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NEW YORK, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- The New York principal who sent teachers an ungrammatical e-mail should be dismissed, some parents say.
Andrew Buck, who has headed the Middle School of Art and Philosophy in Brooklyn since it opened in 2007, sent the e-mail last week to explain why he believes the school does not need more textbooks, the New York Daily News reported.
Well, it is the school of art and philosophy, so it seems about what I would expect. He was taking creative license. Could we fire some of the parents who send e-mails that have grammar mistakes?
Grammatical errors are unfortunate and embarrassing. Stupid mistakes impugn the credibility of the author. Part of the problem may be that many people dash off an email without proofing it the way they would a formal letter on paper.
The real issue it that his writing is pretentious and nonsensical. Foreign words and phrases should be used sparingly, if at all. If you do use them, you have to know what they mean and use them correctly.
The job of the principal is administrative, and he should be judged by criteria relevant to that function. In this case, he should also be told to have his memos vetted by somebody who can handle the language a little better.
I have nothing but disdain for people who jump up and down and demand that everyone be fired the minute they fail to dot an I. Particularly the news media, which could easily find more pertinent things that the public ought to have a grasp of.
Meanwhile. the parents of his students should just start ignoring his turgid communications, which wouldn't even say anything germane if they were grammatically and syntactically sound.
What this tells me is that he needs a proofreader. His content was not bad.
With all due respect, I wholly disagree: I found his content to be absurd, actually, particularly his contention that textbooks have an "adversarial" effect on students' learning.
I believe this person demonstrates little respect for learning -- or for school. As the head of the school, he has a professional responsibility to ensure that his presentation in all distributed communications reflects professional standards. This email, intended to be distributed to the faculty, does indeed fall into that category. It's an embarrassment.
When stupid people try to sound smart...that is what it read like to me...lots of big words, no real information...and an absurd justification of not having textbooks for children, they did not work for him, therefore, all textbooks will not work for all students...talk about flawed logic.
Can he spell UI? No, he won't need to...he won't lose his job, yet another reason why schools are messed up..
What this tells me is that he needs a proofreader. His content was not bad.
"Sine qua non" literally means means "without which not," i.e., that which is absolutely necessary. "Soup du jour" literally means "soup of the day"; an American expression is "flavor of the month," i.e., a fad. To say that something is both absolutely necessary and a passing fad is contradictory nonsense.
Do you know what? If one of my employees had written a letter like that, I would have give him or her a stern rebuke.
When the only contact you have with people--including parents of your students--is riddled with errors, it says a great deal about your sloppiness in thought and work habits. How does a principal, a man who probably has his Ph.D., confuse affect and effect? More to the point, how does a man send a public communication such as that out there without at least proofreading?
Nope. I'm a big fan of Rudy Giuliani and his "Broken Window" theory. If you allow the little things to slide, that means you allow the big things to slide. There is no question to me that an educator who slops out that kind of writing, particularly in the age of spell check, is probably lackadaisical in other areas of his job as well.
The French word for soup is soupe so he wasn't the only one getting it wrong.
Teachers and other staff members involved in teaching my children are held to a higher standard by me. They wouldn't find it acceptable for me as an accountant to not know the correct way to calculate taxes.
Having just witnessed my daughter's first grade teacher spelling spinach as spinage, this is a bit of a touchy subject for me!
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