I don't read my Facebook News Feed thingy. That's because 95% of the things that come through it are stupid shit my kids say. And the stupid shit my kids say is of no interest to me. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of shit they post is so absurdly high that occasionally, my eyes (disobeying the strict directions of my brain) read a post or two.
And when that happens, it's like a stab to the teacher-heart. Their spelling is just so damn atrocious! There's no way it qualifies as English.
The spelling lessons, homework, tests, cutting up pieces of paper with similarly-sounding words on them and rearranging the pieces in different groups (yea, that's the 'creative, interactive' bullshit they make kids do to 'learn' these days).... all those hours! All that work! For what?! Ahhhh a waste! A fucking waste!
To honor the mess my students have made with their written English skills, here is an abridged, not even close to fully inclusive, mini-lesson in decoding Self-proclaimed Badass Kids' Online Speak:
The letter q replaces the letter g
example: "lookinq cute" or "omq what's qood with the lipstick"
uu replaces ou
example: "i c yuu"
dh or d- replaces th
example: "I have more dhan yuu" or "dhat's how much i love yuu" or "have yuu seen dis"
mii replaces me
example: "talk to mii"
mahh replaced mad or my
example: "dhat's mahh funny!" or "yuu mahh best friend"
knoe replaces know
example: "did yuu knoe it mahh birthday"
-variations of the include: dha, da
-variations of girl include: gurl, ghurl, ghurll
It's truly a complex language that the street-savvy urban child has mastered by 5th grade and that the younger, urban toddler aspires to learn before his 10th birthday.
I, on the other hand, would be perfectly content to shoot their fingers straight off their hands and call it a day.
Here is the fruit of all my fucking troubles:
There is this one theory in the teaching world that kids' use of social media is helpful to their education. Pundits (oh and you can guarantee these assholes haven't had any interaction with a public school kid in the last 20 years, or ever, for that matter) claim that all the brief writing kids do on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and while texting, is actually beneficial to them-- it improves their writing skills and makes them smarter or some shit like that. However, after reading my kids' Facebook posts, I think we can all agree that:
1) this theory is WRONG
2) social media/texting is making my kids dumber (or at the very least encouraging bad habits that will inevitably transfer to their school work)
3) once these education experts see my evidence, they will undoubtedly agree with what I've said. (And make me queen of education theory.)
