to want my child's teacher to understand how apostrophes work!!!

[intothenever]

DD is writing things like 'She live's in a house' and has been taught that the plural of potato is potato's! I am getting really pissed off!

One is reminded of poor old Napoleon

One is reminded of poor old Boxer, of course.

Like maths . People say, hilariously, "Oh I'm HOPELESS at maths! Could NEVER do it!" and beam around looking for people to agree with them, which they generally do, to be fair. And if you go against the herd and say anything like "Actually I liked maths and was quite good at it at school," they look at you as though you're a boasting, freakish bastard.

Friday and laqueen, you are so right!

You can't possibly consider becoming a teacher if you can't score 100% in the literacy and numeracy tests designed for 10 and 11 year olds.

I think it a damning indictment of how low standards/expectations are nowdays, that knowing how to use an apostrophe, or what an adverb/noun is is viewed as esoteric information - reserved for a chosen few, and not necessary for the masses

You're inventing again, laqueen.

I certainly think the teacher should know, and if she doesn't that's bad. I just wouldn't be so worried about a six year old knowing. Time enough at 8 or 9, which seem much more usual ages.

Who said that understanding apostrophes is arcane knowledge for the elite? Since it is a damning indictment etc, I assume someone has said so at some point?

Ah, definite implications again! I getcha.

Of course teachers should be sound on spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy, though I'd be prepared to cut an otherwise competent chemistry teacher, say, some slack if her spelling was a bit dodgy but she knew the symbol for nitric acid and didn't spell it sulphuric acid.

But as always, I am amused by posters who bang on about the importance of SPAG, while making basic errors that can't really be explained by just mucking about.

If you know the basics, they flow automatically. Though not impossible, it's quite hard for someone who does to consistently put apostrophes, for instance, in the wrong place.

There will be mistakes in my post, particularly in my use of commas which I'm weak on. The difference is, I don't claim that it's easy or make unconvincing excuses for my mistakes.

Agree with all that, limited.

I just noticed this:

An ex-employer of mine (headteacher of a large primary in a deprived area in the UK) announced in a staff meeting that 'Spelling doesn't matter these days'

I wonder. If his school got put into special measures, and he had to write a response to Ofsted in order to retain his and his senior staff's jobs, would he (a) throw it down casually and not worry about the SPaG too much as it doesn't matter these days or (b) obsessively proof-read it so that it was perfect, and then get someone else to check?

Because my money's on (b). Which is a bit odd, isn't it?

Is that what people are talking about laqueen?

Through out (sic) the school year?

Thing is, we could all probably live without apostrophes couldn't we? I don't think they add much to our understanding of written English. In fact I'm quite surprised they aren't already obsolete, given that at least 50% of the population can't use them properly.
Out of interest, do other languages have an equivalent?

So the choice is the teacher doesn't know how to use apostrophoes or your very young child doesn't. Hmmm. Difficult call.

Apostrophes even.

Except the lecturers can't always, LaQ. Plenty of bloody good minds are crap at punctuation - thankfully there's more to academia than prefect apostrophes.

I wouldn't demand perfect SPaG from a science teacher any more than I'd require tip top mental arithmetic from a linguist.

Johnny, I wouldn't call knowing how to spell the plural of potato "perfect SPaG", I'd call it "fairly rudimentary SPaG".

Well, I really don't give a rat's arse about whether the 'great minds' can punctuate or not. I do care about whether those people entrusted with teaching young children the basics of English are competent or not though.

There are lots of apostrophes in Dutch, Moomin. And I think, confusingly, they use them for making plurals.

I could be wrong about this, though. I got it just from glancing through a text book.

no Nadia, they don't

They use them pretty much the same way as in English, possessive and omission.

But I may be wrong, post an example where you think it is plural and I will try and tell you

I think you can expect someone to be good at something you're not good at yourself. That is if the skill is a fundamental part of their job. I would expect a teacher (primary or secondary English) to be good at SpaG in the same way I would expect an electrician to be good at wiring or a plumber good with pipes.

I certainly would be annoyed if a teacher "corrected" dd's work to something as wrong as potato's for the plural of potato. I work on the principal if someone who struggled as much as I did with English can spot an error then it's a glaring error.