In a message dated 1/4/2006 10:43:31 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Is our insistence on case endings still a throwback to overvaluing
latin? These prescriptions go on making people distrust their own language.
Rather than improving writing, I think they have the effect of shutting
it down. People don't need a new language, just practice in the genres
of writing.
We don't have to be prescriptivists to have
strong values and high standards.
Craig,
I totally agree with you and many others about
prescriptivism. To bring this discussion down to the mundane, however, I'd
like to cite my lesson plans for December. I spent the three weeks before
break going over and insisting on my middle school students memorizing pronoun
cases. They made pronoun books and illustrated them on the computer. They wrote
poems, etc. about cases and when to use them. They chanted "it is I" and looked
at linking verbs. (The French teacher, by the way, went out of her way to
stop in my classroom to shake my hand in gratitude!)
Why did we struggle through all this? Do I not understand
that the pronoun cases are eroding? (There's an old joke about people in line at
the pearly gates; when St. Peter asks "who's there?" the people who answer "It
is I" have their own line labeled "English teachers.") Of course I
do.
But questions on these sorts of things are one more way of sorting
and assigning numbers on standardized tests. If I want my kids to get
those extra points that make such a difference nowadays, I have to teach
it. And if they don't get those points, guess who they come
to?
Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it fair. But we
often have prescriptivism forced on us by politicians and test
writers.
Grumpily,
Gretchen (wonderful discussion, by the
way)
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"