To expect good grammar from a year three teacher?

[MrsFC]

I live in zone four of East London, and while I am originally not from that area and have a different accent, DC, DP, CM, exDH and all DC's friends do, and have a fairly pronounced East London accent.

Now: I have NOTHING against an accent from anywhere in the country, I really don't. But I DO have issues with the bad grammar that can sometimes come with it, for example:

'we done this at school today Mummy'
'Where is the book we was reading Mummy'
'I didn't eat nuffink for lunch today'

I have spent the past five years patiently correcting DC and explaining basic correct grammar to him. I also explain that while lots of the grown ups he knows speak incorrectly, he must not correct them, but must listen to how his teacher and I speak. I am lucky in that he is a competent and avid reader and so I have been encouraging him to read Harry Potter books to try and instill it in him further (top tip - if you want your son to read Harry Potter, buy the Lego DS Game - it worked for me!)

Anyway - I digress. I went to pick up DS from school yesterday and they came out of a different gate.When we found them his new teacher said to me:

'I'm sorry you wasn't told'

I was taken aback and mentioned it to another Mum friend of mine with a child in the same year(I could only mention it to this one friend as the other Mums probably wouldn't have noticed TBH). She smiled and said I was being a bit snobby.

What do you think? And what would you do, if anything?

nickelbabe I can actually remember my mother correcting my late father, who said "We was..."

arses, if we dispense with the teachers who can't speak properly we can justify paying less taxes and will be able to afford to send our children to private school.

In the meantime, as many of us are stuck with the state system it could at least provide taxpayers' children with teachers who know the difference between wasn't and weren't. The teacher may well have been using non-standard English but that isn't what I want my child to be taught. "Non-standard" in this context translates to "plain damn wrong!".

I would still tell my child that she was perfectly entitled to correct a teacher who did so and I would still mention it to the HT.

Arses, who are you tell people they should leave the state schol system simply because they want teachers to do their jobs. If I as a parent have no right to ask a teacher to know the subject he or she is teaching, then surely the state should have no right to collect our taxes for a service they have no intention of delivering.

I would happily send my children to private school if I could pay for it. But, I can't so I will do the best I can with the state one. There is no other choice for me (and many others).

And, quite frankly, if you think knowing the difference between a subject and an object makes me a grammar fanatic, then I think that says more about your (lack of ) standards than mine.

I feel the same way about all subject which are part of the national curriculum. Teachers should know their subject no matter what it is. For example, when (as I have heard they will) a teacher tells my children that 2 + 3 x 5 - 7 = 18 you can bet your high horse I will be sitting in that teachers classroom explaining to her that 2 + 3 x 5 - 7 = 10. If she disagrees, I will be soon be founf in the head teachers office stomping my feet.

It is a good thing I do not teach a typing class.

What's wrong with "I was only asking"? Anyway, there are generally accepted Standard Englishes, varying between countries in the UK - Scotland, for example, has useful words like furth, outwith, uplift, and grammatical variants like "my hair needs washed". All part of SSE.

So, SE (of whatever variety) is a useful register, as it's a lingua franca for at least your own country in the UK, and also for non-native English speakers. Dialect and accent are indeed no markers of intelligence, but the ability to code-switch between registers appropriate to different situations is a very useful skill to learn, and an "immersion" in SE at school is probably useful in reinforcing the idea that this is the appropriate register for this context. This does not apply to accent, of course.

And I'm going to take issue with those of you who claim to have no accent. Of course you do, unless you're mute. If you mean an accent that's hard to localise, then that's different, but it's neither neutral nor non-existent.

I am told mine is posh; that is a frequent description, but I am poor, honestly.
Nouveau poor, of course

I think the biggest issue is the written word - i think that a teacher should speak correctly as much as possible, and recognize it when they slip, but it is much more important that they can recognise it when written down.

SE should be used in writing.
(unless it's a play, or they're using speech in a story)

Strix
explain that sum to me will ya
2+3x5-7
2+3=5
5x5=25
-7 =18

clearly your reasoning says that you do the multiplication bit first, ie 2+(3x5)-7=10

is that a rule? i didn't know that

re English grammar, you don't get taught it in UK (state) schools. I speak well and grammatically correct but only because my parents do and i picked it up. dh was terrible when i met him, but i sorted him out

i only really understood English grammar after doing French A level, going through tenses/subjects/nouns etc.

arses and habbibu speak lots of sense. I especially appreciate habbibu's comments about the ability to code switch between registers appropriate to different situations.

Some outrageous snobbishness on this thread

Strix is correct for the reasons you say Amidai- in the absence of brackets in an equation, you do multiplication first.

If someone is teaching maths and doesn't know that, they shouldn't be teaching maths.

thanks BaT
interesting, i either never knew it or had forgotten it.

"is that a rule? i didn't know that"

Yes, (2+3) x 5 - 7 = 18. The brackets tell you which part to do first if you need to override the order rules.

I think that's the point, we use rules in language (as in maths) to ensure that our meaning is conveyed correctly.

Incorrect use of grammar can give the wrong meaning but more importantly is really very bloody annoying to me and those getting it wrong should be shot or gently corrected

Yes, the order of operations is as follows:

First: Simplify all operations inside parentheses.
Second: Simplify all exponents, working from left to right.
Third: Perform all multiplications and divisions, working from left to right.
Fourth: Perform all additions and subtractions, working from left to right.

Apparently English teachers will simply teach the children to go left to write and then will late tell the order of operations. Bloody stupid. Why not teach the correct way in the first place?

In fact, this reminds me that I should teach this to DD beofre some idiot comes along and tells her something that is just plain wrong.

Ha! "Left to write" Oh how embarrassing!!

RIGHT

Quite right Strix I've already had Words with DD on the subject of BEDMAS (the arithmetic ordering mnemonic). It's vitally important if you're ever going to get hands on with computers, including spreadsheets, databases etc.

We used to call him it BODMAS. And he was a god.

Possibly the single most useful thing I learnt in all my years at secondary school.

honestly i have definitely never heard of BEDMAS or BODMAS!
i went to a good all girls comprehensive and got an A in GCSE Maths
must ask dh, he went to a sink school but has A level maths...

actually that is cruel. his 6th form college was ok!

Get him on to explain to us, then, LeQ. I want to know.

BODMAS rule - Brackets Open Divide Multiply Add Subtract - that's how I was taught it at school.

Reading this thread has been funny - I'm a grammar pedant (and also a teacher - an academic one at that) but I'm a little at some of the replies here!

I don't think it's a good idea to ask your DS to actively seek out his teacher's grammar mistakes - all you are teaching him is that she's incompetent. Whether or not that is actually the case is still to be confirmed! Perhaps it would be better to ask him to tell you IF he notices (if that makes sense?).

BTW, correcting a school letter and sending it back? Really? Someone must have far too much time on their hands! I admit I do cringe at some of the letters we (our senior management team, I mean) send home, but that's taking things a little bit too far, don't you think?