And here I thought stuff this dumb only happened in the US (Part II)
 

In this adventure, some twit in Scotland turned in an "essay" written entirely in chat-code.

I'm not as surprised by the event as I am the location.

Of course, I realize that this probably HAS happened in the US but to avoid damaging some precious youngster's self-esteem it probably received an "A" grade for creativity and didn't even make a blip on the radar.

Is there going to be a move for classes to be taught in E-tronics along with English because it's part of the youth "culture" nowadays?

You know if this girl would have just typed the whole thing in chat code and then use find/replace to put the actual words into her essay this could have been avoided.

All I can imagine is how old I'm going to feel when my nephew (currently 8) gets into high school.

"Yep, I remember back in the old days, we had to actually write out our essays using a pen. And we didn't have spellcheck neither. We had to use a dictionary to check spelling. And don't get me started on dot matrix printers!"

Aw crap. I feel old already!

That's right, boy, SLIDE RULES!! Forget Mathematica, we didn't even have handheld electronic calculators. Hell, we had to figure out where our decimal points went ourselves.

And tables of integrals... don't get me started... you young whippersnappers wouldn't recognize a table of integrals if the CRC manual dropped on your head.

Now. Who hid my Geritol?

Hang on now, I said I was old, not ancient! Slide rules? Tables of integrals? That's back in the stone ages! I mean, isn't that when dinosaurs roamed the earth and all?

If you didn't use an abacus, you ain't cool!

Using chat-code/slang/whatever in your vernacular with friends and family...that's one thing.

But if you don't know proper English, and how to read it or write it, you're just another dummy.

Some of us take perverse pleasure in maintaining knowledge of older traditions.