Strive Notes

You don’t have to agree with someone to admire them. It is with just such a sentiment I regard Dr Ken Smith who suggested certain key words, often misspelt by his university students, should be accepted as ‘variants’ and their misspelling overlooked.

You have to admire him for coming up with such a bad suggestion with such conviction.
It was a bit like watching the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf who gave a series of press conferences during the invastion of Iraq that have put him in the annals of least plausible comments in modern history. Remember when he said that US troops were not in Baghdad at the start of the Iraqi invasion, when we had all seen plenty of footage to the contrary.

Both Dr Smith and Minister Sahhaf provoke amused incredulity, with a touch of admiration, because they’re so wrong and yet prepared to broadcast their statements.

Professor Smith, who is senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, said in an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, that he’s ‘fed up’ with correcting his students’ ‘atrocious spelling’ so suggested certain words should be accepted as variants.

These words included: arguement, Febuary, ignor, ocurred, opertuniry, que, speach, thier, truely and twelth.
It ocurred to him (possibly on the twelth of Febuary) there was the opertunity to ignor truely bad spelling. He obviously couldn’t be ‘bovvered’ to correct them any more.

Naturally his proposal has provoked mainly negative feedback on the Times’ website. Good spelling demonstrates attention to detail, said Jon C and is the ‘hallmark of professionalism.’ Sloppy use betrays sloppy thinking.

Alex D said getting ‘thier’ right does matter and that there’s quite a difference between: ‘Let’s shoot there son’ and ‘Let’s shoot their son.’

How would the professor feel if the same relaxed standards were applied to criminology, asked another. You’ve almost got to admire the professor for this wholesale surrender to bad education.

Ironically, support for the proposal would probably not come from Sahhaf, who is now living in the United Arab Emirates (although he’d possibly deny that) because he has a masters degree in English literature from Baghdad university and was intent on becoming an English teacher before Saddam Hussein and Iraqi’s ‘arguement’ with the rest of the world interrupted/interupted.

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