"Just between you and I"
Whatever Happened to...Grammar Instruction?!

Grammar. We all use it everyday and most of us studied it to some degree in school. While few of us considered it our favorite time of the day, we all begrudgingly admitted it was important. We knew that understanding grammatical concepts like the objective case pronoun-while they make some people's heads spin-is the key to writing and speaking correctly. Many parents do not realize that most schools have stopped explicitly teaching these language fundamentals and that their children would be hard pressed to explain why the pronouns you and me must be used after the preposition between.

Sometime in the 1970s as part of the whole language movement education schools and teacher organizations began to downplay the necessity of grammar. By the mid-1980s the National Council of Teachers of English had passed a resolution stating "the use of isolated grammar and usage exercises...is a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing." Today's grammar opponents contend that grammar is so dull that it discourages children's interest in writing. Rather than find a way to make grammar instruction more interesting, teachers simply omitted it from the language arts curriculum.

The problems resulting from not instilling the value of good grammar into our children are many. Children's scores on the government's National Assessment of Educational Progress writing exam have been falling steadily since it was first given in 1984. Students without a solid foundation in their own language have more trouble learning foreign languages. Teachers know that kids who rely on "what sounds right" when speaking or writing their native language will struggle in French, Spanish or German. Teachers of younger children report that children who do not understand grammar and syntactic clues like commas have more difficulty reading aloud and understanding what they read.

A more frightening consequence of leaving grammar out of the English language curriculum for the last 20 years is that teachers no longer know grammar themselves. If teachers are not equipped to address students' questions about grammar, students have little chance of gaining a firm grasp of it. Those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds or from homes where English is not the primary language are particularly at risk of speaking and writing improperly for the rest of their lives. The lack of proper verbal and written language skills can relegate these children, even the brightest ones, to second-class citizen status.

Many people dismiss the need for explicit grammar instruction for the same reason they brush aside the need for attention to spelling-computers. It is true that word processing programs can now detect misspellings and disagreement between nouns and verbs, but they will be of little assistance to your child when he is filling out a job application or interviewing for college. Since most textbooks do not provide teachers guidance or materials to teach grammar, your child's school must offer supplementary instruction. Ask what is being done about this important issue at your next parents' meeting. You might be surprised!