Thursday, January 31, 2013

"I seen..." is not proper English (even if you're from Kentucky)

Each day, at some point, by someone, in some way, shape or form, I see, hear or read an adult-type person use a sentence with the word "I" followed by the word "seen."  I'm not an English major and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I'm pretty sure there is only once sentence that contains those two words in that order that is proper English and it goes something like this...'I seen' has the makings of shitty English.

Whether it's from someone in the office, a complete stranger at Wally World, or something I read on Facebook (Evansville Watch is hilarious, especially on the weekends), this seems to come up daily.  I just cringe when I hear it.

The problem starts at school.  Hayden is now a 3rd grader.  He wastes a lot of time at home studying for tests in Science (who cares what soil is made up of) and Social Studies (does anyone care that Portugal, Spain, France and England were the first to send explorers west).  Even in Math, he wastes a lot of time learning about shit that just doesn't matter at his age.  Kids his age should spend all day (ALL freaking day) learning how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, and how to speak gooder English.  

In his Grammar class, he's learning about irregular verbs, which I'm all in favor of (though if you just listen to most people or watch reality TV, you'd think those were actually regular verbs).  However, in Math he's moved on from adding, subtracting and multiplying, to learning about right triangles, isosceles triangles and scalene triangles, polygons, lines segments and rays, and a whole bunch of other shit that he'll never use.  

He's too young to give a rat's ass about why a rhombus is different from a rectangle or what you call a triangle with two sides that are the same length.  Being a CPA, I've been involved in math on a heavy duty basis for over 20 years and I've never had a discussion with my boss, an IRS auditor or our outside accountant about how a square is actually not only a square, but a rectangle and a rhombus as well.  

I suggest school officials (it's not the teachers' fault, they're forced to teach shit that doesn't matter) get their heads out of their asses before we fall even farther behind the rest of the world.  For the first five or six grades, kids should have math (real math, stuff with numbers, not this shit with shapes) and proper English (no Ebonics or Redneck-speak, and if you want to speak Spanish, move to Mexico) literally beaten into them.  By the time they reach the upper grades, they'll have mastered basic math and English and should be prepared for the more abstract concepts of pentagons and rhombi.  

It's a shame I spend what I spend to send Hayden to a good school so he can learn shit that's only important if you end up on Jeopardy.  

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