Dear ATEG:

You know so much about language that you seem to stand in the midst of a 
forest of theories, each of you defending a particular tree, each 
determined to prove that chosen tree is the right or the best one. Proving 
the right or best of anything is hopeless; but you must know that already.  
So why have you let yourselves get so stuck on basic terminology? Please 
take time to walk beyond the trees out into the sunshine, turn around, and 
look at the whole forest. 

For whom are you writing your Scope and Sequence? Experts like yourselves 
or teachers, especially in the upper grades, who need a set of terms–-a 
metalanguage, if you will-- to use in their classrooms? Terms they can be 
sure will be recognized as acceptable. Terms that won’t get them into 
altercations with their supervisors or principals. Terms their students can 
carry from one classroom or one school building to another and still find 
themselves in familiar territory. 

What is needed is for you to do for linguistics what arithmetic does for 
higher math. Don’t write one “definitive” S&S; write several, beginning 
with Level One–what students must learn to produce correct standard written 
English. Once they understand something structure and usage, they can go on 
to your more advanced S&S’s in which you may describe the uncertainties and 
ambiguities of language. 

Sometimes this group puts down correctness as an unimportant goal. Itis 
only unimportant when one can already write flawless standard English. 
Correctness must be a primary concern for teachers who don’t want their 
students handicapped in the Information Age. The rest of the world is busy 
mastering standard English. It would be sad if our students would someday 
have to keep their jobs by outsourcing their own language. Should 
tomorrow’s leaders have to send their paperwork to somewhere like India to 
be “translated” into acceptable copy, that would be sad. 

Of course the basic S&S wouldn’t have to be just boring rules and 
exercises. There are so many wonderful and exciting things about language 
that most kids are totally unaware of. Besides some of the suggestions in 
Grammar Alive, Martha Kolln’s chapter on intonation might be a great place 
to start. Show kids how music and writing are connected, and you will grab 
a lot of them for life. Or show them how to write so they can slow down or 
speed up their readers. Fun stuff like that.

Dear ATEG, please stop arguing and start teaching.

Thank you.
Elizabeth Ward

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