.

British English is highly influenced by American English via the media. It may annoy us oldies to hear youngsters saying 'gotten' instead of 'got', 'take out' instead of 'take away', 'lay' instead of 'lie' or 'did you' instead of 'have you' but there's no way to stem the changes and it's hardly worth fretting about. The crux for me is 'are you making yourself clearly understood?', not 'is this what my teacher told us years ago?'.

My eighth grade English teacher believed that language was immutable and insisted we use archaic rules. We had to own a big thick paperback copy of the OED and that was that. Since we also did several of Shakespeare plays you might have thought it would dawn on her that English had changed a good bit over time but not. I was actually living in England at the time. We were in one of those overseas dependent schools.

patriciae

I hear you. I volunteer once a week at an after‑school homework club, and I’m floored by how often the answer keys we hand out have spelling or punctuation errors. Last month a sixth‑grader called me over to ask why “seperate” was marked as correct on his worksheet—turns out the teacher’s template had the same mistake. It’s hard to convince kids that accuracy matters when the materials they’re given don’t model it.

It isn’t just elementary school teachers. When my son was in 6th grde and about to take the same SAT test his HS Jr brother was taking, he got a Kaplan prep book to take practice tests. (Not to study the prep, that would not have served the purpose for which he ws taking the test. He just needed to be familiar with the format.) He found a meaningful error in the answer key, which he verified with his teacher. We had borrowed the book from the library, it was current for that year. I asked the librarian about what to do, he said contact the publisher but the library could not ascertain the validity of our claim and do anything about it. When we returned it, we slipped a little PostIt note about it on the page in question.

Seriously, how could that happen?

(this was the same kid who, at 3, figured out after four flashcards in quick succession that the solution to the problem on the front of the card was one more than the little number in the corner, which is of course the answer to the problem on the back. Our other, older set of cards was not like that. I called the publishers. The CS rep said yeah, they had just released this new edition and had received a couple of calls about it. But they don’t release new editions very often, only to keep up with, get this, color and font trends.)

"Barry Wright" is repeating what another spammer posted. Sheesh. Same bot spammed another thread. This will probably get edited to add spam.

ETA: same bot, different alias, I'm sure.

ETA: Looks like Ol' Barry missed the deadline to edit the post.

Wrought or fraught?