🚀 go-pugleaf

Does anyone in any English Dept. anywhere in the country give a
damn that study after study has shown that a knowledge of
traditional grammar doesn't correlate with anything at all worth
talking about? Does anyone care that the philosophy of language
implicit behind traditional grammar runs totally counter to every-
thing we think we know today about how language functions in social
context?
Once upon a time, I was a Ph.D candidate in Rhetoric and Composition
in the English Dept. at a major midwestern university. As part of my
"education", I taught several sections of Freshman English under the
"direction" of two senior faculty members. Enrollment in a course
team taught by these two was a requirement for all T.A's. What I lea
rned in this course was how to be an insular, pedantic ass in the
classroom. I must say, our two instructors modeled this behavior
wonderfully and, as a socialization process, the class was well
designed. If we didn't learn anything else, we learned what the
role expectations in this particular department were. We learned
that we could reasonably expect to be threated with condesending
(sp) contempt by senior faculty and were expected to mimic this
behavior in dealing with freshman. I got marked down during
observations for failure to maintain a "proper distance"
between myself and my students. We also learned that we were expecte
to grade papers strictly in regard to how carefully the God given
rules of traditional grammar had been followed. I was a slow learner
,I could never learn not to let my judgement be clouded by considera
tions of communicative competency. I actually once put an "A" on a
paper that had two comma splices simply because the student had
managed to say something important in a clear and persusive way.
The Senior Instructor was utterly appalled and I was not invited
back next year.
I have now moved into the School of Education and would strongly
advise anyone still in an English Deartment whom is more interested
in the encodeing and decodeing of text as one instance of situated
cognition than in traditional grammar to do the same.
                  Michael Roberts