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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3931 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Similarly, spelling and punctuation just seems to be a skillset that's not as important anymore.

My nephew is 23 and started his first year of medical school this semester. From kindergarten to present he has never had any formal instruction in spelling in school. Ever. His teachers say they stopped teaching spelling under the assumption the kids would just "pick it up" as they read. To be fair his entire pre-college education was ~99% concerned with passing standardized tests at an extremely poor rural school district. Things may well be different in schools with more resources. I can say with confidence he is entirely incapable of spelling the English language correctly without spellchecking software of some sort and accidentally uses the wrong homonym about 50% of the time. Than/then and there/their/they're are essentially the exact same word for him; the meaning of the word is only deduced from context, not spelling. He finished his undergrad with no issues.

My understanding is that several school districts across the country have periodically rolled out (and then revoked) what amounts to an "immersion" program for English grammar. It becomes popular, people try it and they realize it is crap, take it away....and then bring it back out years later. If you are raised during one of the rollouts...it fucking sucks.

Isn't spelling kind of important for a doctor? He could kill people with misspelled prescriptions.

Nah it was a historical problem back in the days of handwriting but these days communication is almost all by electronic medical records, sometimes people will give out hard prescriptions but it is easy for doctors to dial in and make it legible. More than spelling you used to have issues dosages and frequencies in the handwritten days though.

Incidentally many medications are either super easy to spell (often brand names) or absolutely fucking impossible without external help.

Considering your nephew is going to medical school he's clearly intelligent but it is shocking to hear that even intelligent individuals have that much issue with spelling, considering how often you'd come across someone complaining about bad grammar. People used to make songs/parodies about grammar and spelling, such as Weird Al's Word Crime or youtuber Jack film's Raping vs Rapping. I wonder if there is similar content being produced for entertainment nowadays poking fun at spelling/grammar, or if the next generation just don't care anymore.

I wondered if bad spelling or grammar can lead to a death, similar to how doctors' sloppy handwriting killed 7000 annually but I can't come up with a plausible scenario similar to the bad handwriting one, and there doesn't seem to be any such cases.

Is this in the United States?

That seems so alien to my experience with school.

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