Teaching by Example

While individual teachers may surpass or not quite meet the standard set by the school's administration, most will tend to fall pretty close to that mark. It is the example they are set by their supervisors and it is a gauge used to evaluate the faculty. So staff will strive to meet it - or having met it, will see no need to expend greater effort. That's human nature, and only a rare few will rise above it in any given setting.

This being the case, I think it is reasonable to expect that the quality of writing in an official document sent by administrators to families is a decent indication of the standards one would see in classrooms within that school. This is the example set in an official document I received from school last week:

Irregular attendance and late arrivals disturbs the smooth running of a class and has harmful effects on the student's performance and chance of success.

Oh dear, I can see Miss Evans' red pencil flashing even now! Shall we attempt a correction or two? First, let's try to cut this run-on sentence down to size. How about this?

 Irregular attendance and late arrivals disturbs the smooth running of a class. and It (They?) has harmful effects on the student's performance and chance of success.

Now that we aren't running out of breath when we read the statement aloud, perhaps we could consider the subject-verb agreement.

(Irregular attendance and late arrivals) could be considered a single phrase, in which case it might make sense to use a singular conjugation for the verbs "disturb" and "have." Being that the phrase ends in a plural word, however, that feels awkward.

We might alternatively consider a two-phrase construction: [(Irregular attendance) and (late arrivals)]. That would require a plural verb form. This is the structure I prefer, so I am going to re-write the excerpt that way.

Irregular attendance and late arrivals disturb the smooth running of a class. They have harmful effects on the student's performance and chance of success.

I won't get into a discussion of whether "student's" in the passage refers to one or several students. It isn't clear from the rest of the text, although I would hope it is in the author's mind. We can simplify the second sentence by eliminating the direct reference to the student(s) completely. Because we always hope for positive performance for our students, "chance of success" could be seen as redundant. My final edit leaves me with:

Irregular attendance and late arrivals disturb the smooth running of a class. They have harmful effects on academic performance.

Perhaps it isn't exactly what the author intended to communicate, but it's less of a mouthful to read aloud! I'm sure there are other grammatically correct versions that communicate the author's message.

I do feel one additional note is appropriate in reference to the larger text from which I excerpted this passage. The word "late" has an adjectival and an adverbial form. It is not a noun. While I realize it is common to see a list of a student's "absences" and "lates" on report cards, this is an abbreviation for use on a form. Used in educational parlance (e.g. "We had 20 lates today,") it is jargon and not correct English. One does not report their child's "late." One can however report the child's late arrival, tardiness or lateness. Alternatively, one can report that the child will be late.

This is a public service message, brought to you by a parent who, while you may perceive her as overly critical, cares a great deal about the quality of education our young people receive in schools today. I am sure the main error were the result of editing and re-editing a word processing document without taking time to read the text through all the way. It doesn't hurt to share, though, just in case it wasn't.

Thanks to Elliot Jordan (sxc's jordo) for the photo!