Over the past few years there’s been a lot of emphasis on redefining the 3Rs of education: “Reasoning, Resilience, and Responsibility,” or “Rights, Responsibility, and Respect.” Is it because the traditional 3Rs—Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic—don’t carry the same nebulous weight as those lofty goals? Or perhaps because spellcheckers and calculators make them obsolete? Or maybe—and Fly’s going out on a limb here—because only one of the 3Rs actually begins with R?
Nevertheless, people would hope that local candidates talking about education would get thir “Riting” R right, right? Not Pete Constant. At least that much is apparent from his campaign site, where the Councilmember-cum Adjunct Professor of Leadership at St. Mary’s College talks about “partnerhips” (sans s) in education to improve educational “opportunites” (sans i). The City Councilmember may be reasonable, resilient, and responsible—and even respectful—but he still could use a proofreader.
Im the wurst affender when it comes too spell checking so mabey im just a being sensative. this being sad I can’nt beleive that fly would cansider this bit of information as worthy to report as news wurthy. Their hast to bee more news wurthy things to talk about then this. We is the 10th largets Citi in this nation and their is alot going on, could you pleese tell me something more in teresting!
Please Note: I am mocking how petty it is for The Fly to continue writing about an issue that has already been brought up and I’m sure corrected. My apologies if I have offended you.
SJI , What a slow news day with no real news or scandals to report?
SJI should follow the saying – “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything ”
That should be the media’s standard? Only say good things? Strange. I thought the media’s job was to call attention to the news, whether it sheds positively or negatively on the subject.
Having said that, I’m not sure someone’s spelling errors count as news.
So, Paul Higgins and Blair think a councilmember’s lack of proofreading is more a sign of the councilmember’s being a down to earth guy? You know, of course, that Mr. Constant did not write the copy for his website, that is the job of paid professionals. Mr. Down-to-Earth hired folks unable to do their jobs well.
It’s a fair assumption that Mr. Constant would want to seek out those who do their jobs well, who could be trusted and counted on to proofread prior to running it by Mr. Constant. Presumably, before the site went live the pro’s putting it together had others review, we all know it’s tough sometimes to see the errors in our own work. I’d guess Mr. Constant was one of those reviewers.
The work is sloppy and unprofessinal but seems to be acceptable to Mr. Constant. You have to wonder what other sloppy, unprofessional work is provided by members of his team.
By the way, giving credit where credit is due, Watchdog Silicon Valley posted this story first watchdogsiliconvalley.blogspot.com/2010/01/spel-cheque.html
An Ad Hominem (sp?) attack was explained to me this way in a critical thinking class. If you don’t want to lose an argument because the other side has better points, attack the opponent on things that have nothing to do with the issue but which can emotionally appeal to people.
So you make fun of someone’s clothes, or speech patterns, spelling, looks, height, weight or whatever plays to the lowest common denominator.
As far as professionalism, in our fandom society where we seem to crave celebrities and such, its common to subconsciously subscribe to elitist worship. Those who look good, dress good and talk eloquently and look good on paper (degrees from elite colleges, etc.) are assumed to be good.
This is not really true in life. Sometimes the most educated and eloquent are not the most altruistic or honest. I admit that I would be critical of Mr. Constant for frequent public gaffs as it would reflect not only on his personal abilities but also on his judgment in selecting and using staff support, but that would only become important where he to seek high elective office. He’s a member of a local city council and I would rather have a hardworking common guy who makes honest mistakes than a slick operator (or figurehead out front of a gaggle of handlers.)
The other critical thinking errors are also useful in political dialogue and they seem to work every time such as the straw-man argument (where you create a false choice between something you want and something everyone doesn’t want.)
If the gaff we’re filling the pages of this digital tabloid with occurred on St. Mary’s web site, I would think their web master should also own some responsibility for not proof-reading. As far as digital content, from cell phones to blogs, the speed and false sense of urgency created with these new mediums seems to have created a desire to relax normal standards and allow foolish things to creep into our civic, professional and personal communications.
Really?
We don’t care if our elected officials care about grammar? Or attention to detail? Or they misspell something like “partnerships” when they are talking about partnerships with education?
Really?
Perhaps the Palinization of politics is coming to Silicon Valley.
Surely it was a mistake by Councilmember Constant, and these things may seem petty, but certainly they deserve to be pointed out and they are fair game for San Jose Inside.
Fly,
You might be interested to know that lots of folks, some of whom participate in SJI, do not know when to use “then” versus “than.”
Forget spelling mistakes—Pete Constant voted against government transparency (as did Oliverio). So much for Chuck Reed’s promises of sunshine. For more, see here:
http://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/10/pete-constant-another-lying-politician.html
fly…pretty petty
Steve: Point taken. But please note: Fly’s piece says a bunch of nice things about Pete—and also points out that he oughtta employ a proof-reader. Seemed to me to be nothing more than a good-natured dig.-ej
That is sometimes a problem with emails or blogs; you can’t hear the inflection to know if it is meant to be humorous or not.
Good Old Pete Constant, The guy is a “sell out”. Not only can’t he spell correctly, he encourages Conflict of Interest by sitting on the Board of a money laundering scheme that goes by the name of Team San Jose. How can Pete represent the City and Team San Jose at the same time? Hmmmm, Sounds like another Grand Jury investigation is in line followed up with a Federal criminal investigation for racketeering and union busting.
Good work Pete!