I Just Gots 2 Say Sumthing Bout This

Houston Chronicle, via Drudge:

Coach disciplined for distributing flier at school
Instructor urged Latino students to attend rally on immigration

Rudy Rios was stripped of his duties as junior varsity baseball coach at Chavez High School last week after using a district copying machine to make a flier encouraging Latino students to attend a rally protesting restrictions on illegal immigration.

The flier read as follows:

"We gots 2 stay together and protest against the new law that wants 2 be passed against all immigrants. We gots 2 show the U.S. that they aint (expletive) with out us (sic)."

While Rios is no longer a basketball coach, he was allowed to retain his duties as an English-as-a-second-language teacher.

Sheesh.

Comments

[Retired Geezer]

I never understood the "Making illiteracy popular so we look cool instead of like morons" thought process.

No wait, I do.

Im down wi dat.

[Wiz]

Funny anecdote (well, I think it's funny):

A number of years ago I had an office job, and the office manager was very PC. She distributed a memo with atrocious PC grammar: "Everyone must do their [sic] best to perform their [sic] jobs [blah, blah]" and so on, for a whole page. Lots of "their," "they," and "them", among other examples. I was annoyed, so I grabbed a red pen and did a proofread on it, marking errors, making corrections, etc., just for my own amusement. Unfortunately, said office manager SAW the marked up page, and then justified her grammar by saying that she had taken gender studies and gender awareness classes, and that her grammar was CORRECT dammit.

I tried to make the point that making yourself sound illiterate doesn't improve your pursuasiveness, or that of your movement, but wasn't able to make any headway.

[AnonymousDrivel]

Hmm. Based on his ESL performance, I'd suggest we keep an eye on his JV baseball team. Indications are that he may coach an O-fer season. Poor kids. They'll never know what hit 'em. (Upon reflection, maybe he has exquisite ESL skills. He managed to make English look quite secondary... approaching tertiary.) Consider also that this school appears to be a Houston ISD magnet school. This coach must think that a) attracting and reinforcing illiteracy is a good thing, and b) endorsing law-breaking is socially acceptable.

Update: The school principal was wise enough to relieve him of his coaching duties. Hopefully the "teacher" will use some of that free time to remediate his own skills.

At least the teacher did not "axe" (ask) anyone though he could have been more "pacific" (specific)!

[azredneck]

Not as long as the union is there to advise and support him!

[Splashman]

Um, Wiz? Your examples don't support your contention. "Their" is the correct word in both instances.

their = possessive
they're = they are = contraction
there = location/direction

Maybe you're unable to use poor grammar, even when you try? Heh.

[Klabdak]

Just another product of the internet generation. Ever notice when you are called a "looser" on the net?

By the way, are you sure Cynthia McKinney didn't ebonify 'dat whack English? Check this out:

http://www.joel.net/EBONICS/translator.asp

[Enas Yorl]

I work at a public agency and several years ago we received a letter from one of the elementary schools in the area requesting some information about something or other. The letter was hand written with terrible penmanship - readable but only just barely. It was riddled with grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. It was fairly bloody looking document when I finished proofreading it. Sadly, it was written by one of the teachers.

When I was in high school back in the late eighties I had one teacher actually wonder out loud in class why Antarctica was considered a continent. She thought it was just an ice sheet and she didn't know there was an actual landmass there. It gets worse - the class was Geography. Worse still - it was an Honors class.

[Dodger]

It's things like this that makes me proud to live in Houston......not.

[Klabdak]

Dodger -- you could live in Beaumont, like myself. I garauntee it is 100 times worse here.

[benny bird]

What we dont need is some fool encoraging such outlaw beahvior he should be replaced pernamently

[Wiz]

Splashman-

Sorry, you're mistaken.

Who is the "they" that was being referred to by "their" in the quote? The singular antecedant, "everyone," reuqires the gender-indeterminate, singular, possessive pronoun, "his." So the quote should be, "Everyone must do his best..."

Feminists hate this grammar rule, but that doesn't mean they should ignore it. As I said, it just makes them sound illiterate.

[hunter]

The 'teacher' was interviewed on the radio here in Houston.
He was evasive, misleading and showed himself to be ignorant.
But hey, that is our public school system at work.

[Supernatural Rabbit Scribe]

English as a distant second language, maybe...

I have an acquaintance who was taught a bit about the Japanese occupation of India during WWII in a high school honors US history class. The teacher was a bit vague on the details, but I suppose that's understandable- it was, after all, a US history class...