Ed and Bill,

Thank both of you for carefully considered responses.

Ed, I must confess that I am a bit confused:  if the goal of KISS is to
teach students to be able to analyze every word of every sentence, how is
that appreciably different from breaking a sentence down "into all of its
components," a goal that I think is too heavy-handed on the grammar facet of
the language component?  KISS looks at everything through a grammar looking
glass, and does it very well, I might add.  But how can one justify spending
that much time on grammar while excluding other crucial areas of language
awareness, some of which could serve as vehicles for further grammatical
analysis in their own rights?

Bill, I am not trying to re-visit the "Argument from Utility."  My question
isn't "Why is grammar useful?".  My question is why is it so important that
we are willing to downplay or ignore other important areas of language?  You
state that "the activity of grammatically analyzing a sentence requires
students to think, carefully and in  detail, about their language."  I
absolutely agree; however, the same could be said for semantic analysis,
phonological analysis, discourse analysis, or pragmatic analysis.  I love
your last sentence:  "And I don't think it's intellectually healthy for
students to get the idea that the modes are domain-specific - that holistic
thinking is only usable in the humanities, and analytic reasoning in the
sciences."  But grammar is only one of several linguistic areas where
analytic reasoning can be applied.  For example, most students have a great
time trying to figure out the rules that govern a child's output at a
certain age.  That "non-standard" English was rule-driven astounded me as an
undergrad.  These types of analyses, many of them grammatical, can be
watered down and made accessible to the average educated adult.  So why do
we spend so much time teaching them to analyze sentences down to the
molecular level, boring them in the process, and driving them _away_ from
language analysis rather than _toward_ it?  Why do we think grammar _per se_
is that important?

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Spruiell, William C
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 1/12/04 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: A Basic Question

John Crow writes:

>>My basic question boils down to this:  why has grammar been accorded
such a special status?  Why do we feel it necessary and/or
>>desirable to teach the general public a complete system of grammatical
analysis?  Knowledge for the sake of knowledge doesn't hold
>>water here:  one could champion the teaching of phonemes and
allophones, morphemes and allomorphs, turn-taking conventions, etc.
>>using the same rationale.  And yet nobody (myself included, of course)
favors their inclusion.

While I don't want to disagree with the basic premise behind the
question, I would point out that there are many, many "systems of
knowledge" taught in K-12 to an extent far exceeding their utility in
everyday life (this is an old argument on ATEG, but worth repeating, I
think). For example:

*       Do students really need to know the principles behind the
periodic table of the elements in order to cook or use paint?
*       Do students need to understand the causes behind the Civil War
to avoid having a new one?
*       Do students need to understand the laws of optics underlying
laser beams to use their CD players?

And so on. Applying what I'll call the "Argument from Utility" would
eliminate roughly 80% of the content of public education.....unless
"utility" is expanded to include "practice in ways of intellectually
approaching a subject" instead of just "content of the subject area." I
would fully agree that grammatical analysis, by itself, is of only
slight applicability, and I would further agree that expanding
instruction in language to include a variety of "language awareness"
domains is crucial, but I also think that the activity of grammatically
analyzing a sentence requires students to think, carefully and in
detail, about their language. With my college students, I find that many
of them, while quite capable of deriving interesting and nuanced
insights about texts viewed holistically, have had almost no practice at
all with careful analytic reasoning applied to the same texts. The ones
who have had practice with that kind of reasoning are usually science
majors or minors. Both holistic and analytic thought-modes are crucial,
and I don't think any K-12 education system should allow students to get
by with just one of the two. And I don't think it's intellectually
healthy for students to get the idea that the modes are domain-specific
- that holistic thinking is only usable in the humanities, and analytic
reasoning in the sciences.

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
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