Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/07/02

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Subject: [Leica] declining quality now why are these illiterates
From: jls at runbox.com (Jeffery Smith)
Date: Fri Jul 2 09:04:35 2004

The comic strip Dilbert even panned one person who pointed out that a
memo contained grammatical and/or spelling errors when the meaning of
the memo could still be deduced. I guess that we are the Asoks of the
world. As long as I'm not the pointy haired boss.

Jeffery Smith
New Orleans, LA


-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+jls=runbox.com@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+jls=runbox.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of B. D.
Colen
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 10:51 AM
To: 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Leica] declining quality now why are these illiterates

Bingo! And bingo to Bob as well. I think Leonard is a bit off on this
one, as I don't think it has anything to do with the student's lacking a
sense of self-worth - I think they often have far too great a sense of
self-worth, nurtured by the 'I'm okay and everything you do is super'
philosophy that governs many an elementary school classroom.

I am going to guess that all of the decline in the teaching of writing -
which is what the decline in the quality of writing is all about - goes
back to the introduction of more and more "relevance" into the grade
school, middle school, and high school curricula. Something had to give,
and what gave was what we old farts would call 'the basics.' Students
now days believe that they are being persecuted if they have to write
more than a page or two. Real term papers, and real writing assignments,
have gone the way of reading books, rather than little snippets in
anthologies.

Blah, grumble.

And what we end up with is George Bush in the Michael Moore movie,
attempting to get out the line "fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me." It comes out, as best I can recall, "there's an old
saying in Tennessee, 'fool me once....' pause, pause, ...'shame on you.'
Fool me......you won't fool me again.' "

Ah well...and he graduated from Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business
School. ;-)



-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Jeffery Smith
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 11:27 AM
To: 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Leica] declining quality now why are these illiterates


When I taught at Dillard University, even the top-of-the-class honors
students felt that using correct grammar and syntax was really only
necessary for job interviews.

Jeffery Smith
New Orleans, LA



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_______________________________________________
Leica Users Group.
See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information



In reply to: Message from bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] declining quality now why are these illiterates)