My 9-year-old brings home his school work once a week. It’s my time to peruse what he’s been up to and see if he’s falling behind/soaring above expectations.
Last week’s pile of school work brought home a lovely letter about the Midwest that he’d written. It was kinda cute and I appreciated his eye for detail and enthusiastic tone.
However, he received a D+ on the assignment because he forgot to indent.
Hmm.
I asked him if he could re-do it and he said yes.
“Well, there you go, you’ll get a good grade if you do everything the same *plus* indent!” I cheered.
“What’s indent?” he asked.
Now I know full well the teacher may have taught him what it means to indent. He was quite possibly zoning out or dreaming about money when this topic was covered. Or, maybe the teacher just assumed that all 4th graders know what it means to indent and somehow my son missed this in previous grades.
In any case, I went to work. I grabbed a book.
“Here…” I started, opening Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Crap. The entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid series does NOT indent!
“Well, let’s look at one of your sister’s books,” I said gamely.
Crap. They don’t indent books at the kindergarten reading level, either!
“There’s always my blog,” I stated.
Crap. No, there’s not.
I pulled out the Bible. Wah-lah! God indents.
Thank you, God!
What have you tried to teach your kids lately?
Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Seems kind of silly to have to learn how to indent if no one does it anymore! I remember when kids’ shoes all had Velcro…kids didn’t learn how to tie anything. Same w/ digital clocks…kids didn’t learn how to tell time by traditional clocks. Maybe indents will go by the wayside at some point.
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I know, before he got marked down for it, I didn’t realize how many texts *don’t indent*. Rather, they leave a space between paragraphs. Our schools don’t even formally teach cursive anymore as they believe everyone will type in the real world anyway.
I’m with God. Grammar is important. I actually just did a podcast about America’s least favourite pronoun. Can you guess which one? It’s on the way out because we are all not learning cursive and moving towards e-grammah. We are cursed!
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Math. Oh my do they teach math in a million different ways and writing their numbers different ways. Drives me crazy!
I know! Don’t even get me started about “Everyday Mathematics”. I call it “Everyday I Hate Mathematics!!”
OKay, seriously a D for not indenting???? Where do you send your kids to school cause I still remember your daughter’s teacher going all control freak on her homework for missing something simple too. I’m kidding, but really…no one really indents anymore.
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Whoops, forgive my above comment I forgot to indent.
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