Not being able to work on editing my current work in progress sucks. But not being able to work on my current work in progress forced me to do some of the world building and plotting that I needed to do. So that has become my silver lining in this mess. Instead of using Word, I am using Wordpad and the difference is glaring.
It showed me just how lazy I had become with my spelling, typing and grammar. The typos are legion in the stuff I got done last night. It reminded me of what a teacher friend of mine told me a couple of days ago. Apparently with all the testing that is done now to see how good the schools are at educating, the focus has switched from teaching the basic to teaching how to score well on the tests. When my friend was in a training session about this, the group was told not to worry about grammar, spelling and sentence structure because it wasn’t going to be counted off during the testing. Because its not graded on in the mandatory testing, the students are no longer being taught basic writing skills and their work is reflecting that. Don’t get me wrong my grammar isn’t always the best but I try. These students don’t even know how bad they get.
I have a guilty pleasure. I read fan-fiction on occasion. Most of it’s childish rewriting of the original authors work. But sometimes there is a good original story. A lot of people use it as a way to learn story telling. Some of them should be banned from every posting there again. I’ve seen some good writing and I have seen some truly atrocious writing. In one story I tried to read the writer used sense and since to mean the same thing in the same line. I now understand why it seemed the author didn’t know how to edit even though they said they did several times. They don’t have any clue that they really are bad.
What kind of future do these kids have? How can they write functional resumes or reports for their jobs? Scary isn’t it?
What is going to happen to those who want to be writers? How are they going to get into college if they can’t write a personal statement? IF you are only being taught how to pass a test when are you going to get an actual education?
Education is more than just regurgitating a bunch of facts for a test. You have to actually learn to use the material that you are learning. Problem solving skills evolve from trial and error. From what my friend was seeing in their classroom the students didn’t know how to correct the errors even when they were told they had errors let alone fix them beforehand.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there has to be a way to determine if the teachers and the schools are doing their jobs. But telling teachers not to focus or waste time on basic skills because they don’t count in the mandatory testing is not the way to do prove your school is a good place to learn.
The future is not looking bright.
justcallmelucie 