geek.teacher

One of the many feeds that I follow is EdNews.org.  It’s a great collection of random links to newspaper articles around the country related to education that is occasionally mucked up by terrible right-wing propaganda editorials and bad press releases.  I normally ignore those, the latter especially, but I couldn’t resist when I saw this delightful headline: Shakespeare Didn’t Blog Author Says Texting and Testing Are Destroying Kids riting Style. Now I’m not saying that I’m going to be a model of proper grammar and writing skill around here all the time.  I’m sure I will make plenty of mistakes along the way.  But I don’t think I’ll put out a press release about writing and include such gems as: Missing apostrophes!

 A College Board survey of the nations blue-chip companies found only two thirds of their employees are capable writers.       

Your/you’re confusion! 

 Feelings aren’t communicated with words when your texting       

Changing the subject!  I thought we were talking about the internet destroying writing, but now it’s because schools aren’t teaching your kids the important stuff!

“What’s not taught today,” says Ream, “Is critical thinking skills.Teachers are forced to use what little classroom time they have to teach to the standardized tests.The kids learn how to regurgitate information to parrot it back for the correct answer, but they can’t process the thought and build on it.”       

How can we solve these problems?  By reading the book of course!

Ream says writing is a skill that can be learned.Her book, “K.I.S.S. Keep It Short and Simple” lays out a formula she says makes writing easier: Teach your kids to organize their thoughts on paper; compare the subject with others to show how the ideas are similar; contrast the subject with others to show how the concept is different; and interrelate – write the essay to show how the subject relates to the reader.       

Clearly, K.I.S.S. does not encourage editing.To be fair to Ms. Ream, I sincerely doubt that she’s the one who wrote this piece of garbage.  That being said, if I were in her position right now, I would be absolutely mortified.  This is one press release that has guaranteed the loss of a potential sale.

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