Words, numbers and phones!

Today I came across a new verb: to excerpt. In a review of some writer, whose name escapes me and whose book didn't sound all that interesting, I found this strange expression: "her book is excerpted today". It looks as weird as it is difficult to say. It is an extreme example of a phenomenon that perhaps began with the idea of being able to "table a motion" and to "chair a meeting". Call me old fashioned, but I still think that tables and chairs should be nouns not verbs, objects not actions. 

Here's a link to an article about a maths puzzle for 8 year olds. Well, it was set for 8 year olds in Vietnam anyway. Our daughter, doing her final teaching practice for a degree in education, says some in her class of 8 year olds have difficulty with column addition and subtraction. I wonder how they would get on with this. Presumably the children in the Vietnamese school are used to being presented with this kind of problem. I have so far failed to complete it, despite my sudoku experience. 

In this country a topic for debate at the moment is the use of mobile phones in schools. On the one hand, there is a report that says that results go up by significant amounts when schools ban mobile phones in the classroom. On the other hand, there are people who say that we should harness the mobile phones, accept that they are there and make active use of them. Teachers should factor into their lesson plans the moment when they can say to the class, "Let's see who can find the information we need on their smartphones!" When schools can't afford to replace IT equipment they should remember that students have powerful computers in their pockets. So say the pro-phone lobbyists. But, the cynic in me asks, what about those pupils who do not have a smartphone? Is this not another pressure on parents to provide their children with equipment they simply cannot afford? It's a tricky one! 

I remember one student in particular in one of my classes who would occasionally go glassy-eyed, seemingly paying close attention to what I was saying and yet not quite there. Every time I asked her quietly to put her phone away she would huff and puff and bluster for a while and then grudgingly ask how I knew she was texting under the table. A sixth sense that teachers develop, of course. I have to say that I admired her ability to text without looking. Or maybe she just texted messages that were complete gobbledegook! 

That brings me back to where I started: nouns that morph into verbs. In the case of the verb "to text", I even have arguments with my daughter and granddaughter about the correct use of that so-called verb. Is the past tense "I text" or "I texted"? They say the former while I maintain that only the latter is acceptable. 

Clearly we need the kind of institution that many other European countries have, like the Académie Française, which stands guard over the language and tries, usually unsuccessfully, to keep it pure and grammatically correct. Fat chance of that!