The Mexican government has been forced to defend itself this week after the country’s school students were  found to be using text books riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

The books have been a major source of embarrassment for Mexico’s authorities, which are currently attempting to overhaul the often-criticised schooling system.

Officials in the country have promised to provide teachers of the schools affected with comprehensive lists of the mistakes so they can be manually corrected as soon as possible; it is thought there are 117 in total. The government’s Educational Department has admitted that the errors were only found after more than 230 million textbooks had been printed.

One parent, Edith Salinas, whose child is a sixth-grade student, said:

“It’s not fair. Children are impressionable. The moment they see the error, it stays with them.”

The government’s head of education, Emilio Chuayffet, described the mistakes as “unforgivable” but said the country’s previous administration was responsible. He said the officials currently in place had to decide whether to halt the run of books to make corrections or to ensure the students had the materials in time for the new school year.

Last week, Chuayffet said that an investigation was being carried out to find those responsible. He then tasked the Mexican Academy of Language with ensuring that future versions are free of such errors.

In the same way, many businesses in the UK turn to professional copywriting services to ensure online content is kept mistake-free. The story only further highlights the importance people around the world place on linguistic accuracy. The blunders have no doubt caused some serious embarrassment for the Mexican government – and the same effect could easily be experienced by businesses if they don’t go about content production in the right way.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.