A Sad Day for Public Schools

One of the teachers at our school came in to talk with me. She commented about a list of words I had on the board. I explained it was one of our language lessons where the class had brainstormed about words that were trite, words like cute, nice, awesome were among the most obvious. We filled up the board and the kids came up words that were insightful and clever, for example, the sarcastic, "What?What?", always said in a sneering manner. They understood that it had become overused and meaningless. The journal entry for the next day was for the students to listen for people using trite words. Lastly, the kids used their thesauruses to look up words to replace their favorite trite words. The lessons, quite obviously, were about raising their awareness of trite words and how they do little to foster written and spoken communication. The kids got it and were genuinely surprised at how often we use trite words. The teacher continued to look at the board and finally said, "What does that mean? What does trite mean?" This woman is probably in her thirties and was more than likely taught by teachers who didn't know how to write. Teachers who didn't have a love of language and its nuances. I can't blame her, but I can honestly say that for just a second I thought she was joking, but no, she didn't know what trite meant. It makes criticism of public schools valid. It also made me feel immensely sad.