Angry Teachers Make Easy Pray… I mean “Prey”

The British government recently announced their intention to cut the guidelines for school trips from 140 pages to 8 pages. I, like a lot of teachers, was surprised to find this move might be unpopular with teacher’s unions. Did the unions intend the startling inference drawn by most of the public – that the unions represent teachers who must be dullards? It is difficult to imagine the kind of person who would rather read another 132 pages of guidance in preference to exercising their own judgment. Thankfully, a lot of teachers publicly pooh-poohed the unions. Sadly, other teachers defended the inanity of the unions. Both sides made their arguments by posting comments to the BBC’s news site; see here. However, in this debate, there was only one clear winner. The teachers conspired to cunningly reinforce the beliefs of everyone who thinks teachers really are dunderheads who barely scraped through their own education. Their atrocious English spoke more loudly about the faults of the education system than their ill-constructed arguments ever will.

From around 140 comments posted to the BBC’s site, maybe a third came from people identifying themselves as teachers. Of the comments from teachers, these are the four worst howlers:

I just checked and I spent 10 weekends this academic year taking my students on visits. This means I am unable to spend time with my wife, my children and after seen the comments posted by parents…

That teacher also needs to spend more time with his dictionary.

I have run many school trips in my time. H&S has never stopped me beacuse i use common sense to assess the suitibility for taking 60+ children. However cost has. Extra curricular enrichment is the first to go when budgets are being squeezed but these often provide the richest learning oppertunities and are the best platform for learning because they inspire & excite. however no money= less trips

Oh dear. As well as terrible spelling, this teacher missed the commas that must come after “however”. I well remember learning that at school.

Tony Fisher, no. 18, I can only assume you’re either a member of the slow writers club or you work at the most stupid school in the land. This is certainly not indicative of the four school’s I’ve worked in.

It is a real shame this idiot did not name the four schools that employ teachers who do not know when to use apostrophes.

As a teacher I run 4 or 5 trips a year to museums and other ventues. From the behaviour and attitude of most people I meet as a teacher I can say that most are not able to supervise there own children in a socially correct manner. Before anyone else “has a go at winging teacers” I advise you to organise a trip for 60 children. Think about the diabet child, the deaf child, the partially signed, etc

You may give the benefit of the doubt to errors that could be typographical, but there is no excusing the confusion of “there” with “their”.

It is very easy to mock teachers for their poor English. Not just easy, but also a lot of fun. The best part is that they thoroughly deserve to be mocked. Quite a lot of the comments noted how hard teachers work. Obviously people need to work extra hard if their talents are so limited that they make fools of themselves when trying to construct a few simple sentences. One can only imagine how many teachers choose not to post to websites, for fear it will lead to humiliation and embarrassment… I mean embarressment, of course.

2 Comments

  1. Amen to this post! I cannot help but feel this should be an amplified embarrassment in a country using English as its primary language, let alone by those given the task to inculcate the subject.

    Tut-tut, from a “Sith Afrikan” “grammar-phile” cringing in his own countries English language atrophy.

  2. countries/country’s! I must have just watched SABC News! Keep making some excellent reading Eric. Ciao

Leave a Reply to Gordon Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


*