An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
HEY CHRIS!!! (aka Grammar Nazi)
I was trying to get my email in box cleaned up, and apparently, I tend to miss a few now and then. Apparently, one of those I missed was a link from Hilldale College to a column by a young fella by the name of Daniel Coupland about education. In it he stated:
The Education Department also recognized a need for a new course in English grammar and, with consultation from the college’s English Department, designed a comprehensive course in English grammar for future teachers. Language is the most important tool of the teacher’s trade. As Richard Mitchell (“the Underground Grammarian”) once said, “’Good grammar’…is the Law by which meaning is found and made.”
Yet as David Mulroy showed in his book The War Against Grammar (2003), most educators do not know how the English language works. He concluded, “Unfortunately, few…teachers now have the necessary educational background to teach grammar or to integrate it within their lesson plans. There is only one way for them to obtain this knowledge: it has to be taught explicitly in the college curriculum.” At Hillsdale, we recognize that language is the vehicle for thinking, learning, and teaching and the Education Department decided to make sure that the future teachers who graduate from our college have a solid understanding of how the English language works.
This explains a great deal, doesn’t it! I thought grammar was still be taught to some degree in schools, but apparently, not even those who are suppose to TEACH, are totally clueless. It’s no wonder today’s kids can’t spell, or construct a coherent sentence, with proper punctuation! Sheesh!
Grammar? GRAMMAR!?! We don’t need no stinkin grammar!
Actually I don’t remember grammar 101 being offered in college. I took the two basic comp courses and then speech and creative writing. Maybe comp is where we’re supposed to be exposed to grammar.
I did find out later I could have got my nursing degree in arts rather than science but I think I got a better education that way. Arts is great and all but I’ve seen way to too many ‘starving artist’ sales to really consider that road.
Perhaps they expect ya to already know how to punctuate by the time ya get to college? LOL Believe it or not…I majored in psychology. Needless to say, I didn’t finish. Heh.