Yesterday our colleagues from Blank Paper They echoed a tweet in which a girl's father complained that his daughter's language teacher had spelling mistakes. Well, it's not really that I had them, it's that he corrected the girl's exam and added an "h" in a word that doesn't really take her. She wrote throw, from the verb "cast" and the teacher added, in red, the "h" that transformed the word into "made", of the nonexistent verb "to make".
In red, like the blood that came out of my eyes to see that "h", and like the blood that sprouted when my eldest son arrived, when I was in primary school, a sheet of homework with several spelling mistakes in the sentences. Has it happened to you too? Do your children's teachers have misspellings? What have you done? (Or would it be what you have "done"?)
Natxo Hernández's tweet
The girl’s father wrote it to Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a Spanish journalist and writer, member of the Royal Academy of Language since 2003, known for saying what he thinks without too much filter ... come on, he doesn't have much interest or need to be politically correct.
The writer replied with a tweet in which he recommended that he do nothing in particular, in case in the end he ended up paying the girl:
@ NTXO1 Resignation. Your daughter would pay. It is not the teacher, it is the system. That the girl learns English well so she can get out of here soon.
- Arturo Pérez-Reverte (@perezreverte) October 14, 2015The most surprising thing is that he added something like: we are all lost, the system is broken, there is nothing to do; "Let the girl learn English well so she can get out of here soon".
In another tweet he asked the father for permission to retweet the initial message, and in a third party he even advised that "At least, do not leave rositas. Put it red."
@ NTXO1 May I retweet the garbage of that garbage language teacher?
- Arturo Pérez-Reverte (@perezreverte) October 14, 2015@ NTXO1 At least, do not leave rositas. Put it red.
- Arturo Pérez-Reverte (@perezreverte) October 14, 2015The father decided that he would do something, but an avalanche of reactions and responses eventually made him close your Twitter account.
When homework arrived home with misspellings
It will be that when I was 9 years old I was able to write the dictations without spelling mistakes, or it will be that I am a little maniacal in that sense (and beware, that occasionally I miss some, especially in Catalan, which is not my mother tongue), but see that in my son's duties there were not one, but several faults (I think I remembered that there were three on one sheet), it made me quite angry. Then we mobilized, together with other parents, to speak with direction and ask for explanations.
It can't be that they are teaching children to read and write and show them the words as they are not actually written, just as you cannot correct an exam or dictation and add an "h" where it does not go.
Has it happened to you?
On Pérez-Reverte's answer, say that I did not expect anything else from him, and I say it without making any judgment. He is like that (or so it shows) and, if you ask him, he answers you. I would have said something similar, but with the filter I just applied to the paragraphs above: I got angry and spoke with direction to take action on the matter because something like that was inappropriate and intolerable.
Now I leave the question to you, to know if the system is really falling apart and if the people who must teach our children still need someone to teach them.
