To think that teachers should be able to punctuate

mishap we have a new head .. in his second year now at DGC school, a school news letter is produced by him every Friday and the spelling and grammar is atrocious totally unacceptable!!!!!

No, Mishap - IMO you are certainly not being unreasonable!

My heart says "No YANBU" but my cynical head says that the rest of the population clearly couldn't care less and dismiss those of who DO care as pedants, so what's new?"
However.........that won't stop me correcting people especially those in some sort of educational authority if and when I get the chance!

(You can take the girl out of the school.........)

It makes me despair.

I have conducted a number of job interviews in my time and for several of those roles (e.g. carer), it did not matter whether the candidate could punctuate - other things were important. But for a high level post in a school! This candidate had been in headships and mentoring roles previously - how can we let this happen?!!

Unacceptable in my view even if he has other strengths to bring to the school his application should be spot on,it's the interviewers first impression of him and that would count a lot in my book.
What does annoy me and it has happened already this term is youngest DGS 10yrs has completed homework and worked very hard in finding all the facts he was asked to find only for it to be returned to him unmarked and uncommented on at the next lesson,very disheartening for a young person I would say.

I remember pointing out to our Deputy Head that she really ought to take down the 'days of the week' chart she had put up to impress the HMIs as they were on their way to her room.

It read

Monday
Teusday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saterday
Sunday

No joking!

Glamma that is totally unacceptable and soul destroying for a young child

And these people have degrees...

To be fair, most teachers can spell and punctuate. Its just the odd won hoo slips though, the systum what gives all the uvers a bAD Name:

Aka I have the feeling that I will be going to the class open night for parents just before/after half term and a few words will be spoken by this nanna.

If these people are in their 30's or 40's it is probably not their fault if they cannot spell or punctuate as they grew up in an era when the focus in English lessons was creativity and not accuracy in grammar. My two sons both have extremely well-paid jobs though not in education .One cannot punctuate accurately and the younger one can neither punctuate nor spell correctly. They both feel very embarrassed about this and have tried to improve their standards as they know it reflects badly on them. I used to think it mattered but I don't now. I think social skills and personality are far more important and would feel happy to overlook the lack of skills in punctuation.

Formal grammar is now once again taught in schools I believe so there is hope for the next generation !

Good for you Glamma

Of course it's totally unacceptable, and it sets an appalling example to the pupils. When confronted with a pile of job applications from unknowns, a lot of employers will start by rejecting those that contain misspellings and bad lapses of grammar, just as a simple way of reducing the pile. And if the applications are for a job that requires a degree of (not in) communications skill, who can blame them?

One of my trainees asked me what he would do when he did not have me to check his spelling/grammar on Job applications etc. I told him he should ask his Mum or Granny. He returned to tell me that they were both very good at this. 'It is amazing' he said, 'How did you know they could do it?'

Completely unacceptable! I spent a lot of time, when I was working at school, fulminating at the grammatical and spelling mistakes that a few of my staff made. Even made the IT specialist who created the website take it down and sort it out. Grrrrrr!

That Teusday is a typo not a spelling mistake, aka.

Deputy heads do more managing than teaching nowadays. Perhaps they are managers at heart rather than teachers. We all have a high opinion of middle management, don't we?

Mishap, I'm sure he was not appointed and that he was given feedback explaining why.

Glamma, I hope that the teacher and the headteacher were questioned about this and that it doesn't happen again. From a simple self preservation point of view, I would have thought that teachers would have marked homework if nothing else. After all, that's the work that's seen at home!

Totally agree with your last post thatbags. Also agreed with the comment about the typo.I don't think anyone has criticised our own thread "ToadyI" .If so, I missed it.

glam, I'd blast any primary school teacher of my child who didn't mark homework. Mind you, I never had to because I told her school when she was six that she did do 'homework' (whatever she was interested in, which was quite a lot) but she wouldn't be doing school work at home. That solved any potential non-marking problems before they arose.

The older two were never given school work to do at home when they were in primary school. Neither was I. That's how it should be in my opinion.

No, you are not being unreasonable, mishap.

Not sure where you're coming from bags but the list I referred to with the spelling mistakes what handwritten in large letters about 4" high so the children could use them as......????

Was handwritten...that's a typo.

I think homework can be very valuable but I've not enough time now to argue my case.

Ah. I see. There was no mention of hand written in the original post. I assumed it had been printed (out of a printer, not by hand).