In which I rant about the education department

[katiefoolery]

I read an article over the weekend about the state of English education in this country and how we can hardly expect students to learn English and grammar if their own teachers have only the barest grip of it.  And wow ‑ did I just write a sentence that long without a single comma in it?  Why yes, it looks like I did.

But to return to my point: ’twas an interesting article ‑ one that made me nod in righteous affirmation and scowl and clench my fists in utter fury.  Let’s start with the title, shall we? “Can’t write can’t spell” ‑ where’s the comma?  I know I can hardly speak, given the comma‑less state of my opening sentence, but unless the title was intended as a piece of highly‑refined, ironic humour, there needs to be a comma in the middle.

*breaks out red pen and scribbles one in*

Once I got past the urge to beta the title, I moved on to the body of the article and read of universities and the difficulties they experience as they deal with students who haven’t been taught the basics of grammar and who can barely string a coherent sentence together.  And what would be the reason for that?  Could it be the amount of grammar that is taught to students at primary and secondary school?  Which would be “next to nothing”? You know, I think it might.  What did I know about grammar by the time I reached secondary school?  Let’s see... I knew the difference between a verb and a noun.

And that was it.

What a wonderful grounding I received in my own damn language.

Let’s look at the cause of that by taking a quote from the article:

“And what happens to teachers struggling to come to terms with language structure, in particular those teachers who were school students during the “process writing period” of the ’70s and ’80s?”

I’m not a teacher, but I was a product of that “process writing period” of the late eighties.

More quoteage:

“We went through a period where we sometimes didn’t correct their (students’) written expression for fear of offending or demoralising them,” says Fred Ackerman, president of the Victorian Principals Association. “You could call it (the process writing approach) a bit of a fad . . . the general concept was, the more children wrote every day, the more creative it would be and self‑improvement would occur.”

And this is why, exactly, I hate the education department so much.  It’s also where my ability to express my anger begins to slip away (but, hey, at least I know who to blame for that...).  I cannot adequately express how betrayed I feel.  The department responsible for educating me and ensuring I knew my own language decided it wasn’t worth the bother.  Oh no.  All of those pesky rules were only going to demoralise me!  Instead, let’s just throw me into the pool of whims and vagaries of one of the most illogical languages around and hope I can swim in it.

Instead, I learnt my grammar through reading.  Luckily, I seem to have a memory based on pattern‑recognition, so I was able to develop a feel of when a sentence was right or wrong.  I could fix sentences and feel relatively confident that they were grammatically accurate... but I had no idea what I was actually doing.

And here’s my favourite quote from the article, tacked on to the end as though it’s making a point:

“In 2005, a study by Professor Richard Andrews from the University of York found no evidence to suggest that the teaching of traditional grammar, specifically word order or syntax, was effective in assisting writing quality or accuracy of five‑ to 16‑year‑olds.”

Um, so?  Also, have they been into a school lately?  Have they seen how students write?  I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for one minute that this is at all true or even accurate.  It’s like suggesting that teaching students how to use tools won’t help them in woodwork, or that showing students how to use PhotoShop won’t help them learn how to create graphics.

Once again, I’m annoyed by the arrogance that assumes we implicitly know the rules of our own language, simply because we speak it from birth.  We don’t.  And I just wish the education department would start living in the real world and grant to students the ability to communicate their ideas.  We’re living in a world where the written word is possibly more important than ever: if we don’t know how to express ourselves and communicate with others, then we fail.

Just like the education department failed before us.

Comments

[snarkymonkey.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. I was somewhat self-taught myself. You read some of my past writings, the grammar there was horrible. I'm not an expert but I'd like to think I know when to use proper punctuation. ( I can be a bit semi-colon happy, however. XD )

I dislike the current trend of not teaching grammar and whatnot. In all honesty, I have to hear incorrect grammar far too often. It would be nice if we could change that small error.

Also, stay tuned in my LJ for more dialogue from the Dynamic Duo of Destruction.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

I think the semi-colon seems to have that sort of effect - once you grasp it, it suddenly becomes impossible to be without it. I'm trying to cling to it in order to get away from my obsession with dashes and I notice it popping up everywhere.

Ooh, more from your dialogue duo! Splendid. :D

[vicky-v.livejournal.com]

Despite the rant, I'm so happy that I'm not the only person who has ever betad a newspaper article. I had the strong urge to send it back with my red scribble on it.

"We went through a period where we sometimes didn't correct their (students') written expression for fear of offending or demoralising them,"

Actually I'd love it if someone were to rip into my pieces of work, pick it apart and offer advice on how I can improve. Not even the whole thing, just a paragraph or even a sentence would do.

Yes, it would sting my pride a little for a very short while. But at the end of the day if it helps me improve then I would be so damn grateful for it.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

Newspapers are sometimes the worst offenders against the English language. Some of the sentences they come up with... you have to read them about ten times to work out what on earth they're trying to say! You'd think they'd be interested in getting their point across as quickly as possible, but no. And this example is from the more reputable of the major papers in Melbourne, too.

I definitely agree with you - I would have loved it if my English teachers had taken my sentences apart and told me what was wrong with them. If only they'd given me more of a grounding in grammar instead of style.

[emmyaward.livejournal.com]

There is so much I want to say on this subject, but I'm just going to keep it short. People who believe that teaching kids syntax and grammar is not neccesary are just morons. I can't say that my own education was explicit in that area, but I was lucky in that I was (am) a compulsive reader and managed to pick up instinctively the correct way to structure a sentence. The thing is, though, not all kids are capable of doing this, and in terms of how much I read during primary school, I was an exception.

I'm at uni at the moment, but I worked as a teacher aide in a high school during 2005 and 2006. The way in which some of the girls I was working with wrote absolutely amazed me, and left me with no doubt that not teaching them grammar and syntax beyond 'a noun is an object and a verb is a doing word' is completely ludicrous. I'd get girls writing sentences a paragraph long with zero punctuation and missing words, without comprehension of what they'd actually done wrong. The whole experience amazed me, because a lot of these girls were otherwise very intelligent and capable, but because they hadn't been taught how to write in the first place and hadn't managed to pick it up incidentally, they were disadvantaged hugely at no fault of their own. So, yes. I too am annoyed with education in this country, and at a state of affairs which allows kids to leave primary school (let alone university) with little or no knowledge of how to express themselves adequately in their own language, or even stucture a freaking sentence.

I said this was going to be short, didn't I? Oh well. :-)

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

It really is scary, isn't it? Last year, I found myself reading through some short pieces written by students in response to some activities they'd done and the English they used was, in many cases, almost unintelligible. These were year seven and eight students, many of whom are quite bright. The corrections the teachers had made (if any) didn't go anywhere near enough to helping fix the problems. It's just so frustrating.

Feel free to rant on whenever you like!

[blackswans.livejournal.com]

All too true.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

It's so frustrating, isn't it?

[rigel-7.livejournal.com]

*takes a 2x4 to the concept of whole language*

Crackpots!! They're all, as fandom would term it, "batshit insane"

I'm just thankful I was in the "gifted" program, and thus had access to an awesome teacher who spent the time needed to ground us in our own written language.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

You were so lucky there! I got to learn a lot of my grammar through studying other languages. It's quite ironic that I learnt more about English in French or Indonesian than I ever did in my English classes.

*joins in with the applying of 2x4s*

[flamehail.livejournal.com]

I think this is true even if you have learned your own grammar; you are a lot more aware of the application of structures to your speech when you are trying to figure it out for some other language without the benefit of the "well-it-just-sounds-right" excuse.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

It can also make you more aware of elements of writing, too. I learnt Indonesian at uni and they use a lot of passive voice when speaking, which made me very aware of passive voice in my own writing. It's something I try to eliminate, but it often sneaks in. Luckily, I can spot it much more easily now that I'm aware of it.

[flamehail.livejournal.com]

What´s worse is that it´s not just grammar, either. There are the same problems with math and other areas, because too much emphasis has been put (and still is put) on the "feelings" and "self-esteem" of the students and not enough on correctness. A friend of ours teaches remedial math at the community college, and she gets students in all the time who say they want to be doctors or engineers and yet, at 20 years old, having graduated from high school, can´t subtract double-digit numbers properly.

And while I don´t know how it is in Australia, the problem comes as much or even more from parents who won´t allow teachers to do their jobs than from the poor teachers or even the school systems themselves, bad as the latter usually are. Parents can´t believe their own little genius darling ís actually just dumb or a behavior problem, and refuse to enforce the learning at home. They allow the child not to do his homework and then complain when he fails the test, and occasionally they manage to get their child a passing grade he doesn´t deserve so he isn´t "emotionally scarred" by being made to stay behind his peers. Idiot parents make me a lot more angry than idiot administrators, who, after all, are just bureaucrats and can´t be expected to have the intelligence God gave a rock. -_-

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I'm mainly aware of how students are doing in the subjects that make use of the library, such as: English (of course), history and geography. So things could be just as bad in other subjects. I know there's a lot of talk about banning calculators from maths classes until about year nine, though. Students rely on calculators to do all of their thinking for them, often right from primary school. Many don't even know their times tables. Even my brother, who's only three years younger than me, wasn't really taught his times tables.

You're right - it's not just bureaucracy that affects the state of education. I think we're pretty lucky with parents at the moment, but that could always change in the future.

[flamehail.livejournal.com]

I have as little to do with non-language, -literature, and -history deparments as possible, but I have lots of friends who are teachers or in math/science courses at university. I´ll freely admit I am lost without a calculator, but I have no head for numbers. I can do math, just very, very slowly. Still, I think that would be a good idea. I had some math classes in elementary and middle school where we were not allowed to have or use a calculator, and it definitely helps one to learn the concepts.

Isn´t it weird how much difference a year or two makes? My sister is five school years behind me, which is not all that much in the span of things, but her education is almost completely different. It´s very strange.

I´m glad Australian parents are more sensible than American ones. I want to shoot people in the face when I see how they´re screwing up their children in the name of love. :-(

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Gods, the entire education department of the US makes me SO FRIGGIN ANGRY because it's just like that, or, well, a little better. In that you have to learn... Okay, no, not much better.

I, too, do the pattern-recognition thing. And it's pretty much the only reason I know any grammar at all. I still can't correctly capitalize titles and such, because I go by how I think it should sound based on the patterns I know (yes, capital letters 'sound' different to me than lowercase), and I just recently learned that it's wrong. I mean, not as wrong as most people, but still not the 'rather correct' I thought it was.

I was in an advanced writing college class, and the teacher spent FOUR CLASSES going over what a semi-colon was and how to use it, and even after all that there will still students who just didn't get it.

I could rant for ages on this, and on the whole feel-good culture we (Americans) have going on, but I won't because A) I'm at work, and B) you're Australian and I'm afraid that you will crush my hopes that the rest of the world isn't as bad by going "Oh, yes, we've 'outlawed' red pens, too!"

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think things are going in the absolute opposite direction now. We have a new curriculum at the moment where, if you're doing really well and meeting all of the standards required by your year level, you'll get a C. A C. So we've gone from not wanting to hurt precious little students' feelings to "rewarding" them with average grades for doing well.

There is more grammar taught in secondary schools today than when I was at school but... Well, I've heard a couple of teachers conducting these classes in the library and I've been appalled by the lack of knowledge they displayed, not to mention the misinformation they forced upon the students. I'm almost grateful I was taught virtually no grammar, rather than incorrect grammar.

Capital letters do sound different! There's a sort of extra emphasis to them when I read, as though people pause in expectation before pronouncing the capitalised word. :D

You've made me want to check the pencil box of every teacher who comes into the library now, just in case they don't carry red pens.

[frohike.livejournal.com]

The main thing I want to say here is this. The idea that we can learn to write English well simply because we speak it is a crock. In truth the written and spoken are two separate languages, with different "rules" and different ways of evolving. I put rules in quote marks because there really aren't any hard-and-fast rules, and if you try to attach any then you are foolish. Due to the nature of language, any rule will become obsolete in short order, if it wasn't to begin with.
I tend to view language less as a form of communication, and more as a form of expression. And with expression, any word or phrase will become worn with time, and new ones will come up to fill their place. Hence the language evolves, hence any attempt to tie it down in one form (by using rules) is a pointless exercise.
In conclusion language is not "fixed", and knowledge of one format will not necessarily lead to an understanding of the other.

In addition, at the end of my primary school education I knew what a noun was and what a verb was. Despite my attempts at self-education I still cannot fathom what an adjective/pronoun/preposition/adverb/etc is/are. I had my mum draw me up a little chart with examples and that helped. I apparently have no idea as to where to place a comma (I tend to put it where it seems right, and hope I learnt it sub-consciously from reading); as for the apostrophe... I sometimes have trouble, but if I'm not sure I tend to leave it out (or think of a different word).

And on another topic, how are we meant to learn from reading if all the "best sellers" are poorly written? (Where the hell were their editors? What the hell was their publisher thinking) Though in a sense it's a comfort, knowing I don't actually have to be good at writing to get a book published and reach the best seller list. How are we meant to learn from reading if the books assigned us in school are either out-dated (that is, the language used is obsolete or on it's way out) or are as above, a prime example of how NOT to write?

And if I've managed to say all that without tripping over a semi-colon (so to speak) then there's hope for me yet.

-Nomes

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

If enough people spoke up like this and related their "education" in our own language, I wonder if the various education departments would listen? People aren't learning. Worse, they feel as though they barely understand a language they're supposed to use every day. And I suspect it's not going to get better any time soon.

Yes, language is constantly evolving but at this rate, I fear it's going to evolve into a mostly-meaningless swamp of mis-spelt words. :(

[bardockgurl.livejournal.com]

The last paragraph of that article floored me. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, get angry, despair, I... *flails wordlessly*
It's so depressing that someone so blind to reason/moronic can reach the level of professor *beats head against wall*
I'd love to know what went into that study to reach such a conclusion.

I suppose I suffer from this syndrome in reverse - I had a very good grounding in my language, and followed the subject to degree level, and now I'm in the real world, it's all gone to hell (as anyone who's read a post of mine will be painfully aware :D )But at least I know what I'm doing wrong... I just don't care :D

I can remember being shocked to find that my nieces and nephews weren't having their spelling or grammar corrected, the reason given that the children should not be caused any 'unnecessary' distress or have their confidence undermined by pointing out any errors. The, for want of a better word, logic behind this baffled me. Surely school is for learning? Doesn't learning the correct spelling and grammar come under that? I can remember being baffled by this when it was explained to me, I felt a deep sense of unease and disbelief, plus anger that such an idiotic idea would be so warmly embraced by our education authorities - the people we are supposed to be able to trust to teach the future generations. They're doing a sterling job, aren't they? O.o

*Could go on all day, but is going to shut up and stew instead*

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

Heh - I know! They just make this ridiculous, sweeping statement and expect us to sit here saying, "Oh well - it's been researched... it must be true then!".

I studied professional writing at uni, so perhaps you'd think that at least part of that course would have dealt with grammar. Nope. Not a bit of it. There was even someone in my class in third year who couldn't even stay in the same tense - he confessed he didn't actually know the difference. But at least he felt all positive and non-oppressed about it, thanks to his prior education. Gah.

I am so looking forward to seeing what happens when people who were never taught grammar try to teach that very subject to the next generation. It's going to get so ugly. And the education department will have no-one to blame but themselves.

[sarsalot.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Like quite a few people here have mentioned, I seem to have developed the ability to put together a coherent sentance through independent reading, rather than what I was taught in school. It's just sad. However, I notice in that article they mention that Australia performs second in terms of reading literacy, when it's writing properly that is the issue. Clearly, while being a bookworm worked for you and I, that's not the case for everyone - and while people should read outside of school, schools are there to teach people this stuff - they shouldn't be expected to pick it up on their own.

I had a tute today for my creative writing class (a second year course, by the way), and the piece we were workshopping had the most godawful sentance construction I've seen in a long time. Sentances that ran on and on with a comma thrown in here and there, complete absence of capitals at the start of some sentances or punctuation at the end, lack of consistant tense -it was incredibly distracting. I had a red pen out and was correcting away furiously.
His excuse was that it was something he'd written up quickly that morning, which I think is the heart of the problem for me. People shouldn't be so inept in their own language as to be adding basic punctuation, grammar, and spelling in a second draft, it should be something they do automatically as they're constructing a piece of writing. Mind you - and I don't have enough experience with teaching English to say one way or the other - this could be part of the problem, if people are being taught in classes that these are things to be added in later, rather than an integral part of language.