Clauses and Commas Make a Comeback

This article about the slow return of grammar to English classrooms appeared in the Washington Post this morning. It's about time! There are so many students out there who don't know how to write a proper sentence, let alone understand the parts of speech well enough to know what they are doing wrong in the first place. The move to take grammar out of the classroom was a mistake driven by people who prone "pedagogy" and unproven ideas about letting students "explore and express themselves creatively", as if writing a lot of bad sentences about subjects that may or may not interest them is somehow going to teach them how to write properly.

My favorite paragraph in the article was the last one:

"What you have is a generation of teachers from the early to mid-'70s who don't know grammar, who never learned it," said Benjamin, an author of the national council's publication. "We have armies of teachers, elementary teachers and English teachers, who don't have the language to talk about language. It's kind of their dirty little secret."

This too is true. I was lucky enough to learn a little bit of grammar in grades 6-8, but it was minimal. I learned most of my English grammar by accident because I studied French and Latin. I was one of the lucky ones, but not everyone learns a second-language and gets the side benefit of learning the grammar of one's own. I'm really happy to see that after nearly 40 years the tide is finally starting to turn, but it's going to take a long time before there is any widespread impact, especially since the teachers have to be taught before they can teach the students!

It's funny, but I was just writing my "statement of teaching interests" last week as part of my job applications, and I basically wrote that although I am a big fan of using technology in the classroom, I still think that it is really important to stick to traditional methods. Students may have access to grammar- and spell-checkers, but they need to know how to write on their own. It's nice to know that my opinion on grammar doesn't make me an old foggy but is actually slightly ahead of the curve.