Why I Shouldn’t be an English Teacher
In an unusually pedantic mood, I decided to…
Actually, let me start again.
In a usually pedantic mood, I decided to wander around my bar today and point out all of the things that contained grammatical and/or spelling errors; which, as it turns out, was just about everything. It started to annoy me to think about how little people care. This is a place of customer-orientated business, and yet there is no concern towards the writing when sending out confirmation emails with typos, displaying menus with grammatical mistakes, or writing up specials with misspelled words. It’s a direct representation of the company itself, and while nine out of ten people around here don’t seem to notice or care, what’s the harm in ensuring that you please ten out of ten people?
After about half an hour of me grumbling about this, a couple of my co-workers asked me why I wasn’t an English teacher, which at first I didn’t read into too much, simply quipping that with them around, I basically was an english teacher; however, something moderately annoying then occurred to me.
Why should I be an English teacher? Because I can write and spell and speak English correctly? Nonsense! That’s the bare minimum that every English person, or any person who primarily speaks the English language, should be able to do. It shouldn’t be seen as ‘special’ that I can string a sentence together, it should be seen as typical.
Given that I live in an area the clings to such a grudge against foreign workers who “hardly speak English“, I find it interesting that so many people can put language proficiency on such a pedestal without even realising how poorly they speak it themselves.
--- Grumpy Comments --- 
Damn Straight! We’re slipping further my friend..
It’s ironic that I feel the need to point out that an ellipsis has three dots, and not two; but either way, yes we are!
It was a test(…)
I agree 100000% ! I worked at Swiss Chalet while attending U of T and took great pride in correcting all the spelling and grammar errors sprawled across the many smug ‘notices’ they put up around the restaurant. I even went so far as to add my own footnotes to further explain the grammatical rules for the corrections I had made…
I also have a minor heart attack almost every day when I find spelling or grammatical errors in major newspapers, or hear newscasters speak incorrectly over the radio or tv…
It’s a plague of ignorance… the ‘dumbing down of America’, as my British born, grammar-school educated father often rants…
I am a language teacher, incidentally… In fact, I speak three. In my opinion, one should be embarrassed if they’ve managed to reach adulthood without attaining at least good grasp of their mother tongue…
Thanks for blogging about this! This issue is definitely atop my list of ‘pet peeves’ ;-)