Another forwarded message from Johanna. Happy to be of service.

Craig--

-------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Scope and Sequence & Trad. grammar]
From:    "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Thu, July 20, 2006 11:38 pm
To:      "New Public Grammar public grammar" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]>
Cc:      "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar"
<[log in to unmask]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, Craig,

Sorry to bother you again. I wonder if you would post this for me.
Apologies for the length.

Chomsky on grammar teaching, 1987. From "Language, Language Development
and Reading" - Noam Chomsky interviewed by Lillian R. Putnam. Reading
Instruction Journal, Fall 1987

"QUESTION: Reading teachers are concerned with language acquisition
since oral language provides a basis for reading. In your writing, you
state that at birth, children are genetically programmed to acquire
language and that it is innate. Is, then, the heavy emphasis placed on
language development by nursery schools and kindergartens justified?

CHOMSKY: There is little doubt that the basic structure of language and
the principles that determine the form and interpretation of sentences
in any human language are in large part innate. But it does not follow
that emphasis on language development is misplaced. If a child is
placed in an impoverished environment, innate abilities simply will not
develop, mature, and flourish. To take an extreme case, a child who
wears a cast on its legs for too long will never learn to walk, and a
child deprived of appropriate nutrition may undergo puberty only after
a long delay, or never, though there is no doubt that walking and
sexual maturation are innately determined biological properties.
Similarly, a child brought up in an institution may have ample
experience and nutrition, but still may not develop normally, either
physically or mentally, if normal human interaction is lacking.

It is a traditional insight that teaching is not like filling a cup
with water, but more like enabling a flower to grow in its own way; but
it will not grow and flourish without proper care. Language
development, like all human development, will be heavily determined by
the nature of the environment, and may be severely limited unless the
environment is appropriate. A stimulating environment is required to
enable natural curiosity, intelligence, and creativity to develop, and
to enable our biological capacities to unfold. The fact that the course
of development is largely internally determined does not mean that it
will proceed without care, stimulation, and opportunity.

QUESTION: We realize that linguistics is the scientific study of
language, and not a recipe for language instruction. If teachers in
primary grades were familiar with your work, what kinds of changes or
emphases might they make in reading instruction? What general
suggestions would help them?

CHOMSKY: I'm hesitant even to suggest an answer to this question.
Practitioners have to decide for themselves what is useful in the
sciences, and what is not. As a linguist, I have no particular
qualifications or knowledge that enables or entitles me to prescribe
methods of language instruction. As a person, I have my own ideas on
the topic, based on my own experience (in part, as a teacher of
language to children), introspection, and personal judgment, but these
should not be confused with some kind of professional expertise,
presented from on high. My own feeling, for what it is worth, is that
at any level, from nursery to graduate school, teaching is largely a
matter of encouraging natural development. The best "method" of
teaching is to make it clear that the subject is worth learning, and to
allow the child's -- or adult's -- natural curiosity and interest in
truth and understanding to mature and develop. That is about 90% of the
problem, if not more. Methods of instruction may influence the residue.

QUESTION: Many of our early beliefs about the nature of language of
disadvantaged children have been disproven by research, for example,
that Black English is deficient or inferior; or that it fails to
provide an adequate basis for abstract thinking. Speakers of Black
English want their children to learn Standard English. Is this best
done by direct instruction or by osmosis?

CHOMSKY: Anyone who was familiar with language took for granted, or
should have taken for granted, that so-called Black English is simply a
language on a par with my urban Philadelphia dialect of English, the
English of High Table at Oxford, Japanese, Greek, etc. If race, class,
and other power relations were to change, Black English might emerge as
the standard language and what I speak would be regarded as defective.
None of this has anything to do with the nature of languages. The idea
that Black English, or my urban dialect, or any other language fails to
provide an adequate basis for abstract thinking is utterly implausible,
and I think one should be extremely skeptical about claims to the
contrary. Typically, they are based on gross misunderstanding.

Questions nevertheless arise about what should be taught in the
schools. If speakers of Black English came to dominate and control
American society, so that my speech would be regarded as nonstandard
and defective, then it might be argued that my children should be
taught the language of the dominant culture, Black English, not the
particular variety of English that I speak. The decision would not be
based on characteristics of the language, or on some ludicrous beliefs
about how certain languages stand in the way of abstract thought, but
rather on other considerations. Thus one would have to ask whether my
children would suffer in the real world of power, authority,
inequality, and coercion if they were not to acquire relevant features
of the dominant culture. Surely this consideration would have to be
given weight, if the welfare of my children were to be taken into
account.

On the other hand, if my children were to be instructed in what amounts
to a foreign language, their intellectual development might be
inhibited; there is little doubt, for example, that it would be harder
for them to learn to read if the language of instruction were Black
English, which is not the language that they acquired in their
preschool environment. The same questions would arise if I had moved to
Italy when my children were young. Exactly how these factors should be
balanced is not a simple question, and there is no reason to believe
that there is any uniform answer to them; too many factors vary.

My own personal judgment, for what it is worth, is that speakers of a
language that is not that of groups that dominate some society should
probably be taught in their own languages at least at the very early
stages, until basic skills are acquired, and should be taught in the
dominant language at later stages, so that they can enter the society
without suffering disadvantages that are rooted in the prevailing
power, privilege, and domination. One might hope to modify these
features of the dominant society, but that is another question.
Children have to be helped to function in the world that exists, which
does not mean, of course, that they -- or others -- should not try to
change it to a better world."

I am not presuming to express any firm judgments or to offer general
proposals. There are a great many factors to consider, and the answers
will surely not be the same for every person or every circumstance. We
have to do here not with problems of language, but of the society at
large, and they have to be confronted in these terms.

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/