…
Frank: Those reds they’re everywhere, they’re behind every tree.
Hawkeye: That’s funny. I thought they were all in Cincinnati.
… on language and other related matters ses the work of John McWhorter
That is called tracking students. Among all the things I have attempted or accomplished, I was an 8th grade science teacher in Mariemont Middle School (Cincinnati) in an open classroom (1970’s). All my students were tracked. The “slowest” group called themselves the woodies (wooden heads that couldn’t learn anything- probably some teacher called them that) and they thought science was a waste because they weren’t going to college. It made teaching them all that more fun. I would use car electrical systems to study electromagnetism because they could relate. I had just gotten out of undergraduate school, hair as long as my skirts, and teaching out of a shoebox was challenging and fun.
Sounds like a science class I would have enjoyed. My science teacher in middle school kicked me out of his class for talking and talking back in my defense when confronted. I had to report to the school’s administrative office during that period until the end of the semester and study on my own. I ended up with an A for that semester.
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Really? I only have had 4 years of highschool level English early 1980’s in the Netherlands. (My grades were not great)
In the English correspondence lessons we had to always end all letters with ‘kind regards’ or maybe ‘yours sincerely’
I do not think i ever ended a letter with anything else.
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A high school typing class I enrolled in, before it was called ‘keyboarding’, during the early 1970’s used those phrases for closing all business letters.
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Haven’t seen “kind regards” as a signature much, but “regards” seems good, and better for if arguing would be strange to sign that with “kindness,” that would be like giving someone flowers immediatley after yelling at them
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I had no idea about SMART being an acronym. It has slipped into our vocabulary without us even thinking or knowing why or what it really means. I hate it more now.
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Interesting. Here’s my background on that statement I made. I was born and raised in the USA and lived there for 37 years. I’ve lived in Canada for the past 20 years. I’ve been in the electronics industry for over 35 years and it’s only been within the past few years that I’ve started seeing that ‘kind regards’ closing. It’s not something that I’ve ever seen in the past, nor was it in any writing classes in North America that I’m aware of. Our closings were always ‘sincerely’, or ‘best regards’. I’m sure there were more, but those were the main two. So I wonder if this is more of a European thing? Anyway, thanks for the data point, Ellie. I do appreciate your feedback on that.
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I end letters with Love or Best Regards depending on the person… I used to use the word sincerely to close out letters but decided I liked “best regards” better, because what does sincerely even mean? It’s like finishing each letter with “I’m genuine.”
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If it’s “SMART”, it is part of the control grid/able to spy on you and collect data.
Keyboarding is probably the most useless class I ever took haha… I can type faster using the “hunt and peck method” than keeping my hands uncomfortably on the home row. They say the whole reason the keyboards are designed the way they are is to keep type writers from jamming… but it is not the best layout for typing by any objective standard.
Every school is different… I think at the school I was at last year… They simply did not have enough teachers, the kids literally had no electives… just math, science, English and history (At least we gave them an hour of recess; although it was literally in the parking lot because we had no playground hahaha).
But I see my time in the public school system being very short lived… I’m doing it this year because I like my students, even though most of them have zero desire to learn… but I think home schooling and private schools are the future, and public school kids will be left behind.
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Now they teach texting using your thumbs…
I landed my first job because I knew how to type letters and assemble bid packages for a construction job. Later on when computers were part of the office machines I was already familiar with a keyboard. Served me well.
Now I don’t use a computer or a keyboard, just this phone and my index finger. Never mastered the thumb technique.
Did you know you can connect a keyboard to your mobile phone?
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I did not, that’s interesting! I have never seen one.
I also think our current woke vocabulary has has a double standard when it comes to race, that actually harms the black community the most and makes a race neutral future impossible… For example…
White Privellege…not racist Black disadvantage…racist
Black lives matter…not racist White lives Matter…racist
Black Entertainment Television…not racist White entertainment Television…racist
NAACP not racist NAAWP…racist
Black is King, by Beyonce…not racist White is King, by NOT Beyonce…racist
Black History Month…not racist White History Month… racist
Black is beautiful…not racist White is beautiful… racist
I always tell my students about categorical thinking. The difference between 49 and 50 is small… but once we label one as passing and one as failing the difference seems much bigger. That is exactly what we are doing with this racist vocabulary. We are putting everybody into a category and it makes thinking outside of those perimeters very challenging for the average joe.
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… I thought the phrase was "We be dreamin’ " but, I guess, "I be trippin’ ".
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You are talking about keyboards when you say that?
These are better for typing especially dvorak not qwerty or handwriting can be converted to text too.
What people call phones these days aren’t phones at all.
Yes I was talking about keyboards… But honestly I will probably get an old flip phone when my current one dies 
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Agreed. It makes perfect sense once you realize the point of woke vocabulary is (among other things) to create and exacerbate division.
It’s not about helping any unprivileged group. It’s about power. In this linguistic game, whoever is in charge of defining and redefining words, and creating new “oppressed” subgroups, gets the cultural and political power.
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