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Waggle Bears
So Cal Desert
Posts: 4,089

Marlys May 10, 2007

Sandra's post about the funny things kids write in school reminded me of something my daughter brought home from her english class years ago. It was published in the May 1, 1993, issue of the National Review. Written by Richard Lederer, an english teacher at St. Paul's School, who the author of Anguished English, from which this piece is excerpted. At that time he lived in NH.

Some of these are the same as the link Melissa posted, but this is written as a complete story and does contain some things not on the website.

It is truly astounding what havoc students can wreak upon the chronicles of the human race. I have pasted together the following history of the world from genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot. RL

All spelling and punctuation is as written by the students:

Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. Early Egyptian women often wore a garment called a calasiris. It was a sheer dress which started beneath the breasts which hung to the floor.

The pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Egyptians built the pyramids in the shape of triangular cubes.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son?"

God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his 12 sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had three hundred wifes and seven hundred porcupines.

Later came Job, who had one trouble after another. Eventually, he lost all his cattle and all his children and had to go live alone with his wife in the desert.

The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Illiad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

But that's not the end of the story...I'll post the second part tomorrow. I hope you all enjoy it.