From: cmr02@scm.tees-poly.ac.uk (Peter J "Knaggs.")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Jobs in Education (retry)
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:34:07 GMT
Reply-To: <figi-l@lsiserv2.lsi.usp.br>
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory - University of Sao Paulo

I know that I should not rise to this but I just can't help help myself.
So before I start flaming let me answer the one Forth related question.

> Second, what does this have to do with Forth?

The answer to this is moderately simple.  If I am forced to take a job in
education I will be given some time, and more importantly resources, to
continue my research.  If, however, I an unable to find employment in the
educational field, then it is an (almost) forgone conclusion that I will
have to stop my research due to lack of time and resources.

Now, you may not have seen this research, or you have seen it and decided
that it is irrelevant rubbish, that is your opinion and you are entitled to
it.  However, there is a growing body of people, particularly in europe and
in some enlightened parts of the united states that feel that the type of
work I have been doing can be *vary* useful.  It is my belief that the
Forth community (and the computing industry as a whole) can benefit from
this work.


Ok, so now onto my soap-box.  For those not interested you can stop
reading here (if you haven't already done so).

I must first point out a strongly held belief that most people tend to
ignore.  Whilst the "American" language undoubtedly originated from the
"English" language, the two where separated and have matured in different ways.
The "English" language has been influenced by a small selection of European
languages, whilst "American" has been influenced by many other languages
from around the world.  Although the two language have a common base, they
are no longer a common language.

This must be taken into account when the english read American text, and
also when the americans read english text.  Both the spelling, punctuation,
and grammar of the two languages have changed over the years.  A classic
example of this is in the spelling of various words.  The english have the
word "organisation" while the americans spell it "organization".  Now it
starts to get even more confusing when the english have two spellings for
the same word (with the same meaning), the words "possible", and
"possable" are the same (according to my dictionary).  However the
americans only have the one spelling ("possible"), and as a result this is
taking over at the "correct" english spelling.  Much to the loss of the
language in my opinion.

Now I will turn to David Paktor's mail:

> and repeat what I wrote you earlier

Sorry david, but this is the first time I have received any mail from you.
As I have said, our mail handler has been doing some vary strange things
recently.

> Your messages got through just fine.

Well, when I got the message back there was a complete paragraph missing.
In addition to this two words had been run together.

> The only "corruption" in evidence was your outstandingly bad
> mis-spellings and weak grammer.

Okay, I admit that I didn't check the message before I sent it.

> In education, more so even than in most endeavors, the ability to
> communicate clearly and accurately is essentail.  This is especially so
> in the filed of Computer Science;

I don't see why.  It all depends on what you mean by education.  If you
mean teaching people how to read, or use a specific language than fine.
But education is about thinking.  The education we give our students is not
supposed to be for one thing only, but to be "transferable".  To that end
the important thing to the ideas behind the work.  So long as you can
communicate these properly then everything else doesn't really matter that
much.

For the record, I don't give out notes, nor do I use overhead slides that
much, nor write on the black board for that matter.  I "talk" with my
classes, not "lecture" at them.

Side note: We are no longer allowed to call a black board a black board as
	   it is felt that it leads to undue prejudice.  As a result we have
	   *got* to call it a chalk board.  This is the kind of stupidity
	   that is hampering british education today.

> I hope these errors are merely the result of hasty typing.

Some are, but many are not.  (See later)

> However, some of them seem to belong to a common class of errors
> associated with persons who are ill-read, and who write according to the
> way they hear the words.

Okay, well I will ignore the slander for now and concentrate on the real
problem.  Yes, I freely admit that I spell the way I talk.  Indeed for the
most part I write the way I talk, dependent on the reason for writing.
However, you have correctly identified the symptom, but not the problem.

There is a medical condition that actuarial stops some people from writing
the correct spelling of various words.  This comes in various forms.
Indeed some would say it is a mental condition, although I believe it to be
a physical disturbance in the brain.  Anyone with training in this area
will have instantly recognised that I am dyslexic.  Although dyslexia is a
problem it is also not a real excuse.

> educated in the British public schools (which are quite famouse for doing
> a rather decent job of educating their students)

In which decade are you referring to?  The "British" public school has been
fighting a loosing battle for quality for the past 30 years.  Yes they did
have a vary good record in the past.  This is simply because they where
vary selective as to who they admitted.  This selective education went out in
the 30's, now we have general education for all.  Thank heavens for that I say
(even though the church was against general eduction).

Side Note: Successive governments have "de-professionalised" teaching to the
	   extent that we are running vary short on people who chose to
	   teach for a career.  Basically there hearts are not in it anymore.

> I strongly recommend that you review your letters of introduction,
> resume', CV, and other writings, with a close eye to spelling and
> typography,

I fully agree with you.  Normally I do.  It's just that in this instance I
didn't bother.  The message was written on a lab terminal, and not in my
office, thus my normal reference books where not to hand.

> (your grammer seems, for the most part, to be okay, but it wouldn't hurt
> to review that as well).

If you think that my grammer is poor, you should just listen to some of my
pears.  In particular my students!  This is another example of how our
public school system is loosing the fight for quality.

> Use a spell-checker program if necessary and if you have one available,
> or ask a knowledgeable friend.

Now you've opened a can of worms.  I don't know any of my friend who are any
better than me.  Indeed many of them ask me for help!  Nor do I know that
many people that would be prepared to go thorough the volume of work that
would be required.  This all points to one thing, use a spell-checker
program.

I hope most people will agree that the  spell  and  look  programs on unix
are useless.  These are really not worth the effect of using.  I have not
been able to get a copy of the  dict  program, and so can not comment.

I know of vary few spell checkers that will pick up the mis-spelling of
"hear", when it should be spelt "here".  There is one that I know of, and
this is simply too expensive.  Another problem is that the majority of
spell checkers understand american spelling.  Well that's fine, It's just
that I am not american, nor for that matter do I wish to become one.

I have done some investigation in this area and would like to develop a
spell checker that is fully capable of finding errors such as "hear" in
place of "here".  It should also be able to give a selection of possible
alternatives in addition to there definitions.  When I use a spell checker
that is capable of providing a list of alternatives I spend five minuets
inside my dictionary working out which one I want.  This is a big pain when
using spell checkers.  The only spell checker program I have gotten along
with to date is the "spell" program from Prime.

Truth be told, if I was not engaged in my Formal Methods/Forth research I
would probably be working on a spell checking program.  But as things are,
I simply don't have the time.


So if anyone knows of a really good spell checking program please tell me.  I
don't really care how much it costs.

Peter J. Knaggs.	School of Computing and Maths, Teesside Polytechnic,
pjk @ scm.tp.ac.uk	Middlesbrough, England.		+44 (642) 342673