To wonder how the HELL some people get into university?

[SayYuleNowSayWhipTheReindeer]

I'm currently doing a degree as a mature student alongside work, and am just amazed at the stupidity lack of knowledge some of my fellow students have. For instance, nearly all of them - on a fecking ENGLISH LANGUAGE degree course - mix up "your" and you're", "there" and "their", and use the spelling "definately".

I overheard a conversation today that involved several students talking about how they didn't know their times tables above 5 or 6.

AIBU to seriously wonder if it's even worth doing a degree if this is the standard they're allowing in at the moment?

I would expect 100% of undergraduates to know what a comma is. I would expect a significantly smaller proportion of them to know how to use a comma properly.

Good point grovel!

Yes, I would be really shocked if they didn't know. But I would recognize it's general knowledge, and in my discipline it'd actually be a useful teaching opportunity, because I could then point out to them that the texts they are studying with me don't usually use commas either, and they've been put in by modern editors to help us understand older texts.

Punctuation is thought to have developed in the West in response to increasing numbers of not-very-educated readers who needed extra help to understand texts.

I have had students who don't know the name of the apostrophe, FWIW.

I do not aree at all.

Elementary punctuation is not 'general knowledge' at all, it is a fundamental part of one's education.

No one who has such a poor grasp of English should even be offered a place at a British university. If this is not the case then I must give up in despair and can only comment that the OP's question seems to have been answered.

Pendeen, how many teachers do you think can teach proper comma usage?

Pendeen, please define 'general knowledge'. You seem to think it's somehow different from education and separable from educational background. It's not.

If a student did not know what a comma was, but had got into my class, I would assume until proven otherwise that he or she was an able student. Universities don't just had out places on a random basis, they look at grades. I very much doubt that someone who got the A Level results to get into university would not have compensating strengths that were rather more important than their ability to punctuate correctly.

I look at it this way: I want to teach people who are good at English. I want them to be able to analyze text and respond intelligently to different theories about language and written culture and forms of communication. Punctuation is a tiny, tiny part of that; spelling is a tiny, tiny part of that. It is also more important that a student be able to analyze someone else's grammar or punctuation, than that they be able to use correct grammar and punctuation for themselves.

If I have a student who can respond to text well, and engage well with what we're reading, I will forgive them for poor SPAG, because those skills do not tell me very much about their ability in this subject. I will try to teach them those skills, because they are considered important in society in general, and because it is conventional to use them correctly in academic writing, so that everyone can read each other's work easily.

Wow, a little hostile there, LRD. I'm not sure why you're painting what I said in some sort of imperialist light, that's certainly not what the intention was. I don't think at any point I called anyone stupid, I am more worried that schools are utterly failing people.

I stand by my point that there is stuff that everyone knows - maybe you don't like it, maybe you think I am ignorant but I am sure you are more surprised when someone British doesn't know the capital of England than when someone British doesn't know the capital of Angola. That is what I mean by the gap between general knowledge and stuff that everyone (everyone in particular social and historical context) knows.

Of course in different cultures people are not necessarily taught the capital of England. Of course if I go to another country I am the one not in the know. I don't think anyone is arguing that that is not the case.

What people are arguing is that it is ridiculous to have gone through 13 years of school, to be going to a good university and yet your level of schooling is so poor that you don't know who Hitler is. Do you honestly think in her 13 years of school, the war had never been mentioned? Or do you think that she just didn't care enough to listen?

Eh?!

What on earth ... I never mentioned imperialism. Where are you getting that from?

I've no idea what country or culture you're from and I didn't speculate, either.

However, there is not 'stuff everyone knows'. By saying that, you disprove your own point. Obviously there are things not everyone knows, including for example the correct use of punctuation.

I don't know if you're not reading my posts or what (I am honestly utterly confused at this point), but I have said a few dozen times that it's pretty shocking when students whose schooling was meant to teach them certain things have got to 18 without learning some of the most basic of those things.

I can say it again if that helps? But other than that what do you want me to say .... that general knowledge is the dependent on educational background, or that it's not? That 'everyone' knows certain things, or that they don't?

You seem to be arguing both sides of the case here and undercutting your own points in the process.

LeQueen - sorry, but I don't think there are so many who excel at both that we can afford to use an irrelevant measure to discriminate. I mean, why bother?

I'm not really into arguing on the internet. But I think you're taking "everyone" quite literally. Maybe I should have phrased it "stuff everyone who is going to a good university should know". No, you didn't say the word imperialist, you just suggested it heavily, maybe that wasn't your intention, but that's how it came across.

I am off now, thanks for the debate.

Um, ok.

Yes, obviously it's my mistake as I took the term 'everyone' literally. After all, having queried the concept of 'stuff everyone knows', and suggested clearer language might help, it really was unfair of me to assume you meant what you said.

TBH, this is why IMO there are much worse things a student of English can struggle with than spelling or punctuation. A complete inability to use language is much more of a problem.

FWIW, 'imperialism' is quite a specific term, and I do not understand why you think I was talking about that when I talked about cultural and educational context, especially since my references were to cultures separated by time, not by place.

'LRD if we could return to reasonable and normal numbers of undergraduates i.e. 7-9% of the population going to university - then there'd a very high probability of students who excel at both.'

I have to disagree. This to me is like saying 'if we only admitted 7-9% of undergraduates, we could select those who were good at English and didn't need wheelchairs', or 'we could select those who were good at English and White British'. These things are true, but also morally unpleasant, at least to most of us.

I agree that sending 50% of people to university is absurd and damaging to standards. But I think your assumption that what you really want to select for is ability in a not-very-relevant area, is a bit odd. Why would you want to do that? What would it achieve in the long run? Would you not worry that, by rejecting people because they didn't have the unnecessary skill, you'd end up also rejecting a few people who might be very good?

There are 16 different uses of the comma. I doubt that most people know how to use commas correctly. I would have to consult a punctuation guide if I wanted to make absolutely sure that I was using them correctly throughout an essay.

Ah, but we have yet to establish that SPAG are relevant to the subject in more than a tangential way. I would argue that good spelling is merely convenient to doing English Lit, just as being able to see is helpful if you want to read books, but we don't prevent blind students from using alternative technologies.

I can understand where you're coming from, but being part of the 7-9% at the top of my subject in teh current system and part of the group who'd have been rejected in yours, obviously I do have a vested interest. A fairly large number of people who are in the top 1-2% in the current system would be rejected in your system. I find that really sad, and I can't agree it'd be ok to lose them in favour of someone less good at the subject but better at spelling. To me, that would destroy the whole point of Higher Education, which is about academic excellence, not about rehashing who was best at primary school.

LeQ - sorry, are you advising me what I should do here or do you mean 'anyone' when you say 'you' (I have to be careful, I don't want to be over-literal again).

I think students should be judged on their aptitude in the subject. Not on other criteria that are not directly relevant. Otherwise where do you draw the line? Do you insist they should also be the ones who are prettiest, or have the nicest speaking voices, or what?

Personally, I can't imagine anything more dull that a writer's workshop or book club ... and while I do enjoy reading it's not the same thing as enjoying English Lit (as anyone who hates having their favourite novel pulled apart will tell you).

I'm also an academic. And I care, a lot, about spelling and grammar. LRD, the point about spelling for me is that a lot of English spellings tell you where the words come from. 'Immediately' is not 'immeadiately' because it comes from Latin, in medias, in the middle. Philosophy is not fillosoffy because the 'ph' is the mark of a transliterated Greek word, and if you know any glimmer of Greek you can then work out that it means, or once meant, a love of knowledge. Then you can think about how the meaning has shifted. If we lose the distinctions in spelling, we also start to lose the etymology, and with it any hope of students understanding the real richness of the English language. Grammar matters because it's how we control meaning - I don't see how you can have any kind of meaningful writing without grammar, and in fact students with an insecure hold on grammar don't produce meaningful writing. They are impoverished and disabled as writers by their lack of education in spelling and grammar, and also deprived of a vocabulary for discussing literary texts and styles. I don't usually try to offer more than emergency patches for these gaping holes, because it's not fair to those who are equipped to learn what it's really my job to teach if I spend time on remedial writing, but I think that primary and secondary education have betrayed the majority of my bright, hard-working, engaged students. What's more worrying is that we then send these same ill-equipped students out to become teachers, thus perpetuating the cycle.

LeQ, it's even clearer than that in my view. You can't be good at analysing poetry if you have no vocabulary for or understanding of grammar and syntax.

LeQ - how could you prove that you'd be keeping people who were equally good at both, though? My impression is that spelling is a poor measure of how good someone is at English Lit, so I doubt you could prove that.

But I'll reply to Bertha and maybe answer your point in the process.

BP - I think you are conflating two different things. You talk about etymology and (current) orthography. Yes, this can be very useful to any student. But your logic doesn't seem to me to follow. You assume someone would only spell 'philosophy' with a 'f' if they were ignorant of the Greek. This isn't true IME. I'm perfectly capable of producing a spelling that is incorrect, even while I'm thinking of the Greek word. In fact I quite often write 'th' as 'p' because I confuse it with the sign used to write 'th' in Middle English. The problem is not that I'm ignorant of the etymology - it's that my brain still mixes up the spellings when I'm actually trying to write.

I do take your point that there are some deficiencies that can't be made up easily. There is a level at which a person will be unable to analyze language because they do not have language. But I do not think the examples given - eg. being unaware of the formal name of a punctuation mark, or confusing 'your' and 'you're' are necessarily this kind of problem. They may be. Often, a student with these inabilities will also be unable to study English Lit. But not always, IMO. Sometimes it is as simple as it seems - a glitch, a missing bit of data that the student needs to learn.