"The Curse" of Teaching English

A contrite Middle School lad immediately approached and said, “My bad.” Loosely translated, he and his body language were saying, “I’m sorry.” I understood his embarrassment, accepted his apology, suggested he be more careful next time, and sent him on his way.

 

Then I got to thinking. What had just occurred was an assault on the King’s English. It was a possessive pronoun possessing an adjective. According to the rules of grammar, that’s impossible. The scary thing is that it made perfect sense. What’s the world coming to?

 

I really enjoyed teaching English, but, as this vignette shows, there’s a serious downside. Every time I encounter a word spelled incorrectly, a mistake in agreement or pronoun usage, or an error in punctuation, it has the same effect as fingernails scraping down one of those old chalkboards.  Call it “The Curse.”

 

During my 45 years in the classroom, I expected students to slip up.  After all, they’re very much works in progress.  What’s the purpose of school anyway if not to help them develop and refine their skills? Goofs that appear in public, those that escape several sets of supposedly discerning eyes, are what really get my attention.

 

What follows is a sampling, culled from a variety of sources, that fall outside the bounds of poetic license or colloquial language used for effect. 

 

On the side of a building in a local shopping center some years ago was a large banner that read, “we beat all competitors tire prices.” The lack of a capital letter to begin the sentence is bad enough, but the copy writer must have slept through the class on possessive nouns and apostrophes.

 

Years ago, a noted professional athlete was accused of using performance enhancing drugs. That evening, his attorney exclaimed on network television, “(My client) adamantly, vehemently, and whatever other adjectives can be used denies that he has ever used steroids…” Uh, dude, those are adverbs. 

 

One Sunday morning, I was scanning the classifieds for one of my job-hunting children when I spotted an ad for an administrative assistant that noted that the company was “seeking a sharp, self-starter who is flexible and detail oriented.” All right so far, but then…“Excellent Microsoft Office skills with top grammer and proofreading ability.” Grammer?  Hey, does anybody proofread this stuff?

 

Several winters ago, an article appeared in the local newspaper dispelling a rumor that students who get a certain over-the-counter vaccine spray must take several days off from school. The first sentence read, “Sorry kids, you’re going to have to come up with a better excuse to avoid going to school.”

Kids?  Sorry kids? Was the missing comma after sorry a subtle commentary on the state of today’s youth, or did the writer and editor simply blank out on their punctuation rules?

 

As my wife and I were going through airport security several years ago, I spotted a handwritten sign at the checkpoint telling travelers to pack liquids and gels in a clear bag so they could be x-rayed seperately. My guess is that any Lower School kid could have spotted the error. My wife suggested that the TSA folks probably wouldn’t appreciate my correcting their spelling. As always, I heeded her advice.

 

And then there was a letter I received from the development department of an organization to which I belong.  There was a nice vignette about a member who had been quite generous, and among the secrets to his financial success was the revelation that he “poured over old copies of The Wall Street Journal…” I was left wondering what the guy actually poured over the newspaper.  His coffee?  Honey? Molasses?

 

There’re many more examples, but these will do for now. Thanks for reading. Time to get off my soapbox and return to work.

  ~ Weldon Bradshaw