Max Morenberg:
 
    Grammar can be taught both directly and incidentally.  Thw two
together are likely to be better than either separately.
 
    I do not believe in snake oil.  Not surprisingly, there is
unlikely to be some magical key concerning the teaching of English,
including the facet of grammar.  For commercial reasons however, it
would not be surprising to see yet another "modern" approach.
 
    Regardless of what approach is involved, little learning occurs
without commensurate effort.  It is unfortunate if the noun "effort"
invokes a measure of hostility, as it has done on some other Internet
lists.
 
    By chance, I too was scoring papers.  Two of my college students
wrote that President Kennedy had been "assinated" in Dallas.  The
students had access to an almanac and a dictionary.  Perhaps the
correct spelling of the death word above is too much to expect from a
college junior.  Perhaps of interest too, two juniors in another
class freely used the phrase "to poor water" (in regard to Piaget's
Concrete Operational Stage).  I used to teach fifth graders, who
would seldom have made the error shown above.
 
    I do not believe that there has been a decline in genetic
potential.  I do believe that low expectations and low effort produce
low results.  This of course applies across the board.
 
Realistically,
Richard Swerdlin
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