Educational Complacency
A. C. Grayling reminds us in the Guardian today of the importance of SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) at university. The diatribe stems from the comments of a university lecturer who said that the spelling of the average undergraduate is so bad that markers should give up correcting mistakes and instead accept them as “variants”.
I understand that the proposal was made both with tongue somewhat in cheek and a hint of exasperation. The problem is so severe that the desire to give up can be incredibly strong. Nonetheless the proposal regarding “variants” has already been seen in the SATS fiasco, and there are some who would genuinely believe that this represents a pragmatic Panglossian scenario heralding a new stage in the evolution of the English language. An attitude exists among some of the educational establishment that this sort of complacency is acceptable.
Notwithstanding Grayling’s excellent article, there is an even simpler reason why the proposal is asinine. Universities are institutions of learning: if you don’t correct basic spelling errors, where do you draw the line? Why not stop marking down poorly articulated arguments as many students doubtless make? The logical conclusion of such is that you give up marking altogether as to do so must be a horribly tedious and unpleasant experience given the probability of receiving a poor essay.
The job of a teacher, university or otherwise, is to take a group of pupils or students, and finish with them in a better educational state than they were in previously. This involves not just the didactic imparting of knowledge and wisdom, but the assessment and criticism of the recipient’s engagement with that information. You tell them when they go wrong, why they have done so, and how they can improve. It does not matter if the mistake is factual, grammatical or logical; all require criticism so that improvement is possible.
This culture of indulgence that has sprung up around certain aspects of the educational system has been utterly debilitating. Rather than challenging our students to do better, and telling them how to, we instead leave them to wallow in mediocrity. As a result, they are left poorly equipped to deal with the outside world. It may seem kind to refuse to punish a student with good ideas but poor spelling, but the long-term damage this inflicts is counter-productive. As The Devil’s Kitchen points out:
if I see “variants” on a curriculum vitae, that CV will go straight into the round file
The complacency of not correcting “variants” ultimately reeks of snobbery. The underlying logic is that “these people do not know any better and cannot improve, so we won’t bother trying to correct them; it’s a waste of time”. Or somesuch other nonsense.
To paraphrase Joanna Lumley: “You don’t have to be posh to spell properly.”
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