Very definitely there is a problem. In an earlier post, I wrote about the classrooms of today and the lack of respect for teachers, evident in society at large, also being inside the classroom. There is a very big problem. Walk around a primary school of today and you will see lots of pretty pictures, clay figures, paints, boxes of materials for craft activities and you wonder why it is all fun, fun, fun. At secondary school, we get the consequence of the extention of play time in primary schools which look like kindergarten, stage 2, to crabby old me. Sure, there can be these kinds of things happening but by giving them such emphasis and hanging these things everywhere, kids end up thinking school to be simply fun time throughout. How is this the correct environment to encourage learning which requires discipline. Make no mistake about it, learning to spell correctly requires application, effort and a quiet determination on a daily basis. To write and improve skills, one should have the chance to copy correct text. This no longer occurs.
Indeed, children are encouraged to "express themselves" and write, no matter how poor their spelling. This often leads to kids believing their own errors and continue to make this spelling errors way into teenage and beyond. I have watched kids look at correct spelling and copy it into their books, using their own spelling more often than not containing errors, and many of them.
Kids are supposed to be able to spell and read and write BEFORE secondary school level, otherwise they can't read their textbooks. I reckon the primary schools fall down badly in teaching the basics.
However, students like Beau? No, he won't ever learn to read and write as his IQ level is too low.
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