Tuesday, August 26, 2008

NON-FICTION: VARIANT SPELLING AND TEACHING TOWARDS A MORE ACCURATE LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE.

What is distasteful about 'variant spelling' as referred to in this spiked article is that it seems a lowering of standards. It seems as if teachers want to tell there students "That's okay, close enough. I wouldn't wanted to overload your delicate little brain with any of the standardized combinations of these twenty-six letters."

In reading about this sort of dumbing down kind of educational attitude, I experience a reflexive bit of contempt and disgust. I don't like the idea that certain things are just too hard for little children to learn. Everybody learns at different rates. Outside of our former education, we all experience varying degrees and methods of learning or accepting new ideas.

But, I think there is another, more progressive way of looking at 'variant spelling.' As science, history, and our experience seems to tell that any given language is merely a system developing from many different factors which are hard to isolate as either proper or improper. Rather, it seems that, in alphabetic languages where the letters have multiple readings, any particular spelling of a word where other spellings are possible is 'arbitrary' , in the exact sense that there is no necessity of arrangement implied by the logic of the thoughts represented by the letters or by the needs of use.

Insofar as all human languages are produced by the same mechanism (the brain) and there is no exclusivity as to which set of brains can produce which language, it is far more accurate to give children a language education that teaches children that they speak one version of one type of language and that it is largely symmetric with all other languages in terms of its general features.

Teaching children to think this way would erase the risks of fixed versus unfixed spelling. It would teach them to take a less fixed view of their own language and see it merely as a link in a sea of chains.

This kind of teaching, teaching towards linguistic actuality, would lead to a greater comfort and openness to learning foreign languages, a decrease in language prejudice (like that towards foreigners, occupants of other regions and classes)

It would also produce a greater linguistic awareness, which would allow for more creativeness.

Further, the absence of rote memorization of fixed standards might break down barriers of boredom and opposition to literature and foreign languages that dissuade many learners.

But, you know what, as I write this, the most appealing benefit would be the removal of the impetus to the rebellious spelling that mars so many rap and rock albums, bumper stickers, and vapid t shirts.

Can you imagine if you never again had to see some new album that had an added feature of coolness because it was called "ultamet badazz" instead of "ultimate badass'

Or, more respectably utile, imagine that your children, instead of learning the rules of language that were said to be 'proper' but actually just a snapshot of the sea of human language, seeking to impose a drop of water in it's ever diverse, fluid dynamic, learned that the way she and her parents talk is just a drop in the bucket and that all the humans speaking differently had the a similar brain to her and could speak and write just like her under the write conditions.

What if instead of learning 'proper English', they learned about the set of rules governing language and how those rules applied to the one they happen to speak?

The current view of language taught to children is far behind the modern understanding of language. Children should be taught that language is just a system of written and voiced representations amid a million other such systems, none of which are arguable better or worse than any other.

"Variant spelling" should be taught as part of a language curriculum which teaches children the realities of language at an early age, before the disgusting yet enduring opinions on language that infect all of our cultures and minds has a chance to take hold of their little heads.

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