Law and Order: Driver accused of transporting 15,650 untaxed cigarettes

But Officer I an just a really heavy chain smoker!

Sorry ladies, looks like he's taken.

Doug, I really appreciate the extra Facebook research you do on the police blotter participants, always good for a laugh.

Jeff, if it's publicly open and I don't have to hack it to see it, it's fair game!

Kyle, one in the same. Check Chris Preedom's wall and you'll see the same gibberish (is that what ebonics is?) that is on Earl Lockhart's facebook page. Earl is also in Chris Preedom's friends list.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002128272145&sk=wall

I have used Facebook for some silly stuff but always mainly for keeping contact with friends, and family over the distances that I travel. It was also very handy when I was hospitalized recently.... as I was unable to call everyone and made it possible for many friends to arrange to visit me while I was in. I hate though its darker side what with the recent spate of suicides from cyber-bullying and such. But like any tool you must learn to take the good with the bad.

A good part of that issue can be laid at the feet of public education. Spelling isn't important as long as the teacher can understand the student's intent. On most papers that are turned in, it's not graded (the spelling).

That's pretty sad, Kevin. When I was a student from the late 60's through the 70's and into the early 80's, spelling and sentence composition was graded every day. When did mediocre become acceptable? Public education isn't doing anyone any favors if they tell a student it's alright to be illiterate as long as they can somehow manage to "splain" to the teacher what their meaning/intent is.

"When did mediocre become acceptable?" About the same time that the self-esteem movement became the accredited style of teaching in public education. After all, how can everyone be special if they're actually not. It's taken until the past few years to realize that was a giant mistake.

I haven't had a job interview in 19 years, long before the internet craze. Pagers were popular in the early 90's but the vast majority of them could only display phone numbers. If I remember correctly, cell phones in the early 90's resembled a desk phone and the battery/phone pack was contained in a small luggage bag and they were ungodly expensive. My how the world has changed! There was a time when getting on the internet meant you used a dial-up modem, an extremely slow $3000 (or more) computer. Bulletin boards, mIRC and dalnet were all the rage and so were the newsgroups. It was an adult's world and few kids were online. I remember when that all changed. It was about 1998 to 2000 and cable broadband exploded across America/Canada. Computers became more affordable, internet access was fast and more things could be accomplished with a multimedia based rig....and look what we have now...

Daniel, people generally don't enable their online security either out of ignorance or out of laziness. I don't think they realize that the split second they launch their text, it can't be called back. It's forever archived somewhere.

"Daniel, people generally don't enable their online security either out of ignorance or out of laziness."

Just take out 'online security' and enter anything practical that takes some effort, and it makes sense every time Doug.

My public school teachers in California in the '60s and '70s, and professors in the '80s, were strict about grammar, spelling and punctuation. A student's "intent" was neither here nor there. No ebonics. No hillbilly-onics. We had regular spelling tests in English and learned to dissect and understand sentence and paragraph structure in beginning composition. I always tried to do my best in school and apply the information I was taught. Otherwise what's the point?

But I've noticed that within the last 15 years of so, it's not "cool" to be enthusiastic about learning or to study hard in public schools. I know young teens who purposely use a limited vocabulary and act dumber than they are. A couple of them, who seem otherwise self confident say "I'm dumb" or "I'm not that smart" and often (at least when speaking with me) "what does that word mean?"

More kids seem to make an effort to act like they can take or leave school. The harder lessons become, the more apathetic they seem. I was one of those kids who put my hand straight up in the air, wiggled my fingers and had that pleading look that said "please-call-on-me-I-bet-I-know-the-answer!" Are there any kids like that now?

The movie star Will Smith was raised by his grandmother and he says she would not tolerate sloppy grammar and would tirelessly goad him into speaking English correctly. He is thankful she did.

For the self-motivated person, who looks to good role models although they may not be abundant, proper communication skills are worth the effort to acquire. But hey, that's just me.

I loved to diagram sentences. I liked the order and logic that made it all come out right. I struggled through penmanship. I never learned to hold the pen/pencil right, but eventually conquered cursive and enjoy using it.
The "I'm dumb" syndrome is not exclusive to the teens of today. It is appalling to hear senior citizens say:
"I don't watch the news, I'm too dumb to understand it."
(This was confirmed after this person watched a movie about the Ramsey killing. At one point, I was asked if it was a true story. I commented that it was on the news for over a year, almost every night. The person never saw one bit of the coverage.)
"I like to read, but I won't join a book discussion because I'm too dumb to contribute."
"The folks don't like smart people, so it is best to act dumb."
So, it isn't just the teens. From what I can see, they have excellent role models.

1) the 'ebonics' flap surfaced in the late 1990s when the Oakland Unified School District recognized Ebonics as a legitimate language. Afro-American and southern dialects had been acknowledged for decades- at least since studies in the early 1970s formally documented those dialects as subsets of American spoken-English. The flap over the Oakland, California board action was over-stated and over-reacted to. No accommodating adjustment was made in the school curriculum nor were English programs modified to embrace Ebonics. The board's action merely acknowledged a social reality: an urban dialect existed and could be regarded with the same validity as any other regional dialect. No more controversial than quantifying differences between Boston spoken-English and Tupelo spoken-English; no more threatening than the written shorthand that evolved in 90s AOL chatrooms.

2) the 'whole language program' was implemented in the 1980s as a holistic approach to composition. It immediately went under fire from those who favored a phonetic approach to language education. The primary objection to whole language derived from its underlying notion (as advanced by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s) that learning from fragmented portions of language opposed the fundamental manner by which children naturally learn language: context. This conflicted with the established method of teaching language by studying its components: phonetics, verb tenses, word meanings, etc.

3) Self-esteem's relationship to learning was documented in numerous studies that culminated in a formal integration of the concept during the 1980s- 90s. Again, this trend ruffled feathers from the outset as traditionalists reacted to the near-simultaneous elimination of corporal punishment in schools and Bible-based attitude toward 'pride.' With the usual bravado, dissenters ignored the over-whelming evidence that students with better developed self-image performed at a higher level and bemoaned the abandonment of discipline and culturing of spoiled children.

Schools often embrace practical trends that amount to radical changes in educational practice for students, parents and teachers. It is likely that these trends are imposed from the top down and require substantial change in application for teachers, who in turn resist the effort. Resistance is also exerted by the textbook and ancillary publishers who must adapt or lose money. Imagine all of the filmstrip projector manufacturers who groaned when the Apple IIe took off. ...Or the chalk producers when white boards took off, 16mm film Libraries when videotape took off.

The change that should really rattle parents' spines, not changes adopted by local boards; corporate and federal government teaming up to profit from NCLB and charter schools. ...Of course those educational options are sold to the public as tax reduction!

I learned to read in school by memorizing words, such as in "See Jane run. Run Jane, run." I developed an ear for language by having my mother read to me nearly every night from books we borrowed from the library. It sparked my imagination and I loved it when the teacher read a chapter every day from a work of fiction for young readers ("Anne of Green Gables" "And now, Miguel" "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory").

Regardless of what studies show or don't show, I'm against corporal punishment in school and I think self-esteem being taught in school is a poor use of instructional time. Parents, relatives, and others outside the classroom are more suitable to the task, which is important indeed. But I think the "just reading, writing and math" approach should be augmented by the arts because I think learning about music, painting, dance, sculpture, etc., is very important to a child's development and fosters learning in other areas.

I have no problem simply recognizing that a dialog exists and so noting. But that also seems a little obvious and therefore superfluous. I do have a problem with dialects in any form being part of instruction, which I believe is exactly what C.M. indicated -- that they were not put into any curricula.

We should all be on the same page when it comes to speaking English, regardless of our various backgrounds.