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Originally Posted by NightLight
Speaking as a well read individual and a blue collar worker, I think that attitude is a bit elitist.
There is no shame in an honest day's work, blue collar or white.
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There is blue collar work and blue collar work. I've done some holiday work, at the factory. Simple, mind-numbing work (putting a cherry on a frozen cake kind of work...). That's also blue collar work. If you have a job like that, wouldn't you want your kid to be able to do more? (even maintaining the machines that run the conveyor belts would be a much, much better job, I'd say!)
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Originally Posted by silverraven
I was flat out told by my son's vice principal that my son needed to learn neither multiplication nor spelling. That's what calculators and spell check are for. So no, the mother's response doesn't surprise me in the least.
S
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That's even worse... We weren't even allowed to use calculators until 3th grade of high school (which would be first year of high school in the US). When I was in the US, the host family had a 12 year old daughter. Who didn't even know her multiplication tables 1 to 10...
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Originally Posted by GraceKrispy
ha on "corps." I still think of colonel as "col-on-el" in my head. I can't help it. I learned most of the words in my vocabulary through reading and mispronounced them constantly. My mother would get so upset with me, but I told her the book wasn't reading the words to me!
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I always loved to read, but for the life of me, I couldn't spell. And I only really started talking when I was way past the normal talking stage. And I did read the same books as my older brother (who is just under 2 years older).
(oh, and what's wrong with col-on-el? That's how we say it
)
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Originally Posted by JSWolf
What helped me is that my parents allowed me to read what I liked. And I didn't like most of what the schools forced upon us. I thought a lot of the books were just awful. One problem with schools is that they take books that may be good and the way you have to dissect them makes them a turn-off for a lot of kids.
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I was allowed to go to the big library at the age of 12. And that library was in the big city, about 10km by bike. Simply because our local library didn't have much more to read for us (I share my craze for books with my older brother).