Wednesday, August 22

Your Score Is.... 100%!

Congratulations, you scored in the highest percentile. You don't let very many mispronunciations slip by. No sir, not you. You speak quite properly, and everyone is impressed with your command of the English language. But do keep in mind, you probably come across as bookish and pedantic!

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16 comments:

Unknown said...

They say bookish and pedantic as though they're pejorative.

Metamatician said...

Yeah, as well as misogynistic and necrophiliac. What's wrong with those guys? Are they Amish or something?

Metamatician said...

They did get me pegged on the autodidact part... I think every truly bright person (as opposed to collegiate factory products) learns all the really useful stuff about the world on his or her own. I've learned so much more from my own reading than from all my schooling put together, it's a joke.

Metamatician said...

Oops, that was on the intelligence quiz or something. Shows how valid that quiz was! Dummy me.

Unknown said...

Curmudgeon/

It's true that many universities are essentially finishing schools for a certain segment of our population (and worthless keg parties for another), but that shouldn't actually be offered as too strong a criticism. I think the argument should be for more finishing, frankly...

/Curmudgeon

Metamatician said...

*Bludgeons the curmudgeon*

I think the whole education system should be redesigned so that kids get their K through 2nd year of college (general ed) out of the way by the end of the 12th grade.

School curriculum is a joke as it is, and the problem is underpaid and undertrained teachers, and social issues with the children that schools are increasingly handcuffed from doing anything about. Not to mention cell phones, iPods, PSPs, problems at home, and all the other distractions.

If you pack those two years of general ed (college level English, Rhetoric, Math, Physical Science, Philosophy, and Psychology... screw history, art, music, government, and other subjects not everyone will need) into the public schools, you end up training more people to understand life and people, think scientifically/rationally, form and soundly express opinions, and have solid reading, writing, and arithmetic skills that will serve them wherever they go from there. This makes them "intelligent people" (though I use that word lightly.)

THEN they can go to a University where practical skills are taught, such as how to be a doctor, how to be a lawyer, how to be a teacher, how to be an engineer, how to run a business, how to be a psychologist, how to be a chef, and so on. Some Universities would be dedicated to pure research - theoretical physics, math, and such.

Universities would only teach one discipline so they could completely focus on being the very best at it. Some campuses might house several Universities in separate buildings, but they would not cross paths. In special cases of people wanting education in multiple disciplines, they would need to complete their degrees in them in serial fashion, one after another.

This would simplify things so much. Primary school (K-12) would shape a growing mind to think critically about the world, it's meaning, and our minds, as well as provide the tools for investigating further on one's own and having the ability to express oneself clearly and professionally, manage numbers (money, statistics, slugging percentages).

University would train this well brought up student with an eager and curious mind to learn specific skills, "become" something, and fill that role in society.

Of course this is so sensible it will never happen. Education ought to be under Federal control too, not State or local, so we don't get nutjobs in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Georgia teaching our kids about Adam and Eve and other lies. Textbooks should be standardized nationwide and written by the leading minds in each discipline, with the collaboration of a very accessible author who can team with her or him to make the latest, best information we have still understandable to most people. Why waste money on hundreds of different basic math texts for lower grades? It's the same stuff in all of them, just make great book that kids really respond well too and use that one everywhere. Update it every year in fields that change substantively, and pay for everything with Federal funds, which should be carved out of the War Chest if needed.

I believe Geography, History, Economics, Health, Life Skills, Politics, Ecology, and Ethics are important too but I'm not sure at the moment how to work them into the primary school environment. It could involve a rotating schedule during the week, as long as that didn't diminish the quality of teaching each to an unacceptable level.

Classes should be two hours long with a ten minute break in between. This way there's enough time to actually dig into a topic, a discussion, a group project, or a lab experiment. The 50 minute classes of today are a joke. You get maybe 30 minutes of real teaching into each class.

Wow, you've really got me thinking now. I would completely redesign testing too. I can think of enough changes I would make to write an entire monograph on the subject, but I will spare everyone and stop here. Maybe I'll write that monograph as a white paper and distribute it as a PDF if I ever do it. I know hundreds of other people have tried to reform education and failed. The thing is, I wouldn't fail. If I did it would be because of politics, inertia, and abdication of responsibility by leaders elected to do what's best for their constituency. My school system would be twice as good as the one that exists now, and I wouldn't expect anyone to believe me because I'm a charming salesman, I'd prove it scientifically on a portion of the country and show them the data, which would be irrefutable.

Then we would once again have the best schools and therefore the best education workforce/population in the world. Plus we'd save a fortune nationally not having so much redundancy at every level. Make education about first educating the person to use his or her brain. Then train them very pragmatically in how to do a chosen job. Voila! A smarter country and a more efficient workforce, which means also a richer country.

Then we take some of that wealth at the federal level and help disadvantaged countries trapped in a cycle or ignorance and poverty to build the same kind of system and modernize their way of life. The only requirement their entire country would have to be at peace (no major conflicts) before the could receive this aid. It would include family planning and the aformentioned ecology, to keep populations manageable and the environment from being pillaged.

Disarming and complying with peace accords and UN environmental mandates would increase their position on the aid list.

Perhaps eventually a world education system could be run centrally from the UN, but we aren't ready for that any time soon. Peace must be brought about largely through education and eradication of religion. I have no ideas how this would be done, except to put giant craters in the middle east and the bible belt.

Anyway, I've rambled (Rambo'd) enough. If I get serious about such a reform proposal I'll put it in the white paper and let you all know when it's done. This type of subject is much to complex and broad to live on a comment page.

Sara said...

I gave up halfway through on this one. It was written by an American, and you guys don't know how to pronounce anything!;-)

Metamatician said...

Um, it's you lot who say "aluminIum" instead of the proper term "aluminum" (no second "i"). I looked up the etymology of this world ages ago wondering who was right, and it turns out that IUPAC (the international chemistry standards setters, not the rapper) definitely makes a point that ALUMINUM is the correct spelling and thus pronunciation, and was named such by its discoverer. This was all settled internationally about 50 years ago in Stockholm and every country says it correctly now except yours.

Got any words for me that would demonstrate a mispronunciation? Remember, there are such things as accents and dialects (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand) and that doesn't fall under the category of mispronunciation. It's perfectly consistent and correct within that culture and is listed in the respective dictionaries as being so.

You confused bastards have a different way of pronouncing each word every ten miles you go, when you get to the next village. There must be more dialects in the British Isles than in most countries three times its size. And I'm only talking English - Welsh and Irish look like alien carvings on scrap metal found in the middle of a New Mexican crash site.

:-P

Metamatician said...

By the way, I looked at this quiz again and none of the words are "Americanisms." There is no reason a Brit shouldn't get 100% on this test. Dollars to donuts the Oxford Unabridged has the pronunciations the same as the correct answers on this quiz. You just bowed out because you're lazy!

Thesaurus Rex said...

Try squirrel. Not to eat, to say.
There's no such thing as a 'Squirl'
Lever!!! I rest our case!
The Pulchritudinous One has written a book of pronounciations as observed around her weirdo.
Excerpts;
Flaaaz. (n)colourful things that grow on stalks in gardens.
Skaw (n) educational establishment for children.
Margri'Facha.(n) personification of evil and person held responsible for almost all current problems in society. Subject to be avoided in conversation at all times

Sara said...

Ha! That told 'im, Rex me old cobba! Tee hee.

Metamatician said...

The funny part of this all is, I can understand you both perfectly, even through all your pronunciation-challenged banter. I guess being an American grants me certain supernatural powers that other people, like The Terrorists, simply don't have, God bless them.

Metamatician said...

And yes I pronounce "squirrel" with two syllables, and "lever" is just a case where the norm here is "leh-ver," ergo that's what I say so people won't think I'm one of those pretentious, gay British guys.

If I lived in your neck of the woods I'd be happy to say "LEE-ver," "reh-NAY-saunce," "innit," "MEE-thane," etc., and to spice it up with interjections such as "Smashing!" and the all-purpose "Brilliant!"

I'd still say "Uh-LOO-min-um," though. Probably have the whole island saying it by the time I was done.

Sara said...

And so ad infinitum.

Actually, people still occasionally take the piss when I use the odd Americanism. I never developed an accent, but it's difficult not to take on expressions and the general cadence of a language. When my children were small, they used to fascinate me with their ability to change accents, literally mid sentence depending on who they were addressing. Pure US drawl to their friends and then back to a home counties English accent with their father and I and each other.

What's even weirder was my eldest daughter's ability to speak backwards absolutely fluently, as if it were a real language. We used to try and catch her out by reading her paragraphs from books and having her repeat it all backwards. She was syllable perfect everytime. Kind of unnerving actually. In recent years I've come to wonder if it could possibly be connected to a very mild form of autism? But some things I'll probably never know for sure.

Metamatician said...

That's the most interesting thing I've heard in years. She should present herself at a university to help linguists and neurologists better understand the mind-speech connection.

Crazy stuff!

Sara said...

Funny you should mention that, but someone I once knew was studying psychology and mentioned my daughter's strange ability to one of his professors. Apparently the guy said that what she was doing shouldn't actually be possible. So yes, it is really weird. it started when she was around eleven years old and ill in bed with a fever. She said that as she was lying there she realised that her thinking was backwards in her head, seemingly a strange side effect of slight delirium. When she was better, something had changed and from then on she had the ability to think and speak perfect backwards speech. She's a strange girl. A few years later she invented a kind of hieroglyphic alphabet in which to write her private diaries and she could write in this strange code as fast as if if were her normal language. Definitely an alien child.

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