> Michael,

It looks as if we do agree on policy at least.  I go along entirely with
your insistence that students have to understand the rules so that they can
break them on occasion.  One can't appreciate the point of a deliberate
solecism performed for stylistic purposes (one's own act or someone else's)
unless one has a sense of what rule is being broken.  When Shakespeare's
Duke of York in 'Richard the Second' shouts in anger 'Uncle me no uncle!',
we miss the point of his stylistic rebellion if we do not sense the first
word as normally a noun and not a verb.

It is not romanticism I am attacking.  The best of the romantics were well
aware of the danger of blind idealism (Keats:  'Was it a vision or a waking
dream?' -- and I am particularly drawn to Shelley's paradox,

                                            To hope till Hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.
                            ['Prometheus Unbound', Act IV]

What I dislike is the thoughtless commitment to naïve spontaneity that
strangely regards the investigation of language, the very thing that makes
us human, as de rigueur for the English teacher.

Grammar has been banished from the official syllabuses in England for so
long that the new generation of English teachers does not know it, and such
ignorance is lauded as leading to the removal of a filter that in the past
kept working-class children from entering the education process.  The
fashionable view has been that the teacher should know grammar but the
student need not -- a tremendous encouragement for the budding teacher.
There has been of late a slight sign that the syllabuses are aware that
language has rules, but nowhere here is there any attempt to relate grammar
to expression (as in Virginia Tufte's and Constance Weaver's excellent
books), so the effort is wasted.  As I said, our government seems to be
wholly locked on to this outdated attitude, and, worse, is about to issue an
edict which will force all state primary school teachers to adopt as their
focus of attention  whatever 'project for research' seems to be in favour at
the Department for Education.

I was lucky enough to have had a wonderful English teacher, Muriel McCarthy.
She gave me a lifelong love of the chief of the romantic poets, Wordsworth.
I remember how she was able to relate to its grammatical forms the solemn
climactic rhythm of the marvellous passage where he describes the gorge he
had descended in the Alps ('The Prelude', Book VI, 1850 version, lines
624-40).  There is a succession of noun phrases as subjects (where a leading
noun is linked to an adjectival unit), a succession followed by another set,
this time as similes, all objects of the one preposition 'like', the whole
bonded and musically uplifted by a complex interplay of word-repetition,
alliteration and assonance which produces a subtle counterpoint across the
expectations of the basic iambic pentameter, all with an increasing rapidity
of rhythm that rises to a sublime climax.  We are not condemned, are we, to
say nothing but 'Ooo!' as explanatory of how the enchantment works upon us?

Edmond



Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
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Yes, I believe I do agree with Dr. Wright's critique. I just wish it
> was aimed at something like Emile rather than progressives. In regard
> to your final question, I suppose the presentation I gave for ATEG at
> the most recent NCTE conference might provide an answer. I described
> my use of the descriptive vocabulary provided by grammar to define
> voice and rhetorical style.  Most of my students are law-fearing
> writers: they write grammatically sound prose which no one I know
> would wish to read. So, for example, I might distribute a passage
> written by Orwell from which I have removed all the punctuation. They
> must then punctuate it and explain their choices. Inevitably, they
> produce a range of solutions, most of which would pass editorial
> scrutiny. We then compare their solutions to Orwell's own. The
> exercise usually produces an interesting discussion about the
> artistic deployment of punctuation, one which they can only
> understand and articulate by using grammatical terms.  At this point
> they now understand my definition for an A grade on writing
> mechanics: "no errors of grammar, spelling, capitalization;
> transgressions artistically defensible." In order to bend or break
> the rules of standard grammar as they write their own papers, in
> other words, they need to identify the rules they are bending or
> breaking and identify an explicitly rhetorical intention for doing
> so. Our classroom exercises inform their practice and their defense
> of their practice. I suppose the encouragement to bend rules would
> conform to a definition of a progressive approach; it certainly feels
> different and progressive to them.  And, as I think you'd agree, it
> is not a romantic approach.
> 
> Michael Dee
> 
> 
> 
>> Michael,
>>   I think the fact that Edmond is writing us from England ought to
>> get him at least mildly off the hook.
>>  The progressive movement in American politics has a very proud
>> history, especially in the early twentieth century. I'm not sure
>> many Americans understand that, let alone someone from another
>> country.
>>   Am I right that you agree with Edmond in other ways?
>>   Can you give us a description of what a true progressive would say
>> in relation to things like "craft," "discipline", and "grammar"?
>> 
>> Craig
>> 
>> Michael Dee wrote:
>>> In my lifetime, progressive causes have been routinely disparaged
>>> by the logic evident in Dr. Wright's definition: renounce the
>>> general term (and its proponents) by identifying it with an
>>> obviously flawed subcategory or remote relative.  If you doubt the
>>> efficacy of this rhetorical strategy, consider the fate of
>>> "liberal."  Believe me, my rage at the predominance of conservative
>>> politics in this country can easily match Dr. Wright's passionate
>>> criticism of romantic idealism. Not only that: I would agree with
>>> the criticism, particularly as it applies to educational principles
>>> and practices. And for that very reason I object to casting
>>> progressives as childish idealists.
>>> 
>>> More passion available upon request.
>>> 
>>> Michael Dee
>>> 
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