ABC Ain't Easy as 1-2-3

For its threat to literacy, texting and hip hop lyrics should be accompanied by side effects like drugs. Because they would rather text than dial, today’s youth are infamous for taking English composition shortcuts. Plus, their little overloaded brains don't give a flying flip if their butts bounce to catchy beats laced under grammatically fractured lyrics.

Butchering the King’s English is one of my pet peeves and an ethnic jolt goes all through me whenever I hear “axe” instead of “ask,” “conversate” instead of “converse” and “prostrate” instead of “prostate.” Until reading the emails below by an un-ed-u-ma-ca-ted educator, I couldn’t conceive of a hotter ghetto mess in academia. See for yourself:

If U Kin Reed This, Thank the Skule Bord Prezudint

The president of Detroit's school board, Otis Mathis, "acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence," reports Laura Berman of the Detroit News:
Here's a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins: If
you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats. , , .

Here's another mass e-mail from Mathis, from Aug. 11, 2009:
Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row's, and who is the watch dog?

Despite lacking what would seem to be a basic skill, Mathis has his defenders:
"I know he's a terrible writer. Oh wow, I've seen his e-mails," says Ida Byrd-Hill, a parent and activist who runs a nonprofit and is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ group.
"His job, though, is to represent the community. His lack of writing skills is prevalent in the community. If anybody does, he understands the struggles of what it's like to go through an institution and not be properly prepared."
And if the Detroit public schools are turning out people who are capable of running big institutions like the Detroit public schools, they must be doing something right.