In an off the list e-mail, Craig posed a question that strikes at the
essence of my struggle vis-à-vis grammar and the public school system:  What
should educated adults come to understand about their own knowledge of
language?  I would like to expand that question a bit.

In the public schools, we teach just enough phonology to help students read.
We teach just enough semantics to help students enrich their vocabulary.  We
view these two branches of Linguistics, then, as tools to help the general
public as they wrestle with language-related issues.  In my opinion, grammar
should be accorded the same stature:  we should teach just enough of it to
the general public to help them acquire the so-called language of power,
whether written or spoken.  Grammar should also be a component of critical
thinking, e.g., how advertisers mislead with passive constructions or empty
superlatives.  Deeper grammatical analyses should be reserved for students
who opt to enroll in courses designed for that purpose.

There are other areas of language that are, again in my opinion, more
important for the average educated adult than an in-depth knowledge of
English grammar.  Since many of our students will be parents, a basic
understanding and appreciation of the miracle of first language acquisition
is a very worthy goal.  Or how about some exposure to language variation,
male-female discourse, language and thought, or language and the brain?
And, since grammar plays such a key role in these areas, a deeper
understanding of grammar as a meaning-making system would be a natural
by-product.  All of these areas are, in their basic forms, well within the
reach of high school and college students and generally of great interest to
them; yet the average educated adult is totally ignorant of them.  

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.  

We English teachers have a limited amount of class time with our students.
Why is an in-depth knowledge of grammar so important that we are willing to
preclude other important areas of language awareness in order to ensure that
our students can break down every sentence into all of its components,
especially if they are already in complete productive and receptive (albeit
sub-conscious) control of  them, and most especially if we cannot agree on
how to do it amongst ourselves?  

John

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"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/