A Return To The Basics?

Clauses and Commas Make a Comeback
SAT Helps Return Grammar to Class

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 23, 2006; Page A01

Mike Greiner teaches grammar to high school sophomores in half-hour lessons, inserted between Shakespeare and Italian sonnets. He is an old-school grammarian, one of a defiant few in the Washington region who believe in spending large blocks of class time teaching how sentences are built.

For this he has earned the alliterative nickname "Grammar Greiner," along with a reputation as one of the tougher draws in the Westfield High School English department.

Or, as one student opined in a sonnet he wrote, "Mr. Greiner, I think you're torturing us."

Greiner, 43, teaches future Advanced Placement students at the Chantilly school. Left on their own to decide where to place a comma, "they'll get it right about half of the time," he said. "But half is an F."

------------------------------

Gee, ya think? Wow, after 4 decades of gradually deteriorating education courtesy of "outcome based education" and universities seeking to find new "less painful" ways of imparting knowledge, someone has rediscovered what most Americans of my generation have long known, what worked for the previous two centuries, the education system which gave us our founding fathers, still works.

Why is it that our universities require prospective teachers to take more classes in education than they do in learning the fundamentals of math, science, history, geography, and english? What is it that they are imparting that is so much more important than learning the material teachers are expected to teach? Universities know that the most qualified individual to teach a class in mathematics is (hold on to your hats) a mathematician, but in their infinite wisdom, when it comes to teachers in our school, it is much more important to be trained in diversity, conflict resolution, and sensitivity than it is to be educated in the basic 5.

There was a reason that schools used to teach, "readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic." They are the basic skill with which every functioning individual in our society need to be productive. There is a reason that schools used to require Latin or Greek. those languages form the basis of our language and our philosophical outlook. They were considered fundamental to a good "classical education." They provided stepping stones to better grammar, more concise writing, and clearer thinking.

When our schools become more concerned with political correctness than they are with educating our students, then something is wrong with our education system. When you have teachers who are more interested in imparting their own political agenda than they are in imparting knowledge, then the system is broken.

Of course the easy answer to the question, "What is wrong with out educational system?" is that the teachers are no longer competent to teach. If today's educators are incapable of reading at an eighth grade level, how can we expect them to teach reading? How does a teacher teach mathematics when they can't even balance their own checkbooks? How does a teacher teach geography when they believe that Paris is in England? Ultimately, how can a teacher who is the product of our defective educational system teach knowledge they don't have?

Mind you, I am not saying that all of our teachers are incompetent, far from it. The vast majority of our teachers are hard-working dedicated individuals who do their best in a system that has more administrators than teachers. However, there are enough bad teachers to damage our educational system, and instead of attempting to correct the problem, teachers unions are more interested in how they can get more money for these same teachers. Groups like the NEA are more interested in getting teachers a tenured position and making it nearly impossible for administrators to get rid of the bad apples.

Full Story: Better Education Requires Better Teachers

What do you think?

To leave your opinion click on the word "COMMENT(S)" below