Oh Mag, I wish I had a dime for every supervisor's mishap report I had to
read that was nearly incomprehensible.  When an employee is injured on the
job, the supervisor has to file a report.  Sometimes I would have to read
those blasted things several times to truly understand what happened.  The
grammar and spelling were atrocious!  Then I would talk to the employee and
get an entirely different version of the same story.  Then I would talk with
the supervisor who couldn't say a word to corroborate his own report.

I don't fault those guys.  They skated through twelve years of school and no
one in authority cared.  They can't write, spell, or compose grammatically
correct sentences.  They are skating through their work life too, and once
again, no one in authority cares.

I went to an Episcopal school for three years.  We didn't have nuns though;
we had Miss Stebbins.  She cared.  She was as tough as nails.  I had a
difficult and abbreviated formal education, and I credit my Dad for helping
me survive that period of my life.  I credit Miss Stebbins for every good
thing that happened during school hours.  I hated her then, but I love her
now and I wish I could tell her.  I've got a theory about LD and the
educational environment because of my experiences with her.

She's gone now, but somehow I know she is watching over me.  Yup!  And she's
got that darned fool, big old red pen, just itchin' to whack through my
e-mail.  Whack, whack, whack.  She's watching all right.  I know, because I
can feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

In a message dated 05/06/2000 2:19:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Yes, I think it is rather tragic that natives of the usaare not taught -- I
 mean really taught, other languages. We all seem to get by our 2 years of
 Spanish or French in high school, but most of USA quickly forget it. For many
 years I could understand written French, but now even that has gone to the
 wayside.  I also learned Hebrew the 7 months I was in Israel in 1975.  That's
 gone now too.  It's also a great pity that so many Americans can't read or
 write English, their own language. With that in the background how can we
 learn to teach other languages?

 mag
  >>