To be so angry about this stupid English teacher!

[ILikeTrains]

My daughter's just told me how her English teacher has corrected her on her spelling of apostrophe. Not a huge thing to get angry about except that my daughter's spelling it correctly and the teacher keeps telling her to spell it apostrophie! This is her English teacher, how on Earth is she supposed to respect and be inspired by this teacher.

I know it's quite a small this to get annoyed about but it's just really wound me up.

That's brilliant, Zipzap

BOF I agree and I am sorry if my posts have been interpreted as goady. I share the same opinion of the marvellous TAs.

God, no, not at all, Anais! You really made me think when you pointed out that having an adult 'authorise' the wrong spelling/grammar could be totally counter-productive with some more academically able children with autism.

Your general point is right. The only reason I remembered the Einstein-Szilard fridge (which my recollection of reading about, pace Wonkypedia, was that it didn't actually work) was because I've recently been reading about the Einstein-Szilard letter.

It shows that Einstein really, really wasn't an inventor: his physics was fundamental to the Manhattan Project, and yet he hadn't realised the implications (Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht) and was denied clearance to work on the bomb anyway. All over Europe, various physicists were thinking about nuclear weapons, and in Birmingham actually coming up with viable designs using plausible amounts of material and yet Einstein made essentially no contribution.

BOF - no worries.

Mwah

back atcha

I was a boring swot in school, but my teachers were perplexed by me always getting in trouble with my English A-level teacher. This was because she was thick as pigshit and I couldn't keep my gob shut at some of her clangers. A few precious gems I remember from her:

That I had made up the word quintessential.
That onomatopoeia was not a foreign word and is not spelt onnomattopier.
That chimpanzees are monkeys.
That baby horses are ponies.
That there are no words in the English language with more than 10 syllables - and when I pointed out that antidisestablishmentarianism has more than 10, she tried to give me a detention.

It came to a head when I got sent to the Head for 'insolence'. He asked me what I had done to provoke the teacher, and I told him that I had tried to persuade her that holidays was not spelt 'holliday's'. After that, they realised she was crap and I wan't a bad kid (although a pedantic little smartarse, obviously).

She also took things literally (that made studying the Metaphysical Poets fun - not), and read reeeeally slowly, with her finger under each word. It's a surprise I'm still a bookworm after being taught by her.

Sorry, the onomatopoeia thing is messed-up, I meant that SHE said it was foreign and spelt wrongly.

Well, you have to make a mistake on a pedantry thread, it's the law!

Onomatopoeia is a foreign word? It's Greek, Isn't it?

It's from a Greek term, yes, but if we start calling every word with an originally non-English extraction 'foreign', then we'd have virtually no words that weren't technically 'foreign'. Also, the teacher meant it to mean that it wasn't a word used in the UK, like I was coming out with a random foreign word to try to look clever.

Oh I see. Personally I love 'foreign' words - I love tracing the roots of them. Is it Etymology?

Lol at making up the word "quintessential".

Also love zipzap's story - top marks for inventiveness.