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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (1519)	9/5/1998 1:19:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

Maybe when you said he would "benefit," you meant the quality of his music would improve, but what caused him to make it big was less the quality of his music, and more some others of his attributes. A talent for PR, or for staging, or for putting his musical finger on the zeitgeist, or for making friends in useful places, for example. You were probably both right. I completely agree with you about how insane it is to deprive children of grammar and spelling training. I even suspect that this trend is fueled by the teachers' awareness that they don't know the rules themselves. It would be different if the children were emerging from their early school years into a reading, text-based culture; maybe in that case, they would learn to use the language later, by osmosis, from exposure to good writing. But that's not the situation. It's a TV world.

To: Rambi who wrote (1519)	9/5/1998 8:14:00 PM
From: Stan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4711

Penni, Grammatical accuracy is important. They are the rakes, hoes and trowels of the garden of expression. Without them, weeds will inexorably choke out clear and graceful expression of thought. I think the decline of proper grammar is a sign of a growing, systemic degeneration of our culture. Ironically enough, the patient cannot articulate the symptom. Perhaps a polyglot language has a built-in life span that cannot be propped up beyond a certain age. Do you think it (bad grammar) may indicate an eventual settling out of our society as we know it? I'd appreciate any of your thoughts. Thanks. Stan

To: Rambi who wrote (1519)	9/6/1998 10:46:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 4711

Penni, I don't have anything against fostering creativity, but the idea of having students write anything they want, and hoping they will figure it out somewhere down the line, seems pretty bizarre. I wonder why they can't get them simply to tell stories orally, if they want to get them creating without being restrained by the rules of grammar. Storytelling is perhaps closer to musical performance than writing. I've known many very fine musicians that had no intellectual comprehension of music theory, though many of them, I suspect, had more visceral understanding than they would have cared to admit. When you're improvising, that's fine. When you try to write it down, everything changes. I once heard it told (I don't know how truthfully) that a music student once recorded and transcribed a Benny Goodman clarinet solo, and showed the transcription to Goodman, who immediately declared that nobody could possibly play it. Educational theories are strange things. My mother taught me to read when I was 2, which caused a bit of a stir in school, as I was doing Jules Verne in kindergarten. They bounced me out of first grade altogether (not much of a favor, as I was "the small kid" all through school). They were teaching reading using some theoretically brilliant new method. They dumped that method a little later when it became apparent that kids taught to read in that manner couldn't spell. I still think the best way to teach good writing is to teach reading early, provide good, entertaining, books, and destroy all TV sets. It should also be noted that good writing is impossible without good thinking. Steve

To: Rambi who wrote (1519)	9/8/1998 10:03:00 AM
From: Dwight Taylor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

One of the problems with the "individual creativity before grammar" occurs when the student receives a hign grade on a written assignment with no mention by the teacher of any grammatical or spelling errors. How can a student receive an "A" if there are blatant errors? A teacher at my daughter's school had an explanation. She said that her own spelling and grammar is weak, and as a student felt inadequate and intimidated. I find this is typical of many educators. How can a student properly learn the material if they can't express their ideas properly? For example, "I have a pear of shoes on my feat", is this really what educators find to be effective? Very sad indeed. Your comment on musical achievement in a structured environment or self taught is another matter entirely.