Formal education has a tough time competing with people's everyday experience. If a teacher tells you one way of doing something and then you repeatedly hear others doing it differently, how long does it take to forget the way you were told--or, if you remember, to doubt the importance, if not the accuracy, of the lesson?
I'm not only referring to the way students hear people speak. They're exposed to grammatical errors in advertising, in print, in many circumstances where they could reasonably expect examples worth following. Even a local library, of all places, until recently had a recording asking you, when you called, to chose the extension of the person "for whom you wish to leave a message for."
|