I'm forwarding this from Johanna Rubba - her school's firewall is on the
"kill anything that moves" setting. -- Bill Spruiell

-----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 8:06 PM
To: Spruiell, William C
Cc: Johanna Rubba
Subject: Re: Paul's Solution to Re: Grammar Terms Definitions

Bill,

I'm picking on you to ask to forward this, so as to spread the burden 
I'm imposing on my fellow posters. I hope you don't mind. It states my 
views, not yours.

Phil Bralich is obviously of the same school as Ed Vavra and, in many 
of his past posts, Eduard Hanganu -- their main agenda seems to be to 
deliberately misinterpret and belittle the beliefs, aims, and 
aspirations of the people in ATEG (not all of its members, I might say) 
who are engaged in a very long-term, and very, very young program to 
revise the way grammar is taught as part of language arts education in 
the USA. Ed keeps hammering away at the terminology issue, ignoring the 
information that Herb has been asked to lead a group in settling on a 
set of terms for the proposed revision. He also ignores the efforts 
that many of use are directing towards improving method -- Amy Benajmin 
and Rebecca Wheeler in the lower and middle grades, Bill Spriuell and 
Paul Doniger in high school (hope I got that right) and numbers of us 
at the college level, training teachers. Eduard started out making all 
kinds of claims based on his credentials in linguistics, only to back 
off from them as strong evidence was produced that countered them (at 
least he shows some willingness to admit that he might be wrong about 
some things). Phil simply says we're wrong, and does not respond at all 
to explanations of our position, valid criticisms of his positions, and 
the FACTS I have set out about the dooming of whole populations of 
schoolchildren despite some very promising changes in method that we 
should be cultivating and exploring. (In general, I am disappointed 
that more people have not responded on this very crucial issue. See 
below.)

Phil, in an extremely brief response to my messages, which make 
substantive comments about several of his claims, fails to distinguish 
between the ubiquity of a term and how many people really understand it 
or have very habituated beliefs about it. He goes on to make 
predictions about how people in general will respond to a change in 
terminology. I can just as well predict that "word class" will be a 
welcome change. People dislike grammar partly because of its obscure 
terminology. Why "perfect"? Its grammatical meaning has nothing to do 
with the way the word is used in everyday English. Yes, we will have a 
tough road with terminology, but it is because of the ignorance of the 
powers that be, not their knowledge.

Who can respect someone who refuses to respond to a direct request for 
a response? Who can respect someone who just flames people with 
characterizations like "delusional", "not playing with a full deck", 
and equates the quest for a solid grammar curriculum with more-accurate 
terminology to a "need for entertainment", a fourth-grader complaining 
about homework, or the so-called political correctness movement (with 
his comment about a possible change in math terminology). His arguments 
are also internally inconsistent, since, on the one hand, he keeps 
saying all this grammar is no big deal, while, on the other, saying 
that having more than one term for something will hinder the 
enterprise. He claims at first that eight parts of speech are fine, 
then decides Quirk and Greenbaum's ten (or whatever) are fine.

I know that the level of rhetoric on many supposedly science-oriented 
blogs and listservs is rude and adolescent. That kind of rhetoric has 
not gone over well on this list in the past. I challenge people on the 
facts -- thousands of children ARE failing in school. Our workforce IS 
ever more incompetent. Can't we get past ego?

As to the "see below": I was cruising CA's Dept. of Ed. website this 
morning, looking at 2004-05 scores on both our new high school exit 
exam (which passes a student with 9th-grade competence) as well as 
scores on the standardized tests for grades 1-11. The scores for 
African Americans were abysmal. In all subjects, the great majority 
were at "basic" or below, with about a third at basic. The numbers of 
"proficient" students (one level above basic) were horrible -- 
percentages in the single digits, teens, and twenties in all subjects. 
The highest figure I saw was 34% proficient in 9th-grade geometry. In 
language arts, the majority of scores were still in the basic and lower 
levels, with percentages in the teens and twenties at the "proficient" 
level of language arts. Scores for whites are in the 60-85% range. 
Black kids are not failing school. SCHOOLS ARE FAILING THE KIDS.

Doesn't anybody care?

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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