Wednesday 26 May 2010

Let's matriculate

Have you read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss? If you put a comma in the wrong place then it may be a matter of life and death. I am not writing a blog on punctuation, I just wanted to mention the book because it is full of grammatical errors. We all come across them and I want to take photos of signs that are full of errors or are ambiguous. You see them all the time.

People who have good degrees make foolish errors. The person who wrote the sign 'have you payed and displayed?' probably had a degree. There are many, maybe even a majority who don't know basic rules of grammar but they have been through university and come out with a degree. When you complete a degree course you receive a certificate that acknowledges a degree of intelligence but this may be far removed from the level of ability in the three Rs. My children who have been through university even tell me that some students going through a course do very little studying. Can you believe that?

This brings me to the Labour criticism yesterday that cancelling university places isn't cutting waste. My response is that it could be cutting waste, and even if it isn't we are left with no money so we have to return to a time when matriculate, or go to university meant that you were part of a little list.

Change the world

No comments:

Post a Comment