THE weird habit of writing ‘are’ instead of ‘our’ suggests many Brits are being failed by the education system. Here are some other worrying signs.
‘Are’ instead of ‘our’
Something has gone badly wrong here. These are two entirely different words. You wouldn’t say ‘I’d like to learn to ride a hearse’. It’s basically phonetic written English, in which case soon expect work emails like: ‘Meating at 12pm but there will be sand wedges layed on.’
A very confused understanding of history and/or politics
Non-historians aren’t expected to know the exact start date of the Chartist movement, but it’s handy to know basic facts like: England had a civil war, Jacob Rees-Mogg is not the prime minister, and there is a vanishingly small chance of Hitler still being alive in Buenos Aires.
Blind faith in calculators
Unless you’re a bit weird and love sums, a calculator is best for totting up figures. However reports abound of pupils doing things like adding 27 to 151, accidentally adding a zero to the latter and thinking 1,537 is correct.
Common phrase abuse
Strangely creative in some ways, eg. ‘Deaf as a door handle’, but still wrong. Eventually all metaphorical cliches will be mangled to death, with people saying things like: ‘He’s the fly in the oinkment, with brass nobs on.’
Unsupported opinions are not an argument
Even GCSEs require you to support your arguments, so you’d think people might have taken this on board. Nah. As Brexit Britain has proved, if you’ve imagined we subsidise the EU – which makes all our laws – that’s a FACT.
A general love of stupid crap
Love Island, Daily Mail comments, getting heavily into debt with online bingo – Brits do love moronic things. Although all of these are pretty erudite compared to the average episode of BBC Question Time at the moment.
