Wheeler (I guess we are no longer on first-name basis) assumes that I make a number of assumptions and then "upon this foundation of ignorance" I hurl accusations. Well, I may hurl accusations, but I'm not so sure of the ignorance part.
      She notes that her students have to take two courses, and her students  "learn English sentence structure"  in the second one, where she uses Max Morenberg's Doing Grammar.  I found this interesting, especially since Professor Morenberg wrote an article for Syntax in 1994 (Volume 11, No.2) in which he questioned the effectiveness of his own teaching of his own course, using, I assume, his own book. In 1994, while editing the newsletter, I attempted not to challenge people, but (to myself) I did question Morenberg's approach. I just pulled out the article and reread it. As I understand it, he spent ten of fifteen weeks on sentence structure, and then used the last five to discuss sentence structure in literature and to examine the work of Loban, Christensen, etc.
     The fundamental problem with Morenberg's approach is that ten week is simply not enough time for current students to develop an effective conscious command of syntactic structures. Wheeler writes, "Thus, while it is indeed untested, I suspect that students engaging in such life-long (K - 16) discovery learning of language structure would indeed emerge with a 'strong analytical grasp of sentence structure.'  Nobody ever claimed such mastery would emerge after one semester." But the future teachers that Wheeler is teaching were not brought up in such an environment. They have almost no conscious analytical sense of grammar when they enter their college courses. Indeed, it would not surprise me if many of these students think, as many of my Freshman do, that "of" is a verb, and "is" is not. In effect, what I am asking is if she has any proof that they have it when they leave her courses?
     If we want these future teachers to believe that syntax is systematic, and that a knowledge of it will indeed help them and their students, the first thing we need to do is to convince them of that fact. And the only way to do that, I would suggest, is to give them as much control of the "system" as possible. Take, for example, the question of clauses. It is fairly easy to teach students definitions and the ability to identify clauses in "selected" sentences. Teaching them to untangle the clause structure in any sentence that their students may read or write is quite another matter. It takes much longer, and it requires going over numerous texts, randomly selected by the students, as well as by the instructor. But without such an analytical ability, the future teachers will find themselves unable to effectively apply what they have learned in any of the courses taught by people on this list.
     Wheeler claims that what she teaches "goes to challenge their erroneous, and damaging presumption that there is one and only one 'proper English' and that all others are flawed, imperfect renditions of the Standard.  Students emerge from Language & Teaching understanding at a deep and personal level that the structure of language varies by time, place, audience and communicative purpose, knowledge which they then are able to use with their students to help students code-switch between language
varieties in their speech and writing." Challenge, it may. Convince, I'm not so sure. Of course they will tell her that they are convinced. She is giving the grades. I would suggest that this "lesson" can be taught much more economically, in terms of time, and I still question her students' final ability to discuss, intelligently, such things as clause structure in any text.
     As I think I noted in my original post, when there was a debate in Syntax on main ideas in main clauses, several teachers told me that the entire discussion was beyond them because they did not understand clauses. Similarly, from something I read, teachers in England complained about their new standards because the teachers themselves could not understand clauses. Most of these teachers had been required to take a course in grammar, perhaps even two courses. The problem, I think, is that too many of the people teaching teachers insist on "teaching" lots of stuff that is interesting (for the "professors"), or that fits an ideological/politcal framework. I wouldn't have a problem with this, if the future teachers already had a solid analytical command of syntax. But there are many English teachers who cannot identify subjects and verbs, clauses, participles, etc. i.e., the basic structures of English. There are many teachers who, as I noted in my first post, think that "because" is a coordinating conjunction. Not only are these teachers  teaching things that are wrong, they are teaching things that hurt students, not only on standardized tests (as I noted in the first post), but also in the students' reading and writing.
     I still believe that teaching things such as language differences (in ways that require a lot of class time) is irresponsible and unethical.  Many of us have jobs because the public (and our colleagues in other fields) believe that students can't "write." Although they say "write," many of these people have in mind grammatical errors. As primarily a teacher of Freshman composition, I have to agree with our colleagues. Many of my students have major problems with fragments, splices, etc., and, more importantly, they have problems in using the basic syntax of the language to clearly express the ideas in their heads. It is for this reason that we have jobs. Likewise, those of you who have jobs teaching grammar to future teachers have them because the public (and our academic colleagues) believe that you are teaching future teachers how to deal with these problems. My questions are are you? And, if so, how effectively? To the extent that you are not, I consider you unethical and irresponsible -- you are not meeting the responsibility implied by the very existence of your jobs.
      I found the discussion of September 11 and grammar interesting, but again, I found most of the discussion going in the wrong track. Certainly language differences are important, but other than by teaching foreign languages, we are not going to be able to do very much about that in teaching grammar. As a composition teacher, I became interested in the teaching of grammar because of the syntactically garbled sentences that crossed my desk. For students who do not have a good background in reading, a conscious command of syntax, a command that they can apply to any sentence that they read or write, is very helpful. Are we giving them (and their teachers) that command?  If we do not, will these students be able to participate effectively in the many complex debates about policy that will be forthcoming?
     To do so, we do not need to discuss many (most?) of the constructions that are discussed on this list. Rather, for example, we need to enable students to identify prepositional phrases and subjects and verbs in their own writing, thereby enabling them to see that the meaningful subject of a verb is in a prepositional phrase, and thus the sentence needs to be rephrased.
     I will, of course, be interested in any responses, and I will be especially  interested should Professor Morenberg respond to it.
Ed V.