As usual, my post on this list has evoked a number of responses, and I can't respond to them all in  detail. It does, however, bother me that some members of this list see the question of relative importance as an either/or question. I never phrased it that way. Indeed I suggested that I have no problem with the linguists (and sociolinguistics) if the students have first been taught to identify subjects and verbs. It also bothers me that many of the linguists on this list appear to be blissfully ignorant of the failed attempts to introduce linguistics into the K-12 curriculum. Johanna claims that:
 
"Ed keeps talking about teaching grammar as though grammar were separate 
from linguistics or sociolinguistics. It isn't. Any reason for teaching 
grammar at all is a sociolinguistic reason. And describing  grammar -- 
the way a language works -- is the task of linguistics. And linguistics 
does it better than the pedagogical tradition."
 
Pedagogical grammars, some of them very successful, existed before linguistics was developed as a science. It may be true that linguistics can describe the way language works better than the pedagogical tradition could, but "describe" for whom? I have yet to see any of the linguists on this list even begin to present a scope and sequence design for K-12.
 
     I am, of course, addressing the wrong audience on this list, and I'm probably stupid for doing so. Hope, however, does spring eternal. 
 


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