I sometimes startle myself with my prescience.
A while ago, when Taarey Zameen Par was the superhit and talking point of the hour, I happened to remark in class that a time was coming when every pupil who was simply too lazy and absent-minded to spell correctly would claim that s/he was a victim of dyslexia, and so deserving of leniency rather than stern reprimands. To that extent, Aamir Khan had done all language teachers a great disservice. In any case, dyslexia is far more uncommon than sheer cussedness (I shall maintain to my dying day that spelling correctly is the first and indispensable sign of literacy – someone who misspells ten common words per written page cannot be called educated, even if he has a PhD to his name. And nothing – besides bad handwriting – so instantly identifies laziness and sloppiness as deep-rooted character traits as poor spelling does).
Well, it came true very recently. When I ruefully asked a pupil how she could possibly spell so many words wrongly, she gave me a bright smile and said ‘Sir, dyslexia!’
A while ago, when Taarey Zameen Par was the superhit and talking point of the hour, I happened to remark in class that a time was coming when every pupil who was simply too lazy and absent-minded to spell correctly would claim that s/he was a victim of dyslexia, and so deserving of leniency rather than stern reprimands. To that extent, Aamir Khan had done all language teachers a great disservice. In any case, dyslexia is far more uncommon than sheer cussedness (I shall maintain to my dying day that spelling correctly is the first and indispensable sign of literacy – someone who misspells ten common words per written page cannot be called educated, even if he has a PhD to his name. And nothing – besides bad handwriting – so instantly identifies laziness and sloppiness as deep-rooted character traits as poor spelling does).
Well, it came true very recently. When I ruefully asked a pupil how she could possibly spell so many words wrongly, she gave me a bright smile and said ‘Sir, dyslexia!’
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7 comments:
Aargh! This is one of those things which makes me slap my head and grin very grimly while wanting to hang the student(who forwards the idiotic-smart-alecky comment) upside down from her toes.
Egad! Just imagine - if manic-depression had been the theme of a movie there may have been a student who would say, "I can't help but be creative with my spellings. I'm manic, you see." If she were lazy and did no homework - she would bat her eyes and sniffle, "I'm depressive, didn't you know?
I’ve seen very odd spellings – so odd that it takes a while to even begin to understand what the writer (and someone over 18) wants to say. And I’m not talking about long and ‘difficult’ words but words like ‘individual’ and ‘phenomena’…
I have seen many odd specimens of handwriting too. One doesn't expect little bugs crawling around on a sheet nor tiny fighting matchstick figures. One doesn’t expect to be bombed by all capitals in an essay nor does one expect an original and artistic combination of caps and smaller cases in some random sequence.
Personally, I've had a curious and interesting relationship with handwriting all along…
Also, I’ve always believed that writing in long hand makes one pay attention to one's spellings. One can write the word out on paper a couple of times to see how it 'looks’ – but I guess one needs to know how the word is supposed to look in the first place, and one needs to be able to read what one writes….
Take care. Shilpi
Suvroda,
I doubt that your observation about handwriting is based on anything concrete like a serious study. Examples of some men who had poor handwriting (but were almost certainly not lazy or sloppy) are Einstein, Baudelaire, Gandhi(although bad handwriting was a one of his big regrets) and Shakespeare (see for instance these six signatures which are probably the only specimens of his handwriting present today: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:6-known-signatures-of-shakspeare.jpg).
Which Sandeepan are you? I know nobody who is on 'Suvroda' terms with me, and I regard people who take such liberties as not deserving of a reply. A bit of courtesy always helps...
... and (this is for the rest of my readers) in 29 years of teaching at all levels from middle-school to postgraduate students, I have had the privilege of meeting hundreds of potential Einsteins, Baudelaires and Gandhis, haven't I, so I must take back my assertion and swallow humble pie, mustn't I?
Yes,Sir,I also know some self proclaimed dyslexia-having types.And horror of horrors they seem to take pride in that.My monthly question paper at my coaching institute carries the following lines on its front page-"If you found any mistake like missing questions or marks then contact immediately to the invigilator".Yesterday a "teacher" (ex-IITian, Mtech-IIT-Delhi,Phd) wrote the word "circular" as "sirculur".When I confronted him,he said,"have you come here to learn English or Physics? I am not to be slighted by young students...."
And what is worse is that these people say "Kya fark padta hai"(Does it really matter) on nearly everything.
By the way, Sandeepan - what you're talking about is called an 'e-x-c-e-p-t-i-o-n'. Ever heard of that?
There have been geniuses in this world, who have been and are labelled as being 'mad' but there are far more people in this world who just are unfortunately and uninterestingly 'mad' with no other achievements to their names.
It always amuses me to see that most of us will not only be slyly content about being sloppy, careless, lazy, and unmindful about our spellings, handwriting, mental math, G.K, and manners, and about being all-round mental midgets, but when someone brings our deep-seated deficits (in the odd hope that we may change ourselves for the better) to our attention, we also have the asinine pomposity to lean back and say, "You don't know what you’re talking about. The great ones and the geniuses had the same faults. I'm in their company..."
Of course how can anyone doubt your knowledge about the issue at hand? After all, you’ve read reading an entry in Wikipedia, and so you know all there is to know about it.
The other day I was playing a version of the hide and seek game with a three year old toddler. I told him to hide himself. Guess what he did!
He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. Such simple brilliance.
No wonder it must be sad for Sir to see such brilliant children process themselves into dyslexic adolescents and metamorphosing finally into moronic adults.
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