What (if anything) have recent Literacy initiatives taught our children?

My inability to post properly means my spelling is the least of my worries.
What I was about to say was that I have been laughing uproariously at someone's spelling mistake on social media, because I disagree with them on the subject under discussion. Shallow I know.

I must admit I get very twitchy when I see a spelling or grammatical error. A couple of weeks ago I was waiting for my prescription at the local pharmacy. The professionally typed and laminated poster above the counter urged me to " please bare with the staff. They are undergoing training". I was tempted to whip my cardigan off and hum "The Stripper" but fear the assistant would have pressed the alarm bell if I had!

My husband found this cartoon as he knows how irritated I get

The grocers' apostrophe!

For years, it has been rumoured that somebody has been going out late at night, correcting bad punctuation on Bristol shop fronts.

The self-proclaimed "grammar vigilante" goes out undercover in the dead of night correcting street signs and shop fronts where the apostrophes are in the wrong place

When I retired my ambition was to be the person who went round shops and markets and Tippexed all the wandering apostrophes.

However, that person is not me.

Grandmabatty

I was an English teacher and have some sympathy for you with misspelled words. However:
I would rather see someone try and use an unfamiliar word than use the same language all the time.
The use of spell check is widespread and I don't think people check spelling carefully enough. I've been guilty of typos on here!
There may be undiagnosed dyslexia at play. One of the best English teachers I know struggled with spelling. However she always checked a word or got a colleague to check spelling.
I can't comment on spelling as a literacy initiative in England as I'm Scottish based. Language and ergo spelling has changed over centuries, so I tend to let it go, unless it impedes understanding.

There are also many people who dont have english as their first language.
I admire what they achieve.

It might seem amusing to see the mistakes schoolchildren make but it is important to correct them. Whatever career these children choose, good writing skills still matter. Spellcheck is based on American english, not British and we are not yet a colony of America so let's stick to our own language.

My first thought , like fancythatwas that it might be pupils with English as a second language. That would be the most likely explanation here because there are people from every part of the globe. I was a teacher of English at one stage so I always pick up mistakes, I can’t help it but you also have to be aware that language changes all the time.

Slightly off topic - but prompted by some comments about journalism - last night on the BBC news, the newsreader reporting on the Iranian helicopter crash helpfully told us that "These photos of the President on board the helicopter were taken before it went down"

Not after it went down then.

Yes, it could be that nanna8, but it doesn't have to be. English is my first language, but I speak 2 other languages, both to a very high level. When I write in these languages, native friends comment that my grammar and spelling skills are far more technically correct than their own.. I put that down to years of reading "posh" literature in those languages! I have a fourth language, more for fun, which was learnt by the direct speaking method, and I agree that it is a mess on paper.

Some might write sea me! AGAA4

I agree Joseann. We had both oral and written exams at school. I breezed through the spoken, but often struggled to get a "C" in the written.

I scraped through my French O Level, even though I was in the top stream. We were asked to write a story about a fire and the French word for fireman completely eluded me so I had to keep writing convoluted sentences that vaguely translated as "the men who stop the fire".

I'd be ok now, for the word "pompier" is etched on my brain forever.

This was one of my son's birthday cards recently:

ferry23 😁 you used your initiative to get round it!

ferry23 I appreciate your problem with finding a way to say fireman. Faced with translating a passage about sea life, I put hérisson de mer, because I didn’t know the word for sea urchin. Oursin is engraved on my memory, but likely to be less use to me than your pompier would be.

The times I have to stop myself from correcting spelling mistakes on local forums.

I think what the children in school twenty years ago took from The Literacy Hour was that literature was for analysing, not for enjoying, and writing had to be in a limited, prescribed format. All joy safely removed from our rich literary history.

NotSpaghetti

This was one of my son's birthday cards recently:

Haha, love this!

A lot of people using "carnt" instead of "can't" and "prolly" instead of "probably ". How is this not picked up at school?

Prolly cos it’s ow they spik ya rekan?

Chocolatelovinggran

I think what the children in school twenty years ago took from The Literacy Hour was that literature was for analysing, not for enjoying, and writing had to be in a limited, prescribed format. All joy safely removed from our rich literary history.

YES!

I'm amazed that primary school teachers don't correct spelling or punctuation. I asked my 9 year old granddaughter why the teacher hadn't marked some of her work as incorrect and was told that she doesn't do that.

I have read a couple of times, and also been told by a recent English teacher ,that it is now considered correct to start a sentence with 'and' or 'but' and also to end a sentence with a preposition. Is this just dumbing down or what?

It's all very well for those whose native dialect is standard English. What comes out of their mouths is "correct".
But in this part of the country, there are more examples than I would quote here which are "incorrect".
"I were" and "we was" would be normal.
It's a lot to expect children to adopt a different register, but many do.

Are they not taught at school not to write ‘in dialect’ ?

Honestly, what has happened with “editing” is this no longer a job! I absolutely hate reading professionally written articles/news etc with glaring grammar and spelling errors.

I can put up with it on a personal 1-1 level as sometimes it’s genuine mistakes (like the typos I constantly make!)