Re: OT-ish: txt - Could it replace Standard Written English?

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 04:08:48PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
[snip]
> I suspect the problem here is partly cultural.  There probably just isn't
> a lot of experience in France with teaching adults (with whole minds,
> and who are not also trying to learn the language) to read and write.
> I'm talking here about people who cannot read a menu in the simplest
> restaurant (they have to always order the same thing), who cannot write
> a single sentence without leaving out or massively misspelling many of
> the words, who are almost as illiterate as if they lived in the Third
> World -- in the bush.  (They can usually write their own names.)
[snip]

Hold on a sec here... I thought the original discussion was about teaching
in schools (which I'm assuming to mean schools for minors). If you're
talking about educating adults, that's a totally different barrel o' fish.
As you point out in your message, adults no longer have that knack for
rote learning; their minds have already been formed, so to speak. Adult
learning and child learning are very different things.


T

--
Music critic: "That's an imitation fugue!"

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