RE: Grammar

 Dear Fish,

I found my education (in a public high school in rural Alabama) mirrored
Lucy-Ruth's description and it's very likely that Cecilia's explanation is
the reason why. My school (like many in the States) placed students on
"tracks." In my school there were three tracks: one for the smart students
who were going to college (about 10%), one for the middle of the road
students who were going to graduate and go directly to work (most likely at
one of the manufacturing plants in the area), and one for the "remedial"
students who were struggling just to graduate (about 10%). I was in the
college track and received NO basic grammar lessons and very little of the
sort of in context grammar. The emphasis was placed solely on creativity
and content and it was only when I got my papers back in my senior AP
English class that I realized that there were grammatical rules outside of
not using "ain't." My little brother just started high school in the same
small town and he is in the "remedial" track. Apparently all they cover is
basic grammar and reading skills. It makes me wonder what kind of education
in grammar the other 80% of students at my high school received.

Ob-Sal: While perusing my local video store I noticed a film called
"Chasing Holden." Has anyone seen this film or heard anything about it?
When my boyfriend saw it he commented, "When will it ever end?" Meaning,
"when are people going to stop with the gratuitous Salinger references?" We
had recently seen "The Good Girl" and I think that one had left a bad taste
in his mouth. Are there any ideas from the fishbowl?

-----Original Message-----
From: Cecilia Baader
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
Sent: 9/8/2002 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Grammar

--- Lucy Pearson <l_r_pearson@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I don't know what the situation is in America, but I
> personally feel that one of the greatest deficiencies
> in the British education system is in the teaching of
> grammar. Due to the belief that attempting to teach
> children inhibits their natural creativity, I received
> almost no lessons in grammar.

Lucy-Ruth,

This is one of the greatest debates in all English Education discussions
lately. Over the last twenty years, the fashionable thing to do was to
let children write and then correct their grammar in context. The idea
was that grammar lessons weren't grounded in reality, and so students
never quite understood the practical applications of it. For some
students, this practice did indeed work. However, for many students
without any previous instruction in grammar, this sort of "in context"
crap was grounded in nothing at all. They left school and never learned
it.

More recently, a woman named Lisa Delpit wrote a book called 'Other
People's Children,' a book that basically sets the former pedagogy on
its
ear and demands that English teachers spend time teaching children,
especially minority children, skills-based lessons. They can get to the
creativity later, after they've learned the basics.

You can find more information on this book at:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=16LD6
W7XUE&isbn=1565841808

(All one line.)

>From the reaction in the world of eduction, you'd think nobody had ever
thought of this before.

I don't know how well this is going to catch on, since I suspect that
most
English teachers don't know half the rules themselves, but it's at least
got people talking again.

Regards,
Cecilia.

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Received on Sun Sep 8 17:01:54 2002