The Logic of the Legos "Spelling & Modernity"

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Tuesday July 10, 2007 21:11 by ipsiphi - (iosaf = o as if = sofia = ah bollox no-one understands me anyway)

In the last while attention on this site has been brought yet again to the suicide crises & adjacent mental health issues amongst our young. We've read much & been directed to yet other sites and resources who like most of us want to do our bit to tackle the problem. There seems to be growing concensus that the nasty hard approach just isn't working. Yet we've still got some work to do in appraising what that means & how it ought influence contemporary anarchist & friends activism, conversation, chit-chat & attitude. It goes without saying the judicial, penal & educational policies and frameworks of both the Irish state & Irish society have a role to play. But lest we get diverted into learning a list of "warning signs" & "indicators" of those dealing with the various psychological or emotional challenges which may lead to suicide I thought to bring it back to primary school. S-p-e-l-l-i-n-g.

I'm left-handed and at various stages of my life have shown amidexterity and admit sometimes when the students I teach chatter too much as I write on the white board, I play a little dramatic trick.
I write with both hands at the same time. Then I reverse letters with one hand (generally my left which is dominant) whilst continuing to write normally with the right. If they haven't shut up in stunned amazement by then, I write upside down with one hand whilst writing something else with the other. Our approach to classroom management is generally based in many assumed notions built on our own childhood experience which work in tandem with training & to the greatest extent our work environment. A society which does not identify needs at an early stage of educational development is ill-fitted to deal with crises which result from alienation or marginalisation a decade later on.

I delight in mis-spelling, anyone who can write the same word backwards, forwards & upside down is naturally drawn to turning the same constructs of characters inside out & thus I suppose it is unsurprising that I also delight in crosswords. As so over the years I've passed my time with various cryptic crosswords enjoying the sensation of learning the individual style which is particular to all those who set them. It was only natural I suppose that for a while I tried to set some of my own. My favourite crossword-setter of all time died in the last year to the dismay of many who had enjoyed her puzzles of "elegant simplicity" through her launch in the 1950's to her valedictory clue in "the Guardian" of December 6 2004 ""A hollow farewell (4)" She began setting her crosswords for a newspaper which though on the left had always justifiably invited disdain in Ireland for its prejudice. Yet somehow crosswords have always maintained a distance from censorship as much as censure. I am writing about her now as this introduction to learning resources for teachers & parents alike in Ireland because before our modern age of software driven spell-checkers - hardly anyone could spell properly. Indeed most people kept dictionaries to help them with their spelling rather than to learn new words as the vogue for spelling competitions in the 20th century attests.

Indeed "The Guardian" long held the record for the most typographic mistakes in one print edition, the pinacle of achievement having been the misspelling of its own name. That wonderful error led to the long standing nickname "the Groniad". I sometimes look across the online pieces I write now & I admit I take a perhaps wicked pleasure in some of the typos that have slipped from qwerty keyboard. It indicates spontaneity at best. I think perhaps wrongly it is very difficult to fake.

I was very pleased today to see the BBC include an article on the online feature page which deals with the question of simplified spelling. The idea has been around as long as English orthography or for that matter standardisation of any language, which is in fact no that terribly long at all. It is impressive how many of the European languages which found their words squeezed into leather bound tomes and volumes by the lexicographers were in fact so badly spellt. It was the American writer Mark Twain who perhaps reflecting on the all too brief and scarce improvements made by that people on the language who proposed a phased simplification of English to render it completely phonetic. Unfortuanately the didactic clarity which ensured the old world spelling of center and theater which Twain hoped to push to its lojikal koncluzhin was to become that jargonised dictionary of into such barbarisms as "transportation for transport" (as Bill Bryson noted).

Now we have mobile phones and SMS text messages. Lest you despair, be assured I'm not seeking the three main 3r's of reader reaction on this - refine, rebuttal, resonate. I'm not entering a rant on "why can't our kids spell". I'm not a overfed and overpaid hack. I'm asking you to read the BBC feature and then consider how we identify children and treat with adults who have these "learning difficulties". We stop bullying by removing the stigma of difference which often prevents a collective response. We end the agony of two in despair (both bully and bullied) by taking away that point of contention. There are many such starting points of difference ranging from physical appearance to learning difficulties to speech impediments and phasias such as stammering, suttering and ribbiding and of course Tourets which even Mozart had fuck fnord . I'm not sure if we need think any of us normal. The genetic freakiness which allows me to write inside, outside, upside down & backwards must surely be compensated by evil fetid smelling feet or something. Thus I am against the the hard stick approach of political correctness & banning things but rather altering their context. We must all laugh @ ourselves.

There are many, some of whom are newcomers to this site who still haven't reflected on the place of the typo - or what it says as much as it what is means to laugh at oneself. to get it all wrong.

Once upon a time a delightful little lady Ruth Crisp set crosswords in a newspaper that couldn't typeset her clues properly. The results approached an almost cabalistic mysticism - for truly the clues may never be solved in their given form. But I digress into hermenuetics.

so the 3 R's of comment -
* refine (make better)
* rebutt (i disagree!)
* resonate (the same thing happened to me/my granny/my neighbour)

the links :- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6250184.stm
Ruth Crisp's obit http://groups.google.com.sb/group/alt.obituaries/browse...99626

resources for 2 differences & 1 indicator which needs a group non-heirarchial response, it is indeed something you can't legislate for :-

http://www.dyslexia.ie/
http://www.stammeringireland.ie/
http://www.bullyingireland.com/