PBS: Foster Steals the Show!

Hey guys this is a fictitious play about a PBS scout trying to get a new show on the air. The executives have pitching the idea about a show dedicated to the study and origins of language and they are particularly interested in the decline of grammar in America and how that affects the U.S. on a global scale. Tommy Hammons, the PBS scout, is sent to the office of David Foster to try and let him know he was not selected for the show, but Foster’s incessant defense of his paper, “Tense Present,” persuades Tommy to give him another shot.

Setting: A full, bright office with hanging plants near the windows. A sign on the wall that says “To err is human and grammar will make you divine.” The desk is scattered with students’ papers and there is a paper-weight that has Foster’s family inside of it. The camera pans over to Tommy looking the office over as David Foster comes in wearing a Turtle-neck sweater with a pair of corduroy pants and hushpuppies. He’s also wearing a pair of wire-rim glasses that he never got rid of from the sixties and he’s smoking a pipe.

Foster: Well, good day Tommy

Tommy: Hi Dr. Foster

Foster: Uh, I believe we had a meeting today about my paper, Tense Present.

Tommy: Yes. Well, that’s what I need to talk to you about.

Foster: About? Why, what’s wrong?

Tommy: Dr. Foster, PBS just isn’t ready for a show that is based on your paper.

Foster: Are you kidding me? Language is everything and everywhere; it’s what let’s us have anything to do with one another; it’s what separates us from the animals; Genesis 11:7-10 and so on. (Page 41 classmates)

Tommy: Yes, I know. I read the paper…bu-

Foster: Did you? Do you remember how I said that “…good writing is only as good as the principles on which it’s based” (43).

Tommy: Uh-huh. But what does that mean, exactly.

Foster: Well, “America is in the midst of a protracted Crisis of Authority in matters of language” (43).

Tommy: That sounds familiar?

Foster: It should be. It’s in my paper. Shall I continue?

Tommy nods his head in abeyance

Foster: You see there are two camps. The Descriptivists and the Prescriptivists. The Prescriptivists are like the Republicans. They’re conservative, while the Descriptivists are more “liberal” like the Democrats.

Tommy: Okaaay

Foster: The Descriptivists view writing as self-exploratory and expressive while the Prescriptivists look for systematic grammar, usage, semantics, rhetoric, etc (45).

Tommy: Yes, I know all that. But, what’s the big deal between these two camps? Why are they always fighting?

Foster: The Desciptivists believe that traditional English is conceived and carried on by WASPS.

Tommy: Right. Basically, old white guys who believe they know all and are all.

Foster: Right. But we got to have some form of unity or all hell will break out. Take for instance this Scientific Method philosophy that the Descriptivists have on language. They have these five rules, right. The first one says Language changes constantly.

Tommy: Well, it does.

Foster: Yeah. But, how much and how fast? (45).
Tommy: Look, can you just summarize everything you want to tell me. I’m getting very tired and I still got to read this paper by Larry Beason called “Ethos and error: How business People React to Errors”

Foster: Okay. In a nut-shell, you cannot have grammar without content and vice-versa. How can a person appreciate a significant thought without wading through all the syntax errors? Descriptivists believe some of these rules are arbitrary or even inconsequential (48). But, it’s not just what we say but how we want that other person to respond (50).
I’ll be the first one to admit that sometimes it’s better to speak with different dialects. Depending on where you are at socially or regionally, it’s far superior than SWE. I have students that have great, wonderful intellects and they are geniuses in their own discourse community, but in the academic world they are struggling. Would I not be doing a disservice to them and myself f I ignored their errors? Listen up! Because this is the meat of my argument. “Neither camp appears ever to have considered whether maybe the way prescriptive SWE was traditionally taught had something to do with it’s inutility” (53).

Tommy: You mean pedagogy.

Foster: Exactly! And, students are not going to give a damn about grammar unless you can show them the importance of it. Why, look at the capitalistic exploits of PCE. The politicians and corporations are only using terms like “economically disadvantaged,” because it sounds better than poor. It’s a form of censorship, designed to serve the status quo (55). Then you have AE. These poor saps are more concerned with insecurities and intellectual resumes than they are with really exposing the truth. In fact, AE’s “real purpose is concealment and its real motivation fear” (56).

Tommy: Okay. Cool. That helps a lot. I’ll talk with the “brass” and we’ll let you know.

Foster: The First BLog

Tense Present
In the Essay, Tense Present, David Foster runs the whole gamut of Grammar. He attacks Descriptivists with sentences like “This is so stupid it practically drools” (47). Ouch! Frie (the person he talks about) has to be hurting right about now. I’m sure in the academia world this would be considered a TKO, total knock out! Really, I have never seen an academic paper ridicule another paper like that. It’s Krazy! But, Foster just doesn’t stop with the insults. He goes on to attack another Descriptivist, Steven Pinker who says “When a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed to order words into everyday sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential decorations” (48). This statement outrages Foster who goes into this defense using misplaced modifiers, confusing clauses, and questioning “who” exactly is offended by inconsequential decorations. That was fine! He should have stopped there! But…No, he doesn’t. He goes into this terrible analogy about pants and the acceptance of gender associated with pants. Lord, I felt like I was at a warehouse listening to a guy tell me why the Snickers was better than the Milky Way; the argument was trite when he decided to use the analogy of pants. Please, gimme a break! While Foster “hits” the Descriptivists hard, he also does not fail to swing at the Prescriptivists either, just not as hard. All in all, Foster appeals to readers by trying to speak with an honest tone that seems genuine even when it does not. His candid, refreshing rhetoric gives him a unique style and separates his essay from other essays with clear distinction.

Kool Aid and the Peanut-Butter Sandwich Part II

Ready! Action!

Mulroy's piece expounds the importance of learning grammar. I concur. Grammar is like a big peanut-butter sandwich and when someone talks about it I've got to have something to drink to wash it down, hence the kool-aid metaphor. And, while Mulroy does give me something (grammar hurts SAT scores, literacy, foriegn-language skills, paraphrasing, intellecualism), he water downs the kool-aid (arguments) in discussing the importance of grammar (peanut-butter sandwich).

1. Credibility of the NCTE : Mulroy says "...the leadership of the largest and most influential association [says to pay less attention to formal grammar]" (4). Mulroy waterd down the "kool-aid," by suggesting that he knows more than the NCTE. Here's a thought: if the NCTE, which has thopusands of scholars and teachers at their intellectual arsenal, says we should focus on content rather than grammar, who should we listen to? I'll help you. If NASA said we landed on the moon, and one astronomer said we did not, who you going to listen to. And, maybe the NCTE feels grammar is important (which Mulroy would have you to believe they don't), but they just know that content should be a higher order concern.

2. The Straw Arguments: Mulroy wants you to believe that adult literacy, SAT scores, foreign language study and writing skills are significantly damaged by the lack of instruction in grammar. Th first three straws sound unfounded alone, and the last one, while sounding logical, was weak on (I'll get back 2 this...)

Mulroy & Chapter 1: Is watered down kool-aid better than the real stuff?

America the Grammarless, written by David Mulroy, seeks to expound upon the importance of grammar by using faulty syllogisms that are all based on one observation: "The gist of my argument so far has been [America's educational world is hurting because of] the opposition to formal instruction in grmmar" (22). But, and I do not say this lightly, Mulroy waters down the kool-aid, man! You can't water down the kool-aid, when you give someone a thick, goopy, peanut-butter sandwich! ("Okay, just what the hell kind of analogy is that," someone might say.)

You & Grammar

Psychologically, grammar has always been a thorn in the side. There were days, starting in grade school, where I absolutely hated some of the rote memory tools employed along with primary diagnostic aids to gage your abilities. At that age I didn’t know about the thought processes of man, or how people think to arrive at their answers. I didn’t know that multiple choice/true-false/ and fill-in-the-blank were basic aids to helps students memorize the material. Most of the tools that my primary teachers employed were “canned” tests. You could even see where the material came from. Looking back I reckon I could have done the same thing as them. I’ve always been inquisitive by nature and that will never change, so knowing this positive trait in me I’m starting to know why I did so poorly in my younger years in grammar: know one dissected the “Grammar Gorilla!” In science, I learned how the planets were formed, how gravity affects nature and how the body works, but in grammar you learn that the “rules” change, grammar is ambiguous and, God for heaven’s sake, DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!!!!!!! “It just is Tommy,” the annoyed teacher would answer back. Sometimes I would get an “I don’t know Tommy,” which sounded better than “It just is.” It (grammar) is just a bunch of capricious nonsense became my motto. Some teachers would ignore my comma splice, some would not. Some teachers were more better at ignoring my double-negatives, some were not. Some teachers would ignore my improper placement of I, some would not. And, so, this cat and mouse game continued until I arrived at college. I guess, to a large degree, college for me always welcomed the why’s of man. Most of the professors knew the why’s and were glad you wanted to know them to<(don’t even know how to use the to/too). All in all, I am excited to learn grammar, because I really, really, really-really want to know how to write professionally. Having my prose look like James Bond in a tux, while skirting the Audubon shooting villains, excites me to break the grammar rules, look cool while doing it, and have the ladies melt as I dangle my “modifier.”


P.S. I also want to break the crutch of “spell-check” into a thousand pieces and use them for customized tooth-picks.

America the Grammarless: Wishy-Washy. Not all the Grammar Stains Came Out Mom!

After reading America the Grammarless by David Mulroy, my first inclination is to play the Devil's Advocate. No doubt, as college students the default mechanism in all of us should be to read every essay put before us with hyper-critical lenses. Queerly enough, I am also taking a Persuasion/Logic course that enlightened my eyes to some logical errors in Mulroy's piece, America the Grammarless. For the sake of brevity, I will number my arguments against Mulroy's piece.



1. "Grammatical terms are part of an orderly set of concepts that describe the organizational features of all intelligible speech and writing" (3).



1a. Indeed, one needs these terms. Analogously, the mason needs bricks to build the wall, so a student needs grammatical terms to structure sentences, paragraphs, essays, etcetera. But I also need to learn how to properly fit these bricks (terms) together. Mulroy's position seems as if the "bricks" are more important than the skill?



2. "...association [the NCTE] of English teachers has been urging its members for decades to pay less attention to formal instruction in grammar lends credence to the widespread impression that our students' understanding of that subject is at an all-time low" (4).



2a. Okay. If all these teachers of English (secondary, post-secondary alike) concur that less attention to grammar helps the over-all writing process, then is Mulroy's mind far better?

2b. And, is there a difference between instruction in grammar vs. formal instruction in grammar? Maybe the NCTE is opposed to lower based cognitive exercises that perpetuate rote memory skills, which is a good pedagogy.



3. "...the assertion that instruction in grammar hurts composition is, in practice, the same as saying that it should not be taught all" (6).



3a. Is it? Of course not! The NCTE is just trying to adhere to a new teaching strategy.



4. Mulroy stretches the gamit when he hypothesizes that the adult literacy performance in the U.S. is weakened by the neglect of grammar (9).



4a I'm really astounded by this argument. Essentially, Mulroy is saying that the BIGGEST factor toward the delinquency in literacy in the sixties and seventies was, are you ready: Anti-grammar policies. What about socio-economic factors, cultural revolutions (increased drug use included), the Vietnam War, etc. Im sure, statistically, I could theorize a plethora of problems that affected literacy levels.



5. "The clearest evidence of a problem in language arts instruction may lie in the well-known decline in the nation's SAT scores" (10).



5a. The SAT doesn't even deal with grammar:



http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat/chapter1section1.html



The Verbal Questions
The SAT contains a total of 78 verbal questions, divided into three types. All three types are multiple-choice.
Sentence completions (19 questions). You are given a sentence with one or two blanks and must choose the best word or words to fill the blanks.
Analogies (19). You are given two words that are related in some way and must choose the word pair that shares the same relation.
Reading comprehension (40). These questions test your ability to read and understand facts and arguments based on a reading passage.



5a. (cont.) Come one, really. Mulroy suggests that since grammar is being avoided in grade school, SAT participants are getting low scores in reading. Again, this is a logical fallacy. There could be a wide range of problems that suggest otherwise: poor study habits, poverty, abscence of reading programs. Should I go on?



In closing, Mulroy's heart is in the right place, but his scientific methodology is not. In fact, the whole essay is littered with logical inconsistencies that create a piece that is hard to accept. It would be quite a challenge to find anyone that does not believe grammar is unimportant (myself included), but lower order concerns like comma use, fragments and capitalization are not nearly as important as higher order concerns.