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What if the Teacher is Wrong?

Teachers can have a powerful influence on young minds, but not always for the better. My own experience offers many examples of teachers who are just plain wrong - from being told in primary school about dinosaurs being on Noah's Ark to the university student who docked ten percent of my mark for a writing exercise because I hadn't typed a double space after each full stop. Other children have had to suffer "evolution is just a theory" and other creationist nonsense.

The latest example I've come across is the "said is dead" campaign. Apparently American children are routinely taught not to use "said" when writing, as it is "over-used". Instead, they are issued with a long list of vague synonyms, some of which don't even appear to be words. "Spieled" anyone? This is, of course, wrong. "Said" is a commonly used word precisely because it is commonly the correct word to use. Teachers would be as correct to try and stop the use of that far more over-used word "the".

I suspect that the real problem that these teachers are trying to correct is the repeated use of the sentence construction "Blah blah blah," said Blah. Such sentences do, indeed, become dull. However, replacing "said" with a synonym, even if the correct one is chosen, does not make much difference. Instead, teachers should be suggesting alternative constructions as a means of introducing variety. Teaching children to replace the correct word with a less suitable alternative is both lazy and wrong.

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