Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

I received an email this morning directing me to a survey being conducted by my community.  I clicked on the link and read the first question.  They wanted to know what I liked most about the community.  Among the choices was 'schoools.' 

No, I did not spell a word wrong.  That is exactly how it appears on the survey.  Schools spelled s-c-h-o-o-o-l-s.  Do you think someone should have proof-read this first?  What an embarassment that this is out there for everyone to see.

A recent article in the Detroit News  pointed out the grammar difficulties of the Detroit School Board's President.  The article is most interesting to me because my alma mater, Wayne State University, dropped the English Proficiency requirement in 2007.  I still remember taking the exam in 1968.  I wrote about quarks.  If you follow the link, you discover that not much was known about them in 1968, so it was more about making something sound coherent, if not factually true.

I had a student in the early 70's who could not write at all.  She had taken the exam at Wayne and could not pass it.  Her essay answers to test questions in my lab were totally unreadable.  A year or so later, we switched to all multiple choice exams.

I imagine that the inablity to write well will become worse as we rely on tweeting, emails, and blogs to communicate.  Who cares about spelling, punctuation, syntax, etc., if you get my general message?

To view the entire survey click here.