Connie, I'm afraid I must agree with the points you make about teaching
grammar and about textbooks and publishers. Twenty some years ago (probably
25), I was approached by a young editor from a large publishing company.
He had been just been put in charge of the revision of a popular grammar
series.  He decided it wasn't really very coherent or thoughtful about its
approach to grammar.  And he wanted me (and several other young
grammarians) to bring the series up to date, to make it follow a coherent
pattern from elementary through high school.  He wanted the series to
follow Hunt's insights about syntactic development, and he wanted someone
like me, who had studied with Kelly Hunt at Florida State, to head the team
of writers.  The young editor had done his homework and obviously wanted to
produce a useful, thoughtful series of textbooks.  The editor's enthusiasm
was catching.  But a week or two after he had first approached me at a
conference, he called and said that his plan had been scrapped by his
editorial board.  The grammar series, they admitted, wasn't very good.  But
it sold well.  And they weren't about to change the formula that made it a
bestseller.

Perhaps things have changed in the publishing industry since the mid 70s,
but I suspect that the bottom line still prevails.

At any rate, Connie, my own experiences in and out of class support your view.

Like you and most of the folks on this listserv, I'd like to see a more
thoughtful view of grammar prevail.  But we have to be realistic about the
world we live in.  Publishers care about bottom lines.  Few people are
concerned with syntactic niceties, not even many English teachers. And
humanities departments have come to believe that language has little
meaning. Perhaps that last view is changing.  But the first two will have
to change a great deal for the son of that young editor to prevail with an
editorial board.

I don't think we've yet convinced many of our young teacher condidates that
they have much reason to teach grammar except as a surface proofreading
issue.

It's good, though, that this listserv is facing the issues.  Maybe some
good will come of such discussions.  I hope so.  Max
>
>I quite agree with Johanna about her first and second points, regarding
>children's subconscious use of grammar and their developmental patterns.
>Incidentally, when I got children in grades 1 through 6 write both a
>narrative and a persuasive piece, I found that many of the first graders used
>the subordinating conjunctions "when," "because," and "if."  Would all of
>these have occurred with some frequency if the children had written just a
>narrative piece?  I doubt it.  Thus my own informal research is part of what
>tells me that we must be very, very cautious in drawing conclusions about
>patterns that seem to be developmental.  So much depends upon various
>factors, like genre, motivation to write, preparation for writing, and THE
>INDIVIDUAL.  I'm remembering, too, Walter Loban's work, and the vast
>differences from children in the "low" language arts groups, compared with
>those in the "high" groups.
>
>Johanna, I don't understand, though, why you think an analytical, all-purpose
>grammar should be taught from at least middle school on.  I'm sure you know
>that decades of research suggest (1)  that the grammar isn't learned very
>well by a majority of students'; (2) that what's "learned" isn't well
>retained by a majority of students; and (3) that grammar knowledge seems to
>be even less often applied to actual writing.  I get the impression that you
>want to go back to doing the same old thing that hasn't worked well for a
>majority of students, though you'd perhaps emphasize functional grammar
>rather than traditional.  Can you explain how I'm misunderstanding you, or
>how you justify arguing for teachers teaching, year after year, what has had
>limited benefits, or at least has benefitted relatively few students (like
>us)?   (You've probably addressed this issue previously, but sometimes I've
>skimmed or skipped the postings.)
>
>Students seem even less motivated to learn grammar than they were when I
>started teaching, quite a while back.  Oh, sure, we can get them through our
>college courses in grammar for teachers, but do we really know whether they
>understand the grammar well enough to teach it, except by following a
>teacher's manual?  I worry about this.  Students who understand the concept
>of "sentence," for example, usually don't have the faintest idea why someone
>else would have trouble grasping what is and isn't a sentence, grammatically
>speaking.  Of course I try to help them understand such things, but I always
>wonder how many of my students will be/become good at teaching the concept to
>others.  Guess I'm the listserv pessimist--perhaps in part because I listen
>to and talk with my students as equals about learning and teaching grammar.
>What I learn from most of them isn't especially encouraging.
>
>Speaking of publishing companies, I think one major reason textbooks ignore
>kids' subconscious knowledge is, as I've said before, that publishers get
>nervous about doing anything other than the traditional grammar that's been
>taught for decades, even centuries.  It's not practical (lucrative) for them
>to consider what kids do and don't know subconsciously.  Another major reason
>they ignore such information is that they have to provide teachers with
>something to teach, day in and day out (yes, I REALLY mean this). For
>whatever combinations of reasons, when people like us are promised we will
>have control over the materials, we may sign on the dotted line, but later
>balk when told we have to do the same-old, same-old.  The solution?  The
>companies pay some 23-year old English major, fresh out of college, to write
>the books with our names on it.  These ghost writers don't necessarily know a
>darned thing about language development or teaching  students, but what the
>publishers really want is someone with a good grasp of traditional grammar
>who will mostly copycat the other grammar texts and, most important, who will
>have no qualms about doing what they're told.  Those of us who know about
>kids' subconscious knowledge of grammar and who know the research on
>developmental patterns simply aren't allowed to draw upon that knowledge,
>even though it was our knowledge that led the publishers to offer us a
>contract in the first place.  Other friends of mine in the field of reading
>have found the same thing:  that working with the publishers of textbook
>series is a dangerous game, because you lose your intellectual integrity,
>with regard to that project.
>
>Connie Weaver