[OT] Mediocre Britain

[Richmond Mathewson]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

doesn't frankly surprise me; after all "Being British" is all about dumbing
down things to the lowest common denominator; education, over-regulation 
(after all, if 5% of the population are morons the government must screw 
up everybody's life by regulating things to protect the morons from 
themselves: maybe the morons should be told "you are morons, get off 
your fat, supplementary-benefit-fed bottoms and start getting your 
brains working).

I have just been looking at a series of letters written to my younger 
son from his erstwhile school mates at his school in Fife, Scotland; 
filled with basic spelling errors and grammar problems (these kids were 
11 at the time); most of them being monoglot English speakers, a few 
spoke Fife-Scots at home. My sons, who have  English and Bulgarian as 
mother tongues, and are both fluent in German, don't make those sort of 
spelling errors in any of their 3 dominant languages.

If sschool kids cannot spell in their school language how on earth can 
one expect them to get their programming syntax right, let alone the odd 
nested FOR . . . NEXT loop?

My younger son starts at Salem on the 10th; as the highest scholarship 
holder:

http://www.salem-net.de/

I wonder why I'm not sending him to school in Britain?