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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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From: LindyBill	5/12/2005 8:11:31 AM
	Read Replies (2) of 793881

Betsy's Page "My daughter links to this remedial grammar test by Mark Goldblatt and why she was incredibly lucky to have been taught grammar. Goldblatt's point is that schools are not teaching grammar. This is so right. Grammar is out and so is spelling. I remember sitting through orientation when my younger daughter was in Kindergarten and being told not to correct her spelling when she wrote things since that would stifle her efforts at writing if she always had to stop and worry about how words are spelled. I ignored that, but also realized that we had enter a whole new world of teaching. Gone are the spelling rules that bedeviled many students' days. And grammar was reduced to a few worksheets. Then they go back to reading and discussing their opinions of stories. Everything is about expressing your own opinion. Oh, and creative writing. Lots of having the kids write their own poetry instead of reading the classics of poetry. I'm always amazed to get Quiz Bowl students who haven't read classics like "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by the Woods," "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree," "Paul Revere's Ride." The list goes on and on. And spelling is nightmare. Some of my best students are spelling neanderthals. I have so many pet peeves about mistakes. Kids can't get straight spelling homophones such as "its" and "it's" or "they're, their" and "there." I see those mistakes all the time, and yes, I see them a lot on the Internet. Oh, there's another one that drives me up a tree. How come kids today never seem to learn that "a lot" is two words and there is no such creature as "alot"? I even see some kids who extrapolate that there must be such a word as "alittle." Perhaps in a hundred years there will be at the rate we're going. Here's another spelling rule that doesn't seem to be taught: y changes to i when you add an ending. So, I get papers full of mistakes such as "tryes" or "activityes." And these are mistakes from my AP students! I don't have time to teach grammar or spelling. I usually write a note in the margin and say something like "Ack! Please learn the difference between affect and effect before you graduate and enter college." How come kids can learn the difference between Teddy Roosevelt's approach to big business and that of Woodrow Wilson or any other myriad details from American history but can't manage the difference between those two words? Katie is so right that the only kids who can understand grammar are those who are learning it in their foreign language classes. Suddenly they understand the difference between a subject and direct object and why we have two words "I" and "me" in English. When I taught French and Russian and got to that lesson, I would have to stop and spend a day on teaching the concept to them in English grammar so they could learn the rules in a foreign language. And Russian is a case language so they also had to differentiate between direct and indirect objects. They had no clue in English. Ask any high school teacher and you'll hear very similar rants. I'm not sure what goes on in elementary school classrooms, but I'm sure that grammar and spelling aren't making a big appearance." betsyspage.blogspot.com

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