Comments on: Home Schooling and the Teachable Moment

By: Sofie (A different person, of course)

Sofie (A different person, of course) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 22:53:52 +0000

Absolutely agreed.

By: msilvia

msilvia — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:30:27 +0000

Sure, if your goal is to get an emotional response (a practice I’m sure you’re familiar with as a journalist). But, is that the goal here? Emotional response burns out, and it becomes just like the daily paper, just another “yesterday’s story.” I hope you don’t advocate that for this topic…

By: msilvia

msilvia — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:26:24 +0000

I wonder if you could define for us what “proper grammatical structure” is? As a journalist I guess you know? The line cuts both ways…

By: Judith

Judith — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:09:29 +0000

I kinda liked William’s take here. It was refreshing and in-your-face.

No, I’m not advocating blog rudeness but every now and then, I like a sharp rebuke!

By: Judith

Judith — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:07:07 +0000

msilvia writes: It’s also interesting that we sometimes forget the genre we’re working in (blog writing as a mode of communication rarely values proper grammatical structure)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I beg to disagree. If this is the forum we are communicating in, I see no reason why we cannot apply proper grammatical structure. I, for one, value it highly!

We also tend to think of email as less formal but where do you draw the line? When perfectly grown adults use i instead of I, leave out all traces of commas and periods, and position their missive in one large paragraph block, I’m tempted to tell them, I can’t read this. I’m not going to bother.

I reassure my friends: I’m not going to catch every spelling and mechanical error and send it back marked up in red. I’m not even an English teacher, just a person who by trade is a journalist and whose passion is reading and writing. I also homeschooled my daughter, then an 8th grader, for one year. I’m not perfect, I make mistakes too.

But net-speak, i for I and u for you and rele for really. Really! I can only stomach so much, me, the “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” fanatic.

And if you catch a mistake here and call me on it, happy grammaring! It’s not a Ph.D. thesis, just a blog comment.

By: msilvia

msilvia — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:06:40 +0000

“impossible to forgive…” Really? Seems that your implicit claim is that it’s not OK for Jesse to be closeminded and the judge and jury, but it is OK for you to be an egoist and be the one who can supply such necessary ridicule.

By: William

William — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:27:36 +0000

There’s an important difference. Mr. Scaccia made his error in a paragraph claiming him to be superior and better able to educate kids in English. Not only is this extremely ironic, it makes it impossible to forgive the mistake. Yes, a blog is informal and so shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny by grammar nazis, but Mr. Scaccia’s mistake is still glaring and worthy of ridicule.

By: msilvia

msilvia — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:11:25 +0000

Well put. It’s interesting that we tend to use proper grammar as a means of attacking a speaker when what we should be doing is discussing the message. I wonder, why were they frustrating? Have you never made a grammatical mistake?

It’s also interesting that we sometimes forget the genre we’re working in (blog writing as a mode of communication rarely values proper grammatical structure). If i was writing a research paper that I submitted for publication i might care a bit more about whether or not I capitalized my “I” and used proper possessive punctuation. But, I’m not, and I guess I have proven, like Jesse, that it does become easy to attack the messenger in replace of the message.

I noticed Ivy you failed to truly respond to the message itself- was it because it doesn’t grab your attention because I didn’t offend, or was it because I was fundamentally correct in my assessment that we shouldn’t attack the people. Instead, we should just debate the message. (How’s that for irony?)

By: Ivy

Ivy — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:53:31 +0000

Unfortunately, I don’t really think we can make fun of Mr. Scaccia on this one, because Mark Silvia had quite a few errors as well. While I appreciate his article, mistakes such as this were frustrating:

“Then I read his post, it’s hundreds of reactionary comments (of which I participated), and its worth became more gray to me.”

By: msilvia

msilvia — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:07:28 +0000

Well, actually I was thinking that the teachable moment was in the approach we all take in addressing each other and the topic- the topic itself is too important to treat as if we are all-knowing. And, this lesson can be learned by both of us (you and I) as well. Specifically in how defensive we’ve gotten in our own responses to the subject and these posts (this post included).