Another post in my series of writing faux pas
As many of my friends and associates know, in between sales & marketing full-time gigs over the past few years, I've been doing a good amount of substitute teaching within the Howard County Public School System.
I tend to concentrate my teaching within high school Spanish and Social Studies courses, and I've been enjoying it a great deal. It's been a way to give something back, earn some extra money, stay young, and get a ground level layman's view of the state of today's education. The latter has certainly been eye-opening (both good and bad), but that's for another post.
Howard County is known to have the best overall student performance stats within Maryland, and the state of Maryland ranks near the top within the nation.
But alas, there is certainly room for improvement. I saw the following on an social studies instructional chart that gets handed out to students within a required high school course.
Example 1:
"Some people in China (known as Boxers) are tired of being argued about and want to be free of all foreigners."
Huh? Awkward choice of words and phrasing. Yuk!
Example 2:
"The US wants to trade with China. Other countries (Britain, Russia, Japan) only want China to trade with them."
Huh? I think they are trying to say, ". . . want China to trade only with them."
We can do better.
If you run across something you think would be good to post in this series, please email me at dcryan7@gmail.com (I'll be sure to credit you!)
