Re: Children - OT, sorry!

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

nigel <useweb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:gfh252$hdp$1@xxxxxxxx:

Mandy wrote:
[snip]
I think the test thing meant 11-13 not 9-11
though! :o)

H'mmm, thirteen qualifies as a fully fledged teen, doesn't
it?

Only just! lol

13-18 years old - those six years are the teenaged years. It's
not `only just' teenaged when you're 13 - it's `exactly in the
teenaged range'.

What about 19 year olds?

Durr. Yes, quite right. Call me an idiot.

Nope, just human!

<glowers> Nope, making a mistake like that is very very stupid of me.
I plead tiredness due to lack of sleep.

I hope you get more sleep tonight!

I generally don't have trouble staying asleep once I get to sleep, but I
had to be awake for appointments yesterday and today so I couldn't sleep
for very long at all. I got about three hours' sleep this morning -
couldn't get to sleep until about 7.30am and not because I wasn't
incredibly tired.

[snip]

Childrens' books when I was young usually had a suggested age
range printed on the back[1]. Everyone I knew read books that
were `far too old for them' according to adult judgement. My
conclusion was that the standard judgement of adults on what's
suitable for what age of child is wrong.

By the sound of it that test is wrong too!

It's wrong in what it says, but that doesn't mean it's *useless*.
The trick is to figure out how to use the analysis you get. But I
don't know what to make of these numbers.

Me either!

You mean `neither'.

Do I? OK then :o)

Well, yes. I've no idea why so many people get this one wrong. The
phrase `me neither' means what it says. `Me either' - huh? Whassat
supposed to mean? In itself, I can't see that it means a bloody thing -
except that I've learnt that it's what people say when they mean `Me
neither' and get it wrong. And it's not a natural evolution of language
- it's just plain wrong.

Creeping illiteracy, this sort of thing.

[snip]

I want to ensure that the truth about events is known so that I am
not treated badly by NHS staff in the future.
====================================================================
===

It sounds like they mistreated you badly! :o(

Yep - and you could read it okay, couldn't you? Despite not having
had the college education that the reading analyser claimed you need
to be able to understand it.

Too right! I guess we just have a better level of understanding English
over here but over the pond in America it's totally different?

It's not that simple. There's a lot of poor literacy in the UK and it's
worse than when I was young. And there are plenty of properly literate
people in the USA. But consider this, from Robert Anson Heinlein's
(RAH) `Expanded Universe'.

The following is what he has to say - the following is a condensed
summary of his introduction to this particular rant, and then the actual
text he wrote. This is what Heinlein explained:

He's looking at the University of California Santa Cruz campus (UCSC),
which he says was planned as `The Oxford of the West' (although why
anyone would want to emulate /that/ seriously ill university, I cannot
imagine) - but it had to open its gates to anyone who could meet
University of California (UC) admissions requirements due to lack of
numbers, but the UC is known as a `tough school'. Only 8% of the
state's high school graduates get grades good enough to be considered
for entry. So Heinlein explained.

The thing is, he goes on, you need to pass a test to get in, run by the
university. It includes a test in English composition, which anyone
with ordinary English literacy can pass. If you fail, you have to take
`Subject A', known to all as `Bonehead English'.

This is what Robert Heinlein has to say about the students entering the
University of California, looking particularly at UCSC.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

8%---so 90% fall by the wayside. These 8% are the intellectual elite of
young adults of the biggest, richest, and most lavishly educated state
in the union

[snip]

(Stipulated: California has special cases to whom English is not native
language. But such a person who winds up in that upper 8% is
usually---I'm tempted to say `always'---fully literate in English.)

So here we have the cream of California's young adults; each has been
taught to read and write and spell and has been taught the basics of
English during eight years of grammar school, and has polished this by
not less than three years of English in high school---and also has had
at least two years of a second language, a drill that vastly illuminate
the subject of grammar even though grasp of the second language may be
imperfect.

It stands to reason that /very/ few applicants need Bonehead English.
Yes?

NO!

I have just checked. The new class at UCSC is `about 50%' in Bonehead
English---and this is normal---normal right across California---and
California is no worse than most of the states.

8% off the top---

Half of this elite 8% must take `Bonehead English'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Not my words: the words of Robert Heinlein, in a book copyright 1980
that he didn't want published outside the USA because he didn't want the
`dirty laundry' bits such as the above spread around the rest of the
world, possibly out of embarrassment---but he wanted it published in
America so that Americans could learn about the problem and fix it.

Of course, if the problem is *poor literacy*, and you write a *book* -
well, erm, there's a problem right at the start. But of course plenty
of USAians are literate enough - it's just that one gets the idea that
the percentage of properly literate USAians is maybe less than 5% of the
population...

[snip]

I can't think of any way of doing it short of something like
actually visiting a school and reading the stories out and seeing
how they go down - for example.

I can't afford a CRB check though :o(

Oh yeah, I forgot about all that crap. Damn.

I've got no problem having it done at all... I just can't afford it :o(

Just out of interest - what does it cost?

Rowland.

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