I'm afraid I must apologize to Ed. He asked me a while back to take another
look at his system of pedagogical grammar, and I did so. But then I didn't
get around to replying; now I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say.  I
do remember thinking that I'd like to try the system myself--although how I
would do that I can't say; I don't have a captive audience of youngsters to
work with. I also remember thinking that the terminology still (it seems to
me) gets in the way. But then, I've begun to have a "thing" about
terminology.

I also feel somewhat like Ed about this organization. At one time I was
strongly considering volunteering to edit the newsletter. I love to do
newsletters and was at one time doing five academic newsletters at once.
But I decided not to  volunteer to do Syntax in the Schools because (1) I
don't feel compatible with the majority of the members of ATEG, who seem to
wish for a return to the old days of teaching schoolbook grammar at every
grade, and (2) I don't feel that anyone is doing any research that would
answer the questions that face us and that could be published in SIS. There
are some darn good reasons why the teaching of grammar has virtually died
out in many schools, but we don't have many people addressing them.

It could be, of course, that the work is being done but is published
elsewhere; one does not get much credit toward tenure or promotion for
publishing in a newsletter instead of a journal. It could also be that
doing the necessary work calls for a person with a broad and deep
background in linguistics, pedagogy, stylistics, sociolinguistics, etc.,
and such birds are rare.

To understand the dimensions of the problem, perhaps a little personal
history would be in order.

You may remember that the secondary English curriculum is usually
visualized as a "tripod" of language, literature, and composition, but one
problem with this metaphor has been that the legs of the real English
curriculum behind the tripod have never been of equal length.

When I began teaching English in the early sixties (teaching ninth grade),
better than half of our curriculum was devoted to language. This consisted
of syntax, mechanics/usage, vocabulary, and spelling. We used a spelling
book with one lesson a week, the usual 20 words per week of vocabulary, an
"English" textbook (the standard grammar/comp textbook), and a weekly (or
monthly--I can't remember) publication from Scholastic that included much
material about mechanics/usage. The material on syntax was entirely
inadquate, so I wrote my own supplementary stuff.

Literature came entirely from a hardback anthology such as still exists
today. Schools did not yet order class sets of paperbacks. Literature was
not strongly emphasized because most of us teachers came out of the
historical/biographical tradition of literary study, and our secondary
school anthologies were not compatible with that approach, except in the
junior and senior years, which were devoted to American and English
literary history. We did not know how to teach the New Critical/analytical
approach that came into popularity later in the sixties.

Although composition was included in the "English" textbook, it was hardly
taught at all. By and large, teaching composition was equated with teaching
correctness of writing anyway, which we imagined that we were already doing
through the mechanics/usage exercises in the textbook and the Scholastic
publication. No one had been taught how to teach composition; indeed, no
one had been taught any composition theory at all. The textbook included
the usual modes of discourse approach, as ubiquitous yet useless then as it
is today. In what I discovered was unusual at our school, I did try to
teach composition, using the theory I had learned in journalism, but since
we made so little money in those days I had to hold a second job and didn't
have time to grade papers. It's hard to teach composition if you can't
grade papers.

Today, as you already know, the situation is much different. Based on what
I saw during observations of student teachers, the dominant leg of the
tripod, even in junior high, is now literature. Not only do English
teachers get a heavy dose of literature during the college English major,
but they have been taught some techniques of reading literature that are
worth teaching; they have access to class sets of paperback novels, plays,
and collections of short stories; and they use approaches such as thematic
units and reader-response theory that can make literature more interesting
to students. In other words, the literature curriculum is much richer than
it was when I began teaching, though I did adopt the thematic approach in
the mid-sixties.

Composition has continued to be a step-child, with continuation of the
modes of discourse and a small addition of writing about literature.
However, this has radically changed in the last couple of years with the
coming of the standards movement. Writing is a major part of the
standards-based tests, and many schools are being forced to give their
teachers substantial, realistic in-service training in teaching
composition. And teachers are rewriting their curriculums to include more
composition.

The teaching of language has suffered during these changes--and some would
say that it was high time. I don't know when I last saw a spelling book. A
few schools have adopted vocabulary textbooks, but most teachers get their
vocabulary words from the literature they are studying. There is still some
teaching of mechanics/usage, but I have seldom seen much being taught about
syntax. (Ironically, I have seen more of this kind of grammar taught in
elementary school. In some schools sixth grade is included in the junior
high, so that's how I have seen it.)

Some schools still have those "English" textbooks of grammar/composition,
but I saw more of them in storage than in students' hands.

In theory, there is plenty of room for the study of language and
composition within literature. The thematic unit is often referred to as
the INTEGRATED thematic unit, which means that language and composition
would be integrated with literary study. But too often this integration is
left for the teacher to do, for there are few published units that do a
good job of integration. Teachers try to integrate vocabulary by pulling
words from the literature, but they end up replicating the
20-words-per-week of unrelated vocabulary that so justly died out in the
past. Likewise, style in literature could be integrated with a study of
syntax, but again, teachers would have to do that themselves. I don't think
most do. When I tried it with college students, there was panic in the
streets.

This post has gone on too long, so I'll quit now. But we should see that
anything that ATEG wants to do about returning the serious study of syntax
to the schools must be done in the context of what is going on in schools
today. There is no possibility of returning to the fifties, and that's
probably just as well. ATEG needs to adopt a realistic program and locate
(or develop) professionals who are doing work that could help in developing
the needed new approaches. Otherwise, nothing much is going to happen.

Bill

William J. McCleary
3247 Bronson Hill Road
Livonia, NY 14487
716-346-6859