Proliferation of errors
August 20, 2012 pm31 9:00 pm
I’m not supposed to make fun of Gotham Schools, but sometimes it’s just too funny not to.
Take a look at this evening’s “Remainders” and a nice piece of praise for the first of you to locate the inventive malapropism (answer below the fold):
Remainders: Teacher: Sex, theft and paperwork plagued school
by Rachel Cromidas, at 7:33 pm
- A former city teacher describes the proliferate sex, theft and paperwork at her middle school. (Buzzfeed)
- An educator has a roundup of the policies that are affecting classrooms this school year. (Answer Sheet)
- Teacher: Mayor Bloomberg’s call to change sexual misconduct laws won’t solve problems. (Schoolbook)
- California teachers are busily planning their Common Core rollout as school year approaches. (Marin IJ)
- A Philadelphia principal worries recent cheating scandals corrode the public’s trust in teachers. (HuffPo)
- The Learning Network blog offers a last-minute roadmap for back-to-school curriculum planning.
- A testing policy analyst forsees challenges in post-No Child Left Behind climate. (Answer Sheet)
- A teacher recalls the anxieties of the new school year’s beginning and last one’s end. (Ed in the Apple)
- President Obama’s speech decrying larger class sizes galvanized parent activists.(NYC PS Parents)An adjectival sense of “proliferate” does indeed exist, but unlike the verb, the meaning does not transfer out of the botanical realm. “Proliferation” might fit, for the rapid spread of such activity, but that’s pretty clearly not what the author was going for. “Profligate” – extravagant or licentious – does sound a bit like “proliferate.” Were there an editor who corrected such things…
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JD2718 
Corrode—now that’s amusing, if it weren’t so sad
I would choose “rampant” to convey “out of control growth” if you need an adjective. Since I’m a pro-choice person I tend to stay away from words like “prolife-ration”!
If only it were truly so, that coupling should proliferate,
And teachers had the time to teach — and strength, in intervals, to mate!
Then Daily News and New York Post be damned, I’d say I’d stay a while,
And when retiring, deeply sigh and fondly glance and gently smile.
Alas! I never had the time nor strength — and few I’ve met had either.
It’s bell to bell and minutes three, in which to pee or take a breather.
And at the end, exhausted, drained, it’s time to do those jobs again,
The other four, besides the classes, that teachers do, without complaint.