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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anaxagoras who wrote (2599)	5/23/1999 12:20:00 PM
From: JB2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

You seem to be making the assumption that most people operate on a crude plane of logic with a simple binary thought process: i.e. they get their thoughts across or they don't. I don't think making a point is a simple or conscious decision for most adults. Emotions and hormones and politics all fascinate linguists because it's much more than just a decision when it comes to the way we express ourselves. The connection of one symptom, inattention to habits of writing, and another symptom, of children bearing arms, is for example correlated. Why do you think there is less emphasis on the propers of reading and writing in public schools than there has been in the past? Because now teachers say their dominant task in the classroom consists of behavioral control, not educating---just disciplining. And the teachers' hands are tied when it comes to doling out much in the way of deterrents. Back when education was the main thing going on in the classrooms, words used to be the weapon of choice in schoolyards---for all of the recorded history of schools, as far as I know---but now threats of real bullets have taken center stage. The one symptom seems to have followed the other in a natural progression. Who has time for spelling anymore? That's not what school is about now. It's about indoctrination and socialization first and foremost, and the kids that don't fit in get no consolation from just being plain smart. So they flip out and express their most base selves in the most definitive of non verbal ways. Or maybe I've just read too much Chomsky.