An Extra ‘S’ on the Report Card
Hailing a Singular Achievement, President Gets Pluralistic
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 27, 2007; A10
NEW YORK, Sept. 26 — As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?”
Now he has an answer.
“Childrens do learn,” he said Wednesday.
The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law. To create the right image, the White House summoned the city’s chancellor of schools, a principal, some teachers and about 20 eager students from P.S. 76.
The visual worked fine. The oral? Not so much. For Bush, it was a classic malapropism, the sort of verbal miscue that occasionally bedevils him in public speaking and provides critics and the media easy fodder for ridicule.