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Incompatibility or Ignorance?
by
Sonja
, 25-Jan-12
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This was a very interesting article from a needed perspective. While I think the author raises some very good issues, ones that I've wondered about as well as a college professor but also as the mother of a school-aged son. For example, I too decry the inconstant use of terminology from one school system to the next, one grade to the next, etc. While this dogs K-12 education, I have to wonder how much is due to ignorance of Linguistics and how much is really due to cross-purposed. As the author indicates, the reasoning for including "grammar" in K-12 education is not the same as it is as a study in Linguistics. I think the author rightly notes that literary criticism is more important to teachers as well as the idea of teaching students to "write better and speak better" because of the belief that they're teaching students proper language usage instead of the truth: they're merely teaching them about language, not language itself. The students come to school with the latter already. I would also add that as a field of study, Linguistics and its sub-field of Syntax is not the same as what schools are teaching nor is it their goal. In the end, I think Linguists can serve a role and write textbooks for K-12 teaching themselves in a way that's compatible with school goals and outcomes for "grammar" as opposed to syntax. Nevertheless, however this issue is resolved, I'd like it if they at least get the terminology to match.
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