[_::_] Response to Mulroy's Myth of the Bad Old Days

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According to Mulroy:

Groups such as ATEG who stand behind the idea that Grammar should be taught are accurate in their beliefs and will soon receive a surge in followers. However, there are things holding them back. For one, they view the traditional teaching methods of grammar as fundamentally flawed. This may not be the complete truth, granted that many individuals owe their knowledge of grammar to the old ways of teaching. So, it could be said that the traditional methods do not need a complete overhaul.

Reed and Kellogg might agree. With exorcises found in their text books they urged students memorize rules and read examples (a traditional way to teach grammar).

Nowadays students are given kernel sentences and urged to combine them all into a simpler sentence with all the given information. Reed and Kellogg did something similar in giving students sentence they must complete by inventing the appropriate phrase (with prompts of time, place, and manner for example). This method allows for creativity.

Reed and Kellogg also make use of sentence diagramming. They use a method which relies on lines and separation of function - and similarly a fellow by the name of Clark makes use of bubbles. Some people have remarked that sentence diagramming is too confusing with lines going in all directions - which is a gross overstatement. There are only three types of lines used in the Reed and Kellogg sentence diagramming. Compare this to the newer idea of tree diagramming, which is held back by the fact that it MUST result in "as-spoken" sentences, not to mention the numerous branches and titles trickling down, and you can see how the traditional sentence diagramming is more understandable. Keep in mind, both methods relay the same information and show the same knowledge of grammar. As an added perk, diagramming can help one understand difficult sentences of English as well as other languages!

My response to this:

I agree that sentence diagramming is useful. I did it for the first time in my Grammar course with Dr. Benton just this semester. I felt I learned more in that section of the class than in any other.

I agree that tree diagramming looks over-the-top difficult. I wouldn't want to do it at all.

I agree that the traditional teaching methods of grammar were useful and did teach students about grammar. I even agree that we don't have to completely overhaul the entire history of grammar teaching to continue teaching effectively. In this case, I can see change as going either direction - it takes off, or it crashes and burns.

To sum my opinion up, I agree. There wasn't much room to disagree when the majority of that discussed points to common sense stuff. As in, grammar is good, the history of teaching grammar taught grammar, and diagramming sentences works. On a happy side note, I can make a wall of side-ways bricks with text, watch: i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!

Question!

1. The definite-answer question:

Other than the lack of poetry, history, rhetoric, and ethics - and therefore the lack of the need to understand such things using grammar - what is one other reason that Mulroy gives for the death of grammar in the past?

2. The open-ended questions:

-Explain how the ideas Mulroy expresses regarding grammar and its lack of importance in the past echo things happening today.

-Give an example of an idea that Mulroy expressed in chapter three that you disagree with. Why do you disagree? Proof? Reasoning?

3. Diagram the first question.

Take the middle road, one must.

1. Mulroy sees the rules that govern liberal arts a innate - almost like Socrates, except Socrates believed it was innate because we knew of it in a prior-to-life state in another realm (or some such idea). He, meaning Mulroy, also believes that the liberal arts are "ground rules for thought."

2. Well, Mulroy thinks they are letting too many things slip into the category of 'liberal arts'. He also throws back to some of Plato's ideas stating that rhetoric was the least important or repectable of the liberal arts (because it merely pleased others, but wasn't a true art, an idea not shared by all, resulting in the continual presence of rhetoric in instruction despite opinions) - while grammar was always important and accepted as a necessary tool.

It seems to me that Mulroy placed more of an emphasis on the fields of study that help students gain insight on values, language, culture (and other abstract ideas), rather than the concrete fields like mathematics or medicine. Those concrete fields have a purpose, but they must be learned and are not innate. (I like the example that it is easier to talk someone into understanding an idea, than it is to talk someone into know where a liver is. You must look for a physcial location for the liver, but the idea is something you can personally manifest). Also, unlike the 'liberal arts' the concrete and specific fields are not a foundation for all learning.

Playing off of that idea, I think that those concrete and specific fields that ready someone for a career and such are only understandable with that foundation of the general studies or liberal arts. Those things make a person a more well-rounded individual and aid them in understanding any other intellectual endeavours they choose to follow. Sort of like how you can't muliply or divide until you know that a number represents a certain value of being. Two things are more than one of the same thing. Four things are indeed four seperate individual things. Actually, you'd need to know that there is a NEED for these values before you can multiply or divide. But the main point is, you need to know the foundations before you can move on to the specifics.

In all actuality, though, it is possible for a person who was instructed only in a specific field, only to fulfill a certain job, to be successful at that job. However, that would make for rather dull and barely helpful doctors and business men - and much worse chatting buddies.

In regards to the instruction of grammar, the middle of the road would be the best path to take. To show that grammar enables a student to think abstractly and express and learn effectively is a great thing. But to let them know that grammar will also directly help them in the field they end up working in would also be quite helpful.

Interview with Dr. Sukholutskaya

In an interview with Dr. Mara Sukholutskaya regarding the current state of grammar and the importance of literal meaning, the following was established:

According to Dr. Sukholutskaya, there is no trend resulting in the lessoning of literal meaning. Certain forms of writing require the reader to read into things figuratively or interpret, but that doesn't mean that literal meaning has fallen into any sort of disfavor. Also, it is a natural part of language for certain words to take on new meanings. Like the American-English use of the word "gay," with which an entirely new meaning has surfaced, and it was certainly not the core literal meaning. Similarly, the Russian word "goluboy," meaning light-blue, has taken on the same connotations. However, for these such words with multiple and changing meanings, there are many more with a strict always-literal meaning.

Regarding Grammar, Dr. Sukholutskaya is outspoken and finds grammar to be very important. She has noticed a decline in the importance of grammar, both by students and by teachers. She has also noticed a general shift into laxation. Students no longer wear respectful clothing, and their use of language and respect for language mirror such.

Dr. Sukholutskaya gave a very effective example in pointing out how you never see someone in a tuxedo or evening gown using improper grammar. This statement, in conjunction with the image of the average college student today, seems to express Dr. Sukholutskaya's opinion on the current state of grammar in academia.

I done ain't say we be taught EnGliSh

Of course we need to teach Standard Written English in schools. It should be important for every person who is so kindly forced to tread through the swamps of hell known as grade school to at least understand how to effectively communicate and be understood. I'd also be a little pissed if I had lived through junior high and high school just to graduate and be no wiser to the things essential in continuing my education, communicating with my peers, and generally living life while being understood. At the very least, all the little kiddies need to learn how to communicate to a wider audience just to up their chances on obtaining a mate and producing spawn.

We've learned, in this grammar course alone, that Standard Written English helps us communicate in a current and understandable way, that also allows our thoughts and ideas to be understood for years to come. Learning how to write in the socially and culturally accepted language, regardless of what that language is, should innately better someone. Just like with my thoughts before studying the opinions of the battle-hardened scholars interested in grammar, I still believe that being understood is the meaning of language. However, instead of accepting our naturally picked up sense of language to get us by, I now see the importance of learning the widely accepted "accurate" form of the language.

From what we have learned so far, I would assume that the best teaching method to assign to teaching SWE would be starting out with the fundamentals. To begin, the student should understand a common array of words and their meanings. They should also have the knowledge of grammar picked up from those surrounding them. From that, you could build up their knowledge of grammar, in order to aid them in understanding everything they will be learning about the language. After they have a good solid foundation, then it would be best to start in on effectively expressing your own ideas and interpreting other individual's ideas as well.

It almost seems like common sense that you must know how a language works before you can do any sort of expressing with it.

But, I do believe that I wasn't taught enough about grammar at an earlier age. This has probably been a detriment to me, and anyone else in the same boat.

The following is an effort to summarize "The Scandal of Prescriptivism" by David Mulroy.

Currently, there are negative stereotypes associated with those who use grammar incorrectly, and those concerned with correct usage. Most of the grammatical mistakes made today are found within the groups of children, the poor, and minorities. This strengthens the negative stereotypes associated with incorrect grammar usage. Also, those who are preoccupied with correctness are often seen as old, stuck up, and arbitrary. Despite these negative associations, the continuation of a solid, correct dialect is still useful.

Having one accepted appropriate broadens the numbers of people one can effectively communicate with. To understand how that is so, consider what Caxton wrote in the preface to his Eneydos translation, within which a fellow travels not-so-far from home and eventually asks a lady for eggs. The women replies to him that she can not speak French, when in reality, neither of the two could, the lack of understanding spawned from the differences in the English dialects at the time.

The need for a common dialect was and is apparent. In the past, it was difficult attempting to unite everyone under one dialect, until the popularity of dictionaries allowed everyone to study one grammatical dialect.

[Insert quote from Pinker's piece which we have just read for class, then insert a subsequent quote from an Illinois professor by the name of Hook, and finally insert the debilitating counter-points that both writers do not directly cite those whom they attack, but instead use pop-culture references to prove their points, as opposed to the more tasteful use of Bible versus and such.]

Some points that Pinker brought up in opposition to prescriptivist ideas are correct, and some are wrong or inappropriate for the point being made. His idea that we all communicate effectively and grammatically through natural and unlearned methods is denied by the fact that while writing the piece to prove the point, Pinker exhibits appropriate use of punctuation and grammatical features not possibly known with having been taught. The idea that grammar is entirely instinctual is unlikely.

Resulting from the popular fad of bashing grammatical correctness and its being taught, teachers are trained to be nice, and avoid possibly offending children by not correcting their grammatical mistakes.

This is greatly ineffective in continuing a solid central dialect. There is, however, a popular reason for learning our current standard dialect (SWE). It is said that if one wants to make it in the business or academic world, one must understand the language or dialect used by those parties. This is actually a cynical way to look at it, because it assumes that understanding the central dialect has no uses other than to gain popularity with groups (when in fact, there are greater reasons to understand SWE, or whatever the standard is for your language).

Professor Hada's view on literal meaning

Perhaps literal meanings have fallen into doubt because of two factors:

1) A rebirth of fundamentalism, i.e., a knee-jerk appeal by the masses to resist the mis-perceived, out-of-touch academics who read into everything. So the masses, cling to something that is one-dimensional to validate themselves and by contrast, distinguish themselves from the so-called elites. Thus, academics, tend to distrust all the more, one dimensional readings.

2) And closely related, with the arrival of the 60's and the advent of post-modernism, many theoretical scholars became enamored with theory at the expense of text. This is a pendulum swingfrom the formalist, new-critics, and some theorists went to the opposite extremes whereby they sacrificed the plain meaning of a text on the alter of extravagant theory. This pushed literalness even further into the shadows. I tend to be more descriptionist than prescriptive. Prescriptive tends to take on overtones of directing and controlling thought. I think there is a time and place for both, but generally, I shy from manipulation. Grammar, then, has in post-modern times, been seen as prescriptive, as validating an ethnocentric view of a privileged class, and thus, in the spirit of times, has become less emphasized.

(In my opinion, Dr. Hada seems to be saying that literal meanings have fallen into the background due to the need of the non-academics to seperate themselves from the "elitist", as well as the post-modern push towards theory rather than plain-text readings. On a side note, he brings up how the two polar opposite schools of literal and theoretic seem to strengthen the followers of one or the other. In other words, those who read things literally do so to seperate themselves from the theoretical readers, and vice versa - each finding a need to think the way they do by the very existence of the opposing view. It's almost like an academic-commoner gang war.)