Wut r u lukng @?

Apparently, it's not just American's that are getting dumber...

Incorrect spelling will not be penalised in English tests

Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks.

I'm not sure who's to blame for this. The system for discounting an important part of written communication? The students for spelling so badly there's "obviously" nothing that can be done to help it? The teachers who can't teach the kids to spell correctly in the first place? Or the parents for not raising a bigger ruckus when little Liam was in grammar school and couldn't spell words like "remember" or "beautiful" on their exams?

It's just a mess. And don't think spelling and grammar are better on this side of the pond.

My father taught at a vocational education program a few years back. This wasn't a program that students who "can't hack" regular classes go to. This was a program they had to sign up for and be good enough in their regular schooling to get in to. It's focus was on financial training and the students had intern-like jobs at some local bank branches. They had to keep diaries of what they learned at the jobs and how they applied things they learned in class in the workplace.

I couldn't read those without feeling like my eyes were bleeding. The spelling, sentence structure, grammar and expression of ideas was, generally speaking, horrible. Keep in mind that this is the work of the "good" students.

When I was in high school, I was in an accelerated English class. We were the smart kids. Somehow, I managed to have a larger vocabulary than just about everyone else in the class. One time it struck me as quite odd that I was the only one who knew what a "quagmire" was.

Sloppy writing not only illustrates a sloppy thought process--it encourages it.

Just look out on the Web and you'll see that we've got a lot of sloppy thought processes going on.

(And for those that know me, it is very true that I don't spell that well all the time... but that's mostly because I've gotten lazy and rely quite a bit on automated spell checkers and whatnot. Back before all those things, I did frequently use a real dictionary.)