I would add one important element to Johanna's. Just at the time that the effectiveness and usefulness of grammar teaching was being questioned, transformational grammar hit K12 pedagogy. This was not the sophisticated research agenda of Chomsky and his associates in the mid-60s. Rather it was a poorly understood and baroque reduction of various versions of that model of grammar. As Chomsky has himself insisted, formal theoretical syntax is not for pedagogy. The New Grammar hit shortly after the excitement of the New Math and tried to jump on that bandwagon, but it was much less well thought out. The result was that series like those by Paul Roberts were so complex and difficult to apply to language arts that teachers, in frustration, rejected not only the New Grammar but all linguistics with it. Just talk to any reading teacher trained in the 70s and 80s, and they'll tell you how useless it is to use linguistics in reading instruction, and only because the linguistics that was used was so incompetent. But the rejection of the New Grammar came quickly on the heels of the assault on grammar, and the two weren't distinguished from each other. That's a very important reason why the linguistic insights that the college faculty among us have to offer must be filtered very carefully through the pedagogical knowledge and experience of K12 classroom teachers, and we must work together to see to it that good, useful linguistics gets into the classroom in ways that will help children learn and love language and the language arts.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Sun 9/3/2006 12:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grammar Certification
I think grammar teaching went away for a couple of reasons. The
movement towards "relevance" in education in the '60's and 70's very
correctly pointed out that grammar was being taught in such a way as to
alienate students. Instead of reforming the curriculum by examining,
for instance, linguistic stylistics, it was just dumped. I would guess
that most English teachers become English teachers because they love
literature; I guess many don't have the analytic bent that
grammar-lovers have. I also suppose a lot of them found grammar as then
taught as awful as the students did.
The study(ies?) that claimed to prove harm from grammar instruction
provided exactly what people were looking for to justify dumping
grammar teaching. The Whole Language movement sealed the deal.
Many states have brought back grammar requirements in the K-12 learning
standards. Large numbers of teachers are not prepared to teach the
material, of course. And, sadly, it is mostly the same program as
before the Great Dump. That's what got me into this group.
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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