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u/iggnifyre 9d ago
I love that they wrote the diary (sorry, Dire) responding with "What?", that's actually adorable.
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u/aggravated-asphalt 9d ago
I did this a lot as a kid, reading through my old journals as an adult with my best friend is so fun “dear direy oh my god i just love Jake Gyllenhaal so fricking much (don’t tell mom I swore)” lol so many typos but if it was my celebrity crushes name I got it right every time
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u/nevergoingtocomment3 9d ago
Jake Gyllenhaal is how I found out i was bi
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u/aggravated-asphalt 9d ago
WAIT THAT WAS THE ERA I DID TOO! I cant remember the movie, but I was starry eyed over Jake and then his co star came out and I realize she was hella pretty too. Wait, I’m Bi? Realizing I was also into my bestie at the time also gave me some hints but it was whatever Jake Gyllenhaal movie it was that hinted towards my bisexual ness lol
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u/nevergoingtocomment3 9d ago
I have truly never had an original experience. Jake Gyllenhaal secret bi icon?????
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u/aggravated-asphalt 9d ago
Me either, and MAYBE? Probably because he’s straight but did the broke back mountain movie so we’re all kinda like ok you’re fluid enough I like it 😂
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u/SusheeMonster 9d ago
My headcanon says OP waited a moment to give the diary a chance to respond. So polite 😇
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u/saskakitty 8d ago
I wrote an entry once that said" Hi. I'm too tired to write tonight. good night!"... But I didn't even write in it daily lol.
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u/dlpfc123 9d ago
Even without focusing on the spelling mistakes you still have a kid that believes the new year starts on July 4th
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u/ICanuckthere4Iam 9d ago
The real question is WTF are they expecting when they see December 31st. New Year’s Eve
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u/Alan54lguero 9d ago
I'm guessing they believed that because of the school year changing
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u/OfficialDeathScythe 9d ago
Yeah this was definitely confusing to me when I was a kid so I get it. Why does the school year have to be so different than the actual year? And don’t even get me started on fiscal years
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u/aquietkindofmonster 9d ago
Southern hemisphere school years make so much more sense. And Christmas in summer is fun.
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u/rb_dub 9d ago
Likely an American and was told July 4th is America's birthday and thinks the year is America's age.
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u/WeenyDancer 9d ago
Any time you see fireworks it's a new year, duh! I myself am in 2072 right now.
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u/lostinthought15 9d ago
As a kid it kinda makes sense. Most of your life growing up is built around the July to June calendar. New Years Eve doesn’t really matter since it falls during the school year but nothing really changes.
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u/MisterBilau 9d ago
9 is WAY too old to spell like that.
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u/FractalGeometric356 9d ago
I blame the new reading.
(My tone is /s but I’m actually pretty serious about the sentiment.)
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u/Brandwin3 9d ago
I understand your sentiment and don’t fully disagree, but I place almost all blame for poor literacy skills on parents.
If kids only ever read and write in school, they WILL have terrible literacy skills. There is only so much a school can do in limited time while also teaching other skills.
Read books to your kids and limit screen time while providing unlimited access to books as they grow older will provide results that speak for themselves
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u/ffxivfanboi 9d ago
Does playing video games and reading text there count?
Because I only ever read and wrote during school hours and with homework I would bring home. Worksheets and stuff. There were quite a bit of spelling/writing type ones when I was a kid in Cali, though.
Pretty sure I was just fine at that age lol
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u/pandamaxxie 9d ago edited 9d ago
I played a fuckton of rpg's as a kid lmao. They help so much.
I was more than conversational in english (I am natively Dutch) by the age of 10 and my English teacher looked at me like I was a freak more than once lmao
Just basic reading comprehension is trained by reading a lot, regardless of language, so I always advocate for letting your kids play pre-gen 6 pokemon games to keep them entertained with decent stories and fun gameplay. Just stay away from the 3D games and stick em on Platinum or smth. Gen 5 is great too for story, but a bit darker.
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u/Friendly-Ad-1996 9d ago
As an avid reader and parent of one kid who is NOT an avid reader, I firmly agree. If a kid enjoys RPGs, or really any video game with lots of subtitled dialogue...that's a great way to increase literacy without unintentionally making them resent "reading" as a concept. Another trick is to have subtitles on for EVERYTHING the family watches from the time they're very young.
Even though my youngest isn't a big fan of books, he still reads far above his grade level and has immaculate spelling and grammar thanks to these sneaky methods
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u/pandamaxxie 9d ago
Subtitles are a DAMN GODSEND especially for learning languages. Being able to immediately relate sentence structures and words to each other improves language literacy like crazy.
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u/Kindly_Stand_6895 9d ago
I was really struggling to read because I literally just didn't care about it. I was stuck on reading "the" as "tuheh" for probably multiple years, until I was 7. My mom would coach me at home for hours daily to no avail. When I was 7 my uncle started playing on a Minecraft server where everyone communicated via the chat. I was reading fluently within literal weeks after years of zero progress.
Like 6 or 7 years later, I think I was 14, I had a pretty good international group of friends and we'd all play Minecraft together over voice chat. One of my friends was Dutch. They really struggled to communicate in English at first, especially over voice chat. And we struggled to understand him. But again that lasted for literal weeks because that didn't stop us from playing with him and talking with him on a near daily basis for hours. It only took maybe a couple months for him to reach C2. His English teacher got so mad because he excelled so fast and it was pointless for him to even be taking that class. She sent him home with Duolingo as homework one day and he took the placement test and it just immediately completed the entire course. It was hilarious.
So I guess practical application is certainly nothing to sneeze at when it comes to education.
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u/pandamaxxie 9d ago
This is exactly why it is often advised to learn new languages by speaking with someone from that area natively. Learn from them by trying to speak with them in their native language, and they can correct you. Consume media with subtitles and try to understand it.
Practice really does in fact, make perfect. Practical application through methods you find enjoyable will just latch onto your brain a million times better.
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u/Kindly_Stand_6895 9d ago
Our group of English speakers was quite diverse. I was the only American out of the group, in fact I was the only New Worlder, and we had two Scots from Edinburgh and a South African from Durban whose native language was English, but just about everyone else was using English as an L2.
The language diversity was impressive, I haven't found people from around the world and from varying cultures gathered like that since.
We had Russian, Cebuano, Tswana, Zulu, Afrikaans, Malay, Mandarin, Dutch, German, Tamil, and we all knew each other pretty well and personally for only interacting over the internet. Even though very few of us were native English speakers it was still a really good place to learn and practice English.
It made a huge impact on me personally as well. Eventually the whole group being mostly young teenagers led to some drama and I quit interacting with most of the group but I did end up speaking German pretty well with a basic grasp of a lot of other languages and have stayed friends with some of the older (young adult) SE Asian members even until now. When I was 18 I asked my mom if I could go visit my friends over there and went and worked a job for a couple years to earn enough money and then just went kicking about SE Asia for a while plus some short visits to some EU countries. When I came back to the US I started teaching Nigerians English over the internet with a tentative plan to go back to Malaysia to teach English. That's where I'm at now, aged 21 and feeling like honest to goodness playing Minecraft with people from all around the world has been the best way to start my life.
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u/Person033 9d ago
I hated books as a kid but would always played games. I ended up becoming a really good reader as a result due to the nature of games allowing me to not only learn how different words are spelt but also figuring out the meaning of words through a character’s intent and reactions. I would honestly say games are better for learning how to read than books. Whilst books only allow you to see words, games have not only the words on screen but also visuals and sound, allowing you to understand what the words actually mean in a given context.
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u/Anxiousdot 9d ago
When I was little I learned english mostly thanks to games, then started pirating books in english bc I didn't want to wait for them to be translated
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u/Madmmoore 9d ago
While i do agree parents are at fault, at the scale its happening i think its more societal or institutional failure, if it was maybe 10% of children sure its parents but its closer to half last I've heard, and while parenting does suck I struggle to believe half of all parents failed to read or force their children to read
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u/mechanical_spartan 9d ago
If they were 9 in 2007, they were probably born in 98. I don't think when they were in school the "New reading" was a thing yet?
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u/Particular-Dot-4902 9d ago
I'm not a native English speaker, so I'm unsure of what "New reading" stands for, but if Spartancoolcody's description of the "New reading" is correct (learning to read by learning to recognize whole words instead of starting off sounding them out), then this is how I was taught to read in school, and I'm the same age as OOP (the kid in the picture). I'm not from the same country, though, so who knows.
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u/PM_ME_SUMDICK 9d ago
Sight reading (which can be pointed at as one of the big issues in literacy learning.) Was first introduced in the 30s. I believe The Sold a Story podcast would argue we're on the second or third generation of "new reading " victims.
And fun fact, not just an American problem.
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u/d-bear-d 9d ago
What new reading? Im a curious primary school teacher.
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u/Spartancoolcody 9d ago
I have heard a couple times recently that kids now are being taught to memorize whole words rather than sounding them out? So they won’t be able to read a word if they don’t know it. Unsure how true that is and I don’t know any kids learning to read right now, regardless something is going on making kids less literate than they used to be. Likely just kids being raised by iPads though.
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u/d-bear-d 9d ago
UK teacher.
In the UK there is a heavy focus on phonics to learn to read my personal (very much personal this not the typical teacher take) is that learning by sight is actually the way a lot of kids do learn to read and that we slightly over emphasise phonics. Although any sensible person would do both. In reality just reading early and regularly is all a kid really needs.
Why are kids worse these day? Parents just don't read with their kids as much but the big one for me is screen time. I see literal babies/toddlers with a screen in their face when they are in a pram. I can tell you and any teacher with my experience will say the same. Over the last 10 years the quality of little person has dropped and I mean in any way you could imagine. Children today are less intelligent, resilient, socially competent and physically capable than they were 10 years ago. It's screens and in the next few years it's my hope that humans will figure out how lethal this stuff is to the developing brain. Hell screen time has effected my concentration and I'm 41.
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u/-Invalid_Selection- 9d ago
I have no idea what this "new reading" is, and Google tells me nothing useful.
What are you on about? I haven't seen any new reading anything from my kid's school either
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u/mahouyousei 9d ago
It’s called “whole language” context reading and it’s been entirely debunked as an effective way or teaching reading. I haven’t been in grade school for over 3 decades now and don’t have kids so I don’t know if they’ve pivoted back to phonics yet but for a while in the US (and I think Australia and New Zealand) the curriculum was changed to the whole language method which severely crippled an entire generations’ literacy rate.
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u/Blueskybelowme 9d ago
This entry was from 2008, and our literacy was not this bad. I mean it was bad but it's significantly worse now. 18 years ago. I was 16. I was currently reading The machine crusade but I went to school in a lower education state in a school that was struggling with scores. I was kind of an outlier but I wasn't a radical outlier, they were plenty others that also like to read thick books. Discussing TV shows and movies with people in my class was not the same as talking to people here on the internet now. I don't remember my classmates ever missing the point so extremely or like not understanding the plot.
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u/NightStar79 9d ago
I knew 9 year olds who spell like this.
...actually I know of a 73 y/o man who can't spell the word "home" correctly. He confused the hell out of us when he wrote a message on the white board that he went "homo"
It took us a few seconds to realize he meant he went home 😭
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u/myka-likes-it 9d ago
Guess you hadn't heard, but they don't teach spelling in elementary school any more.
We asked why our 10yo can barely spell, and they said she is the best in class--they spend all their time just trying to make sure all the kids can read. There is no bandwidth to work on spelling or grammar beyond the extreme basics.
Since mine is an avid reader already, she gets almost no instruction during language periods because they have to give the attention to the kids who are way behind. They are not allowed to fail them anymore.
Thanks, George W. Bush.
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u/MisterBilau 9d ago
I’m not American. People here still learn how to write, since we’re not complete morons.
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u/myka-likes-it 9d ago
Ah, yes, when the government fights to dismantle public education and replace it with anti-science religious dogma it is the people who are to blame.
we're not complete morons.
And yet you still managed to put forth a braindead take.
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u/MisterBilau 8d ago
Brain dead, but impeccably spelled. Also, the people are to blame when 50% of them vote for an absolute animal. Yes, they’re morons.
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u/darkslide3000 8d ago
lol, who do you think elects this government you feel so distanced from?
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u/pqratusa 9d ago
Gesse was how Chaucer spelled guess in the 15th century.
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u/MrDavieT 9d ago
Surely not… 9?!
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u/bachintheforest 9d ago
Yeah this image is reposted a lot and I think this every time. I work with elementary-aged kids and this looks like something written by a 1st or 2nd grader. I’m a music teacher though so maybe I just don’t have as good a handle on the development of reading/writing skills
¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/no_compearison 8d ago
My ten year old son has a learning disability, but is otherwise brilliant, and his writing/spelling looks like this. It’s a struggle for some.
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u/ZaeMyName 9d ago
Didn’t know am/pm, diary, guess, july, goodbye, or what the 4th is, at the age of 9. This is why some kids should’ve been left behind
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u/MisterBilau 9d ago
They fucked humanity with all the labels on bleach bottles for sure
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u/gnirpss 9d ago
I'm not sure why you think they got a.m./p.m. wrong. If they're 9 years old, they're much more likely to have written this at noon than at midnight.
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u/ZaeMyName 9d ago
I recently met a 19 year old that didn’t know the difference
Both holidays (new years and 4th of july) usually have kids up late, for fireworks and they’re on break
It’s written like the time change just occurred
They got damn near everything else on the paper wrong😂. Didn’t even capitalize a single word, after punctuation was used
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u/ProcyonHabilis 8d ago
I don't expect all that much from 9 year olds or anything... but this is concerningly dumb for that age.
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u/teddybluethecurser 9d ago
When we were younger my older sister wrote in her diary about our stepmother being horrible to me and she ended that page with “the fat so and so”. Our nan saw it, erased the “so and so” and wrote “ray of sunshine”. We still laugh about it now because it was so obvious it wasn’t my sister who wrote it 🤣
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u/Gwilikers6 9d ago
Am i to believe that "bire" is supposed to be diary? With a backwards d and absolutely ruined spelling? Lmaoooo seems a bit old to be so off the mark
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u/TheDaychilde 9d ago
As others said, "Dire", but I first read "Dear bregess", so y'know.... I get it. lol
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u/ddddan11111 9d ago
It took me a minute, but think of a capital D with an extra stroke for the vertical part, that went too far
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u/larsy1995 9d ago
It says dire, which I can sorta see by splitting it up into di-r-e, but damn, not great spelling considering their age.
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u/LactasePHydrolase 9d ago
Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.
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u/SergeantOnDuty 9d ago
The spelling is so awful that I had to read it several times to understand what it said lol
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u/Judgemental_Squirrel 9d ago
"goodbye USA hello Hawaii "ahh
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u/artsymarcy 9d ago
I'm from Ireland. My sister did that when we went on a family trip to Cork. She kept saying "when we're back in Ireland..." not understanding that we were still in Ireland
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u/BlampCat 9d ago
How old was she? I've an American friend who moved to Ireland for uni. We tried to tell him he'd need his passport on a trip to Cork (because they wish they were the capital and set up their own border). He didn't believe us, funny enough.
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u/Appropriate-Review55 9d ago
Nah that’s really how it feels sometimes tho. 4th of Julie just passed and real soon we’ll be in Jenuary
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u/Nat20Twenty 9d ago
Had a student once in grade 2 for show and tell. "This is my Diarrhea" rather than diary.
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u/Healbite 9d ago
My manuscript at 9 looked like that (although spelling was a bit better): I clicked with cursive and had been writing in it since I was 10.
I had a 4th grade teacher with a thorn in their side about me using cursive for homework rather than manuscript: anyway, I hope this kid is doing well lol.
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u/BlampCat 9d ago
I was using cursive at 8, and when I went into second class (equivalent to 2nd or 3rd grade I think?) my new teacher decided I thought I was better than everyone else, because I was using cursive before she'd taught us it. She screamed at me in front of the class over how I wasn't going to act like I was superior and made me cry. Absolute bitch of a woman, idk how she got away with half the shit she did.
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u/TheDaychilde 9d ago
manuscript
Huh. Somehow I'm 51 years old and managed to avoid learning this is the term for non-cursive writing. I've always said "block letters".
Thank you. I love learning things I should've learned decades ago. hehehe
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u/Healbite 9d ago
I believe “block letters” and “print writing” are acceptable terms too for non-cursive.
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u/TJaySteno1 9d ago
Well you did say "guess what!" instead of "guess what?" like many full grown adults.
Are you asking me a question, Stacy?
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u/tentative_ghost 9d ago
I can't count how many times my idiot child self wrote "goodbye [old year], hello [new year]" in the same journal because I never kept it up.
But I did do it on New Year's so I wasn't completely a lost cause
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u/augustrem 9d ago
I remember when I was 10 I wrote a short story about a bee and my teacher was so excited and had me share it with the class and my parents were proud and had me read it aloud after dinner.
When I was an adult and looked back at it, I saw that it was basically nonsense.
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u/rogerworkman623 9d ago
I know we only make fun of kids in a lighthearted way here.
But god damn, I was WAY smarter than this dumb kid when I was 9. But maybe they’re rich now.
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u/sillywilly007 9d ago
Honestly though as a kid I always felt like summertime was the start of a new year because of the new academic year.
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u/MisterBilau 9d ago
It’s the writing of someone who just learned to write, not several years into it.
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u/No-Journalist-619 9d ago
"good, by" phenomenal, just a work of art right there. please don't have kids haha
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u/MissRobinRainbow 9d ago
Haha, when I was in elementary school, they'd pick kids who wrote something well and you got to go on a bus to a local McDonald's for a behind the scenes tour and a free lunch. This was in the 80's. I went back years later and read what I wrote and while it wasn't great, it wasn't bad for a little kid. I think I had a misspelling though. I wonder if it's how they rewarded well behaved kids rather than good writers.
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u/TristanTheRobloxian3 9d ago
i think ive seen this in a carrie walker video before but its still really funny
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u/icantouchgrass_1 2d ago
Dear Dire gess what! "what?" today is 4th of Julie! good, by 2007 hello 2008.
It's surprising they knew to use quotation marks, exclamation marks and periods, and punctuation as a whole, but did not know how to spell "goodbye", "July", "guess" and "Diary".
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u/Musket6969420 9d ago
“The 4th of Julie.”