<p>I am and have been(mostly) a manual labor guy. I wanted more and better for my S, so I wanted to push him to college, in hopes of finding a career he liked better, that could support him well with less physical effort.
I dragged him along on some of my labors for hard, slow, difficult grunt work. Manually digging post holes comes to my mind first. It is a heavy tool going in, and an even heavier one coming out. He hated it. I told him- every time you lift up that heavy load of dirt, ask yourself- why should I go to college?
I told him by the end of the fence row he’d understand why!</p>
<p>Maybe there is more to getting along in life than SAT scores.
Zing!</p>
<p>I cannot keep grammatical rules straight, so this thread is a little intimidating.
I wish they would update Grammarian for ios.</p>
<p>But seriously, what is wrong with farming?
You need major skills, dude!
Mathematics, meteorology, economics, animal psychology, biology, chemistry, mechanical engineering, not to mention you have to be in shape physically and a hard worker who is not easily discouraged.</p>
<p>We were not given a body just to move our head around.
:rolleyes:</p>
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<p>I agree and my beef with the above suggestion wasn’t that it involved farm/manual labor, but that it was forced/mandated rather than voluntary for the individual concerned or it was suggested by teachers/parents whose tone betray a serious need to “put intellectuals in their place” out of anti-intellectual attitudes. </p>
<p>Moreover, I have worked in a stationary store as the cashier clerk and a dishwasher in a pizzeria from late elementary school till sometime during my freshman year in HS when the commuting/academic demands became too much. Difference was I volunteered for them by putting in the job app with parental consent after taking the initiative and more importantly…was paid. :)</p>
<p>This is such a great article, and quite relevant to the direction this thread is going. It’s written by a former post-doc at University of Chicago who went on to be a motorcycle mechanic in Virginia. A passage I particularly liked:</p>
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<p>[The</a> Case for Working With Your Hands - NYTimes.com](<a href=“The Case for Working With Your Hands - The New York Times”>The Case for Working With Your Hands - The New York Times)</p>
<p>cobrat – No one has even begun to suggest forced labor. Farm work or other hard labor was on a list of things of things that some of us thought everyone ought to do (or know how to do) in life. It doesn’t mean that we’re in favor of rounding people up and putting them in labor camps. It does mean that we think it would be good for everyone to have an experience doing hard manual labor – whether that’s a summer of farm work or a week or two repairing houses damaged in a hurricane. My children have gone on numerous week-long mission trips where they did hard labor to help people (digging a ditch for a septic line, roofing a tornado-damaged house, etc.). They have learned to appreciate people who do manual labor every day and they have been inspired by the people they have helped. They volunteer to do this year after year.</p>
<p>Amen, Marsian. In the spirit of OP’s topic & related article, I just thought it would be kind of fun (not to mention a little fuddy-duddy-ish) to come up with some life skills experiences that a HS senior ought to have before attending college. In fact, one could say that more 18-year-olds would be better prepared for the transition, especially living away from home. That’s all. Forced labor at a gulag?! Uh, no. But a summer of mowing lawns, unloading railcars, bagging groceries? Absolutely–I did all of 'em at various points in those formative years.</p>
<p>ONLY problem with younghoss’ statement, sad to say, is that going to and graduating from college is no guarantee anymore of a ‘better’ situation eventually than the post-digger. But no one can deny that a degree gives you a fighting chance.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t entirely blame it on the K-12 education but I wouldn’t blame it entirely on “sending the wrong students to college” either.</p>
<p>“If the house belongs to the Edge family it is the Edges’ house.
If the house belongs to the Edges family it is the Edgeses’ house
If the house belongs to the U2 guitartist it’s The Edge’s house.”</p>
<p>This is correct. 
I clerked for a Judge Williams who reinforced my already firm status as a grammar b—h. The only part of this that is subject to a style question is when forming a possessive where the name sounds like a plural, but is NOT plural. “Judge Williams’ chambers” and “Judge Williams’s chambers” may both be correct. In my Judge Williams’s chambers, the latter style was required. </p>
<p>It’s enough to make you wish that the Old English -en plural (which survives in the word children) had won out. We only have two cases in English, and we mark them the same way!</p>
<p>We all know there wasn’t any possessive intended on those welcome mats and mailboxes. It’s just a misinformed way of forming a plural. That’s what makes me cry.</p>
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<p>Child / children and ox/ oxen? How about woman / women and man / men – where did that plural come from?</p>
<p>From German; “en” is a standard plural suffix. From Wikipedia:
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<p>I do a lot of technical writing and find I consult my grammar usage book regularly just to be sure. Even there, options exist…e.g. to use biannual or semiannual. Like a previous post, when in doubt I simply restructure my sentence!</p>
<p>Funny how we’ve diverged from the original OP post, but I have enjoyed it immensely!</p>
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Drat!
I just realized I’ve been misspelling “Possessive”. In addition to my apostrophic faux pas.
I usually don’t make too many spelling errors.</p>
<p>And Luminosity said I was getting smarter last week.</p>
<p>^^^
That’s “Lumosity”.</p>
<p>I give up.</p>
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<p>I think you are being too hard on yourself, Bovertine. Linguists look at language as descriptive – living and changing – whereas grammarians look at language as prescriptive – permanently locked into rules of right and wrong. Over extended periods, the linguists will win every time, because language is essentially a popularity contest and rules will change eventually when no one bothers to follow them anymore.</p>
<p>Case in point: the current use of “they” as a singular to avoid the awkwardness of he/she. This is still grammatically wrong, but should it be? “You” can be used as either singular or plural (as least in the North where we don’t have a you-all) so why can’t “they” be used in the same manner?</p>
<p>interesting.
Years ago when I was in grade school, masculine was correct even when both genders were the subject. Today, the “he/she” is expected. Awkward, I think, but it is what is considered correct today.
Maybe “they” will become correct too, in time.</p>
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<p>I typically use the generic “he” and do not worry about being PC. Some writers use the generic “she”. Some people think “mankind” should be replaced by “humankind”. Where does it end?</p>
<p>Haven’t you ever seen the use of zhe or zir? [Gender-neutral</a> pronoun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns - Wikipedia”>Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>There seem to be at least three pronoun issues under discussion here:</p>
<p>gender
singular/plural
general/specific (one vs. s/he)</p>
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<p>This is especially prevalent in education writing. It used to always interfere with my reading speed, because I have two sons and often stopped to see if a specific individual was being referred to – my children were always "he"s.</p>
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<p>Not just current, but in the language for a long time–see The Language Log.</p>
<p><a href=“http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003572.html[/url]”>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003572.html</a></p>
<p>Wayne Leman at Better Bibles Blog has posted a substantial list of “singular they” examples from the long history of English-language bible translation, starting with Tyndale in 1526 and continuing up to versions from the past decade. His examples from the 1611 King James Version: </p>
<p>Matt. 18:35: So likewise shall my heauenly Father doe also vnto you, if yee from your hearts forgiue not euery one his brother their trespasses.
Phl. 2:3: Let nothing bee done through strife, or vaine glory, but in lowlinesse of minde let each esteeme other better then themselues.
Numbers 2:34: And the children of Israel did according to all that the LORD commanded Moses: so they pitched by their standards, and so they set forward, every one after their families, according to the house of their fathers.
Numbers 15:12: According to the number that yee shall prepare, so shall yee doe to euery one, according to their number.
2 Kings 14:12: And Iudah was put to the worse before Israel, and they fled euery man to their tents.</p>