Grammar and teachers

[Usersooty]

I went to a popular theme park last week. Masses of school trips.

I heard so many teachers/TA’s speaking using grammatically incorrect language. It really shocked me and as we waited in (endless) queues I listened to lots of “we haven’t got no snacks”, “we’ll go toilet after this” etc etc.

I have never heard a single member of staff at my childrens schools speak like this. I’d be really concerned if they did.

It made me quite sad for the children being taught/supported academically by them.

I didn’t stare, I didn’t comment. I wasn’t rude at all. Prepared to get flamed, but AIBU to be surprised by this?

What I do see an issue with is the use of universally incorrect grammar, the most common example of which is using 'myself' in a non-reflexive setting. 'Myself and Mrs X have organised a trip..', 'please contact myself...' - I see it all the time from teaching colleagues, and it makes me internally cringe every time. I think people use it because they think it sounds posh or intelligent, when it actually makes them sound entirely the opposite.

I find the 'myself' thing utterly cringeworthy too, but I'd still consider it less incorrect than some of the examples given on this thread which some have said are dialect. Are you actually suggesting that double negatives or 'go shops' etc should be considered correct in an assessment or exam, for example?

Okay, so it is teachers. I am shocked. I don't doubt their brilliance as teachers, but I am shocked they are using non-standard / incorrect (whichever way you see it) grammar. I have never heard this from any of the teachers of my own children (state schools, north of England, variety of regional accents).

It isn't something I have really heard much. Maybe as I'm from Yorkshire and the t' is used so much and often quite subtly it hasn't really caught on in the same was as it has in other regions.

It's not something I hear from my colleagues, the children or their parents tbh.

II’m reading everyones messages. All interesting.

I think “recruitment is a nightmare” is a red herring. Yes, we don’t have enough teachers. But we’re doing a disservice to our children if the teachers we have are not the best they can be.

Surely that's just a different pronunciation of my though?

Plenty of people say rum instead of room. Should I assume they are talking about the alcoholic drink rather than a room?

Well I think there's a wider question here of what we consider to be 'correct' English.

If we recognise dialects as 'correct' English - then should we be moving towards allowing dialectical English to be acceptable in written form? Many of these grammatical 'errors' that are being quoted on this thread are not errors, they are grammatical variations that form part of a dialect. If we say these dialectical variations can only ever be used in spoken rather than written English, then what are we saying about the value of that dialect, and therefore the value of those who speak it?

Should there be a standard of formal written English that everyone uses, regardless of dialect? Or should we be accepting of dialectical grammatical variations in written English, embracing the variation of English that is spoken across the UK, and giving each dialect equal value, rather than just one?

It's an interesting debate. I'm not sure where I stand on it, to be honest. I happen to be a Southerner with an RP accent for whom 'standard' English is my dialect, but if I were someone from another part of the country, who was constantly being expected to change how I speak and being told the way I spoke was 'wrong', I might have a much stronger viewpoint. I think we need to be open to discussion on the issue. Language should be open to evolution and I think there is a huge amount of judgement and discrimination tied up in people's perception of how other people speak that could do with being addressed more widely.

I also think a lot of people don't understand the difference between accent and dialect. A lot of posters are confusing the two on this thread.

Just want to point out that the plural of TA is TAs not TA's. See it a lot, not just the OP.

“My children’s schools”.

Omfg! Do NOT get me started on the random use of apostrophes when making a noun plural. So many staff do this at my school. It's no wonder the children don't get it right either 🤦

When I was a student on placement in a school, I remember being really shocked that the very brightest were not getting all A’s at GCSE and the teachers thought that a cluster of A, B and C grades was absolutely brilliant. These children were the top few in the year. Absolutely capable of better grades than they got. They didn’t have the support to aim higher because their teachers (not all, but a significant number) really thought that achieving anything more than 5 A-C was outstanding. This was based on their own lived experience at school.

My supervisor had a long meeting with the school and they upped their expectations.

Ill be mocked for this, but I felt so bad for the child who had been so proud to get 8 B grades (“and I didn’t even revise”) who would have easily got 10 or more A grades if she’d been encouraged to work a bit harder and not just cruise through doing the minimum.

Sorry. Slightly off topic. But sometimes it feels like a race to the bottom in the UK.

YANBU I have frequently seen spelling mistakes on DC’s report card. It’s hard to take a teacher seriously when you know that they can’t even spell basic words properly.

@whatsappdoc and @Piglet89 yes! Sorry. My phone autocorrects incorrectly a LOT. I probably should have been quicker to correct on this thread 🤣

Ah, the old autocorrect being blamed, very convenient.

I'm also a southerner with an RP-ish accenf, teaching in Cumbria @EnidSpyton. I rarely see dialect or non-standard English in my students' writing. I imagine it's more common in primary. It's not as if they are in a local dialect bubble though. If anything, the non-standard British English I see is mostly Americanisms, almost certainly via YouTube and TikTok!

I do think some computer spell checks don't pick these errors up tbh. There were even some mistakes in my dd2's year book, (from SLT) which I would expect to have been proof read beforehand!

I totally agree with you OP, but I know how these threads go.

Bad English is, apparently, an official dialect now 😥

I'm a teacher, and I'm afraid it's very common- mostly from TAs, but from some teachers too. It's so frustrating, and makes it so difficult to correct the children when they're hearing incorrect grammar from other members of staff.

I worked with a primary teacher who left teaching a few years ago. She made almost all the errors pp have mentioned. I was 🫣 when she asked if I would be happy to mention her services as a tutor to families. She has her own tutoring company and the website is an EYESORE of errors. (Including “myself”)

It’s painful to think of parents who don’t notice these errors asking her to provide academic tutoring to their children. So no, I haven’t recommended her. I did offer to proof read her website and she told me she’d checked it all and it was perfect.

@Simonjt I think it’s often blamed because it often causes problems. Especially on a phone. It even autocorrects the name of one of my children (not a remotely unusual name).

I also find the incorrect use of 'myself' so cringeworthy and so common in schools!

What would you suggest?

Nobody wants to do the job at the moment-recruitment and retention are at an all-time low and people are desperate to leave. Many classes are covered by TAs and day to day supply teachers. If we get rid of anyone who you think doesn’t speak correctly, who will teach our children?

Increasing the salary and removing a lot of the pointless paperwork would be a good start. Labour talked about making teaching a Masters-level profession, that might make a difference. However at the moment, people simply don’t want to do the job so something needs to happen to change that before you start to complain about the warm bodies that are currently propping schools up.

@2mummies1baby exactly. It’s so hard to correct a child when their TA/parent has just made the same error and is still in earshot

I couldn't agree more.

I've seen a lot of this 'getting a C is amazing' attitude in schools, too. I'm a secondary teacher, but also move around schools a fair bit to deliver CPD to fellow English teachers, and deliver CPD to trainees on various ITT courses. The sad reality is that the academic quality of many trainees is poor. There is such a lack of interest in teacher training these days that candidates with C grades at A Level and GCSE, and 2:2 degrees from very average universities are being allowed to train as teachers. These teachers just don't have the intellectual capacity to teach above a certain level and they also have low expectations for their students, because their own bar for success is low due to their own lived experience.

I have no shame in being an academic snob when it comes to the recruiting of teachers. If you couldn't achieve above a C in your own schooling, how on earth are you going to be able to teach a child the skills to achieve above that grade?

Well that's a whole new debate isn't it?