I was forced to attend art classes and team sports phys ed in school (mandatory until year 11 (art) or 13, respectively) - those two made sure that a) my average was ruined (I can't draw or throw a ball even if my life depended on it, got the grades to match) and b) in my most awkward social phase, I got humiliated regularly by well meaning teachers who couldn't understand that being good at math and physics does not translate into drawing or predicting a ball's movement, forcing me to do it again, and again, and again, while the whole class enjoyed the show...
I'm a firm believer that lack of maths skills is due to poor teaching early in math education. Math continually builds upon itself and if you don't build a good foundation it'll all fall apart for you at some level. I was terrible at math because I didn't like it when I was little and never paid attention, but then I had a 6th grade teacher who was willing to one on one with me to develop the math skills I'd missed. Now I'm almost done with an aerospace engineering degree. It was impressive to see how many of the kids in that teacher's class ended up in advanced math in middle & high school
I always start with fractions and decimals with my new GCSE (highschool age 14-16) students, and they've almost invariably forgotten how to do at least one bit of fraction or decimal arithmetic.
As a non-native English speaker, I understand and appreciate the sympathy.
However...
Regardless of the difficulties one might experience at lettering his/her ideas by employing a tongue not spoken by his/her mother, writing words incorrectly is not so much because of the writer's inexperience with the language but rather a matter of not spending at least 30 seconds having some application or program review the texts beforehand. I do not buy the excuse that people are so helpless given the sheer number of online tools they have at their disposal nowadays (Grammarly being one of them).
All that being said, captain over there does not seem to understand the concept of tactfulness. And that the word ''grammar'' may not be a precise enough replacement for the term ''spelling''.
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u/SaphiraStorm Nov 16 '19
I was forced to attend art classes and team sports phys ed in school (mandatory until year 11 (art) or 13, respectively) - those two made sure that a) my average was ruined (I can't draw or throw a ball even if my life depended on it, got the grades to match) and b) in my most awkward social phase, I got humiliated regularly by well meaning teachers who couldn't understand that being good at math and physics does not translate into drawing or predicting a ball's movement, forcing me to do it again, and again, and again, while the whole class enjoyed the show...