Why is Good Grammar Absent from Education?
Good grammar is essential to a good education
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend when she casually mentioned she had plans to spend an evening helping out another friend of hers with some work that needed to be done. I asked, “What kind of work?”
“She’s an English teacher. I’m going to help her grade papers.”
I experienced a moment of envy. “That sounds like fun,” I said. I love trolling written documents in search of typos, misspellings, and other crimes against grammar.
(What can I say? I always endorse good grammar.)
“These papers are written by teenagers,” she responded, “not so fun.”
Good Grammar is Fun and Education Should Be Too
I considered this, then remarked, “Yes, judging by the amount of writing errors I see coming from adults, those papers will probably be more red than white by the time you’re done.”
“Oh no,” she exclaimed. “No mark-ups. She just grades them. She says there are too many errors and she doesn’t have time to mark every single mistake.”
Well, if that’s the mentality of today’s English teachers, it’s no wonder the written word is treated with such complete and total disregard. I said as much to my friend and then we moved along to other, less disturbing topics.
What’s Happened to Our Education System?
Since that conversation, I’ve spent ample time wondering what, exactly, the English and Language Arts teachers are teaching students, if not good grammar. Looking back, I realized that I hadn’t had a decent grammar lesson past fourth grade. My spelling and punctuation skills were largely inherited from the massive amounts of reading I did, so I didn’t need grammar lessons necessarily, but it sure would have been nice to have graduated high school knowing the difference between farther and further.
During high school, I had an English teacher who found time to teach the class dating etiquette, which was supposed to prepare us for prom. We learned things like how to step out of a car, which arm to fold your coat over, and how to eat in a fine restaurant. While I found the lessons interesting, and the teacher was one that I liked very much, I look back with much chagrin, because we really should have spent that time mastering split infinitives.
A year later, I had a teacher who proceeded to read the entire novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Teachers Have a Hard Job To Do
I have a friend who teaches high school science, so I’m not completely without insight as to many of the obstacles that teachers must overcome: delinquent students, overbearing parents, oversized classes, and ridiculous requirements handed down by a politically-driven school board. Don’t even get me started on the bureaucracy in the public school system.
Is there a solution? Why are we letting these kids down? What’s wrong with a system in which a teacher cannot mark up her students’ papers in an effort to teach them good grammar? And if this is a problem for an English teacher, what are math, science, and history teachers skimping on? Are the kids getting shortchanged?
How will those kids ever learn how to communicate effectively if they don’t learn how to read, write, and master grammar, spelling, and punctuation? In a world where written communication is becoming more and more critical, where will these kids obtain the skills they need to succeed? Or is good grammar only to be relegated to the privileged, the talented, and the self-starters?
Melissa Donovan is a website designer and copywriter. She writes fiction and poetry and is the founder and editor of Writing Forward, a blog packed with creative writing tips and ideas.
Amen! I know my son had a horrible time with language and grammar. Then he became interested in Dungeons and Dragons. He read voraciously for a couple of years. Then his reading, writing and content understanding blossomed.
Imagine, Dungeons and Dragons doing more for him than a grade school education.
Based on many of the blogs out there, grammar does indeed seem to be a skill that is losing its necessity.
However, I’ll take some grammar errors in stride to learn what some of these people have to say – though I am a self-professed grammar snob and English geek, I don’t get too hung-up on mistakes when the passion is there. Some of my favorite writers have not followed the rules of grammar “to a tee” (Richard Bach, for example).
Anyway – my wife is a new English teacher (and theatre), and she has struggled (and continues to struggle) with the exact situation you describe. What is most frustrating for a teacher, I’m told, is when corrections and suggestions are made but not followed. She’s graded papers and made suggestions and corrections that were completely dismissed in teh final version of the paper. Unbelievable.
Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley
http://www.environmentastic.com
I know what you’re saying, Melissa. I can just keep counting the teens and young adults I know who can’t even read big words, some can’t read at all, and forget spelling or grammar. How do they graduate without knowing how to read? How do they complete their assignments and homework? I’m stunned. When I was in school, there were spelling tests, other tests, homework that was graded. If I hadn’t been able to read, how would I have passed? It’s crazy!
I used to move around a lot as a kid, and I’ve been to eleven or twelve elementary schools. I have no faith in the public school system: even if the teachers are sincere about their jobs, the students aren’t. You end up spending the entire class period describing something that should have been taught in ten minutes. Students seem to be expected to be lazy and slow, and with no challenge they almost always slumped to the occasion. Private schools were better, but I learned three times as much twice as fast when I briefly tried home school for a year.
Now, universities teach these English skills as part of college composition classes. I was never taught how to write an essay until I reached college.
I think a couple things: (1) some grammar and sentence structure is on the way out—the exclamation mark and the comma (except for lists and maybe those joiny words (however, furthermore) (I have an English degree: joiny words)), (2) language is taught all wrong and (3) I can’t think of anything else.
The problem with the way language is taught is because the majority of teachers take a classical approach to teaching language: formal, repetition, memorization. However, I believe a romantic or maybe you’d say postmodern approach to language education would be more significant. Make it about passion and the excitement of writing a sentence or paragraph. The pure joy that comes from using a well placed dash.
I don’t love grammar or sentence structure but I do love a beautifully written sentence that employs those devices to make me think and wonder.
@kexbrown, It seems that most people who went through public school and who have a good grasp on grammar are mostly self-taught. That definitely says something!
@A. Caleb, If someone has valuable knowledge to share, I too overlook grammar and typos and poor writing in general. I appreciate and encourage good grammar, but I’m not a stickler. Having said that, I do believe that writing is a huge aspect of blogging, and bloggers would do well to make more effort in that area.
@Michele, You’re right about that! It’s crazy! I mean, what are they doing in school all day? Is school becoming more of a day care than a place of learning?
@Eliza, The closest I came to learning any grammar in college was a class I took on the history and structure of the English language. We were expected to arrive knowing basic grammar, and many did not.
@Rhett, Yes, teaching with passion is a much better way to gain the trust and interest of the students. I once read an essay explaining that because arithmetic assignments were frequently used for punishment (i.e. talking in class results in one page of multiplication), it caused a general dislike of math among students, which spread wildly. Teachers (and parents) need to instill kids with a greater appreciation for knowledge and learning. When I was in junior high, it was literally “uncool” to get high marks and those who did were called “study buddies.” Ridiculous!
My best friend has been teaching Italian to college students for the last 10 years or so, and she loves teaching the grammar, the mechanics. She tells me that she’s always amazed when students don’t know what, say, a past participle is, but also that her students have thanked her for explaining the grammar because it’s something they were never taught by their English teachers. I suppose I was lucky that I had teachers who taught that–my 7th grade English teacher even taught sentence diagramming. I don’t necessarily remember everything, but am grateful for the solid foundation–both from my old teachers and that lifelong reading habit (grin).
It is easier to correct 1 or 2, or even 10 mistakes. But to check 100+ mistakes? It gets dull, doesn’t it?
I don’t mind bad education. All it means is less competition for those who make the effort to learn. Plus my kids are going to be home-schooled, if I ever have any.
By the way, there’s a book on this topic that you might be interested in. Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education”. You can find a very good review here.
While I agree with the basic idea of this post…I find it hard to expect that a high school teacher should have to mark every single mistake.
Give a poor grade and explain the mistakes in class…sure!
Edit every single little error on 20-30 papers? Crazy talk!
A better question is:
What kind of a world do we live in where professional athletes get paid millions to play a game and teachers get paid a pittance and are expected to put in extra unpaid overtime just to correct papers?
When we start making education a priority (and parents start getting involved), then we’ll have a society we can be a little bit more proud of.
Dear Michele,
You’ve been tagged. Check out WRA’s Seven Procrastination Busters [Meme] for more details.
I’ll be back to enjoy the last few posts as soon as time permits. *hugs* Hope you’re having a great week.
Opps, helps to actually add the link: http://www.writersroundabout.com/2008/01/seven-procrastination-busters-meme.html/
Fifteen years ago I was on faculty at a private university and preparing future educators, among others. Students were required to submit weekly abstracts of their outside reading. Just fresh out of a doctoral program myself, apparently I was a bit naive. I thought students would value rigorous critiques of their writing and so I spent a significant amount of time on editing and even gave them opportunity to re-write and re-submit. They were, after all, paying $600 for a three-hour class (again, this was 15 years ago) and I wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth. Many of them had a different outlook – they seemed to figure, Hey I’ve paid my $600 worth for this class. Where’s my A?
I teach college courses for international students. Correcting English language mistakes on papers and assignments could easily quadruple the time I spend grading papers – and with sometimes up to 200 students a semester, it’s a frightening thought.
That said, as a writer, receiving that kind of feedback is always useful – even when it was from teachers telling me I didn’t know how to write. Maybe a happy medium is to mark the first paragraph or page and then indicate that there will be no more language corrections from that point forward. It helps avoid overwork but still provides students with some feedback.
Eileen, I feel your pain. Such grades for money mentality is quite horrifying.
@Deb, Your comment reminds me that I actually learned a lot about English grammar through several years of French. Studying a foreign language is incredibly helpful in better understanding one’s native language!
@Rudy, You’re right. It would get dull, but how are the kids supposed to learn if their mistakes aren’t corrected? Rock and a hard place.
@Elver, I can appreciate your sentiment. Poor grammar skills are one of the reasons I get so many proofreading and editing projects through my freelance business! However, I think an entire culture benefits when the masses are better educated. The question here is do we want what’s good for ourselves as individuals or for our society as a whole?
@Chad, You’ve come up with a great solution. If teachers go over the types of mistakes they see on the papers during class lecture, then everyone in the class will benefit! The problem is, I don’t think much class time is given to grammar at all these days.
@Courtney, Excellent point. Our priorities are pretty screwy.
@Rebecca, psst… I’m Melissa
I got your tag, of course I’m subscribed to your blog so I saw it right away. I’m still thinking about that one, and I’ll leave you a comment on WRA but probably not till next week.
@Eileen, That’s awfully disheartening. It’s bad enough the teachers are too crunched for time to properly correct papers. It’s just as bad that the students aren’t inclined to learn.
@Christine, Excellent idea! Another great solution. If teachers mark up the first paragraph, or even the first page, at least the students can get some idea of what they’re doing wrong. If this strategy was combined with Chad’s idea of reviewing common mistakes during lectures, teachers could save a lot of time and the students would still be able to learn. Awesome! Hopefully we get some teachers reading this!
*groans* You can tell I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I always have to be careful when talking to you or Michele because I keep getting the names tangled in my mind.
Sorry, Melissa, I do know the difference between you. Can I get away with blaming dyslexia for that or just go with the blonde excuse?
I think our education systems (both American and Australian) are in dire straits. I don’t remember learning any specific grammar in school at all. I failed ninth grade English but I have no idea why. I loved writing and was always frustrated when classes were filled with a teacher who spent 90% of class time yelling at students and 10% having us take meaningless notes from the board.
Almost all I know of grammar and writing structure and rules was learnt post-school. Thankfully, we are given fantastic resources (e.g., this blog) and can continue our education without the flaws of the formal schooling system.
Kudos for the most accurate reenactment of a conversation.
I love everyone’s comments to you on this. And I love how well they all write! It is odd to see people using Caps and punctuation! on the Internet in a comments section.
What a major topic of discussion to tackle!
Becoming fluent in French is how I came to understand English grammar and big words.
As a high school English teacher, I’m working hard not to be reactive/defensive as I read this post and comments.
Yes, we work hard. No, we are not always compensated in proportion with the work we do. For the most part, we do what we do because we care about kids and we want to give them the tools they need to be successful in the future. There are teachers who don’t use best practice to reach kids, just as there are people who aren’t great in any profession.
Kids come in with lots of baggage, but also hidden brilliance. Our challenge as teachers is differentiating instruction (and grading!) for groups of kids with abilities and experiences that could spread from barely literate to extraordinarily gifted.
I teach grammar in my classroom. Is it the focus? No. We work on analysis and writing as a whole–ideas, not just structure. For me, grammar is a means to an end (clear, concise, creative and correct communication), not an end itself.
If learning another language besides the native English is a great way to master English, then by that logic, would it not mean that foreigners who speak English as a second language would, on average, speak it better than someone who only knows English?
If you also take into account the fact that the internet has broken down many barriers between countries, then would it not make sense to predict that in 10-20 years a large portion of United States bestsellers will be written by people who speak English as their second language?
As the global culture becomes more and more English-centric, there’s less motivation for an English-speaking person to learn a second language, but more motivation for a non-English-speaking person to learn English as their second language. If knowing two languages dramatically increases your language skills and if the United States education system is as poor as it seems to be, then that prediction doesn’t seem very odd.
So, yeah, writing will also be outsourced. Lovely
Writing is already outsourced. I’m an Australian (living in Australia) who often works for US publications.
The ScreenWriter’s Strike has also tempted producers to look outside the US for alteratives. Thankfully, the opinion from writer’s about the strike is fairly universal. There may be some unloyal fish out there but they probably won’t be the quality writers needed for the brilliant work guild members usually produce.
@Rebecca, no worries
I do think that there are plenty of writers out there who maybe learned the basics in school and through reading, but who purposefully pursue knowledge on their own. Despite all my reading and schooling, I still look things up all the time!
@Jaden, Yep, that was our conversation alright! Heheh.
@A. Werner, Thanks for sharing some of your teaching experience with us. Teaching is one of the most honorable and underrated professions in the world. The idea of developing a curriculum for a group of students ranging from brilliant to barely literate is one that disturbs me. I know this arrangement is not designed by the teachers, of course. It just seems like those students at either end of the spectrum are sure to lose. I’d love to hear more about that from a teacher’s perspective!
@Elver, When I learned my native language, American English, I learned it organically as a small child. But when I learned French, it was methodical, examining nouns, verbs, conjugation, and sentence structure. The French, for example, say Je t’aime. I you like. We English speakers say I like you. I learned a lot about the structure of English through comparing it to a second language.
No, I don’t think this means that foreigners who speak English as a second language will speak it better, but through learning English, they may come to better understand their own native language. Having said that, a long and arduous study of a foreign language could result in someone speaking the language better than natives do; I just don’t think it’s commonplace.
As for best sellers… much of what makes them best sellers is their tie to the culture. Even if someone overseas masters the language, there is much to a culture that can only be absorbed though living within it. Sure, a foreigner could write a U.S. best seller (and many have) but there is more to writing than mastering a language.
Anyone who knows two or more languages is at a clear advantage, in more ways than one. The U.S. is putting itself at a great disadvantage by not mandating a second language starting early on in school. I’ve always felt that way, and it bothered me that there were no opportunities to learn foreign languages here in California until I reached eighth grade. Now, Spanish is spoken here just as much as English is, so shouldn’t all the kids be learning both languages? I think so.
Outsourcing is a concern for all industries. Writing certainly is no exception.
Thanks Elver, for great thought-provoking comments!
@Rebecca, I’ve tried to write a few posts about the WGA strike, but other than pointing to the latest news, what’s there to say? We all know right from wrong, and the writers are (as usual) getting ripped off. How sickening that the originators of the material, the people who came up with the brilliant television plot twists, fantastic film characters, are so snubbed by the moguls.
There’s nothing wrong with business. But there is something wrong when people are so driven by greed that financial gain drives their every decision to the point that they don’t care how their actions negatively impact others. We all need to be a little selfish now and then, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but for it to be your sole purpose in life? I just see that as a hollow existence.
I’m afraid it’s an age-old dilemma. Reeks of feudalism, and not in a good way.
I’ve never liked grammar.
Maybe because the teachers in German schools overdo it?
I guess I got the hang of it thanks to reading a lot. Sure not during school, but at least they tried. Hard
.
Having Etiquette lessons so you don’t look like a fool on your Prom?
.
That’s just plain weird.
Reminds me of some teachers we had when I did my “2 years job training school” – they came up with some pretty useless crap too
@Nicole, I think most people feel the way you do about grammar. In fact, many writers that I meet seem to have a pretty relaxed attitude toward it. The problem is, this shows up in writing. I don’t think people need to stick to the rules 100% of the time, but I do believe that if you don’t know the rules, it shows.
Yeah, the etiquette lessons were strange, and pretty useless. As far as high school goes, the most useful class I took was typing
I\’m a real sucker for anything to do with accelerated learning ideas. Thanks for your post. I\’m going to get back into this next month.