Why is the board travelling?, page-206

"Plus if grammar is all we disagreed on, your final point about clarity and accuracy of grammar being critical to the ability of people making well-informed decisions? Cmon, give me a break."

Modern progressive liberalism is a double edged thing, promising instant empowerment coupled (conveniently) with lowest common denominator appeal - it's all about gratification. For me this seemingly unstoppable tsunami is related to the same systems of control which Gutenberg sought to break in the 15thC - taking the power of the written word to the masses - out of the hands of the Church and ruling aristocracy.

If you think about it, now that we've been primed over the last seven decades to conform unquestioningly, to become wage slaves, to pay our taxes, to consume, to be milked, harvested and herded by our governments and their agents/affiliates (yes Rothschild, Trilateral, Bilderberg et al - I mean YOU), how convenient is it to have mass populations who can't spell or write properly, addicted to smartphones, tablets (of all kinds), detached & distracted from the realities of life our grandparents and parents knew... and yoked in perpetual debt.

VERY, I'd say.

I digress...

The fact is that good grammar and accurate communications are absolutely key to a sound decision making process or system, whether personal, corporate or otherwise.

I despair when I read 'I should of done that' when the semi-literate writer should know that the sentence should HAVE been 'I should have done that'. That's not me being pedantic - it's someone else showing their ignorance - so if anyone has a problem with me having a problem with that... that's their problem, not mine.

Similarly the popularity of apostrophes placed after a plural noun such as 'Fig's for sale' or 'No dog's allowed' etc appear everywhere these days. All this shows is that teaching standards have become dumbed-down over the last forty years or so to the point that what we've come to expect might as well be a new form of Esperanto, just totally made up on the hoof - anything goes, it seems.

The (apparent) excuse which I think some hold up here though is that as long as people can understand what the writer's trying to say, then everything's cool.

Well it isn't cool - it's shoddy - it's shonky - and it's plain LAZY. All it does is encourage averageness, imprecision and raise the potential for misinterpretation.

Imagine that you're a novice German speaker, or new student of Mandarin. Do you know how easy it is to not only convey the impression that you don't know your stuff, inferring that you somehow can't be bothered with the lingo - and therefore aren't as worthy of good marks as someone who has a better grasp of vocabularly & grammar?

Not only that, but in languages like these the potential to either sound like a total idiot - or worse to cause offence - is enormous. All I know is that I'll bet anyone here that 90% of senior school year students in English in China will be getting these basics of our language absolutely correct - because if they don't, they FAIL.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me I went to one of those old English private schools whose teaching methods were utterly Victorian - and I don't mean Melbourne. It was founded in 1557 and Roald Dahl was an old boy (along with Jeremy Clarkson - but we don't talk about him much).

JC was 5 years above me - RD attended 50 years prior, just in case you thought I was THAT old. Try picking up one of his great books (Dahl's not Clarkson's) if you haven't already and you'll receive a proper lesson in good English.

It isn't hard - it isn't big or clever either, just in case any of you are thinking that I'm pulling the 'Pom' card here - I'm not - I'm from working class English & Irish stock.

Funnily enough studying Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Byron & Shelley were good intro's for not only starting my career in a multicultural inner city Manchester, but in helping to learn other languages along the way - and whether hanging out in the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or elsewhere, such groundings have always proved useful.

I'll leave you with this - a well known little anecdote with its roots in WW1:

“Send three and fourpence - we’re going to a dance”

http://www.makingbetterdecisionsbet...end-three-and-fourpence-were-going-to-a-dance

Right - Sunday evening rant over!

Back to XPE - Big week ahead I hope.

GLTAH!