BY: Mike DiMatteo
“Somehow, we’re supposed to be able to write without knowing anything about the equipment we’re using. We’re supposed to ‘express ourselves,’ to squeeze out the orange juice of our souls, without being given anything to do it with, not even a knife to cut the orange.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft
Mrs. Danner was stern. She was an old-school Lutheran German who demanded excellence. Find your name on the board — as I often did — and detention, without trial or jury, was your sentence, and there would be no questioning it. During her class, one was expected to sit in an assigned seat, remain upright in the chair, and do as instructed. There was no extraneous talking, very little discussion, but there was learning. A lot of it. And she was a great teacher in every respect: patient, knowledgeable, and, despite what the paragraph above might suggest, a wonderful person. It is entirely possible to be wonderful and stern at the same time.
She was also a teacher of English — and when I say English, I mean writing and grammar and punctuation and spelling and all the rest that today is largely removed from the classroom. We’ve replaced spelling tests, grammar lessons, and punctuation drills with student-led learning and graphic novels that do none of what Mrs. Danner insisted upon. In fact, if she were here today, I’m quite sure that more than a few education “experts” would find their names on her dreaded board.
And deservedly so.
Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, grammar was taught in schools as the foundational tool for those who wished to express themselves in the written word. Even in what we once called the Dark Ages, grammar was insisted upon, along with punctuation and all the other elements of style that constitute proper writing. As a writer and novelist myself, the tools of grammar are indispensable — for without them, how could I make my point, or get my readers to feel, to experience, to commune with the characters I create? Without grammar, there would simply be words on a page, their meaning lost, random in their creation and organization.
To use an old example:
Let’s eat, Bob.
Let’s eat Bob.
I’m sure Bob prefers the former. That is what punctuation and grammar do: they allow us to express even the simplest ideas in their most elegant form. They allow us to be understood, without question or doubt, and provide a baseline from which to work. In other words, despite our differences in culture or any of the other boundaries we place upon ourselves, language through grammar allows us to communicate across the present and into the future. It also allows us to understand our past through the written words of our predecessors.
As the historian David Christian has explored in the framework of Big History, we are the only creatures on this planet with a collective memory. We preserve our ideas through the written word so that we can pass them on to future generations to build upon. Sir Isaac Newton was not far off when he observed, “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Those giants left breadcrumbs — through their writing, using the tools of grammar and punctuation.
Imagine, in the not-too-distant future, generations of students unable to understand Shakespeare, or Milton, or Washington. What does it say of us that so many students are already unable to read — or worse, to comprehend — something as essential as the Declaration of Independence, the very document whose ideals our Constitution was written to protect? What does it say of a society that will not insist upon teaching the rules of grammar because they are deemed uncomfortable for the students? Better, apparently, to acquiesce to the lowest common denominator of student desire than to insist upon raising the bar.
Yes, this generation has tools Voltaire never imagined: social media, recording devices, and instant access to information. But study after study has confirmed the importance of writing and expressing oneself through the written word — that the act of composition does more for student achievement than many of the alternatives. It is reprehensible to strip that from our students in the name of comfort or the avoidance of anxiety. Humans do not improve through ease. Only through the heat of fire does iron become steel. This we know.
We must, without delay, return to the world of grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and all the rest. We must know the basic parts of speech so that we can teach children how to write — how to express themselves in ways that extend beyond emotional reaction. We must give them the tools. And we must do it now.
The ability to express oneself through the written word is to connect ourselves to our past and to dwell with understanding in our present — to grasp the ideas that created this nation in the first place. It gives students the tools they need to improve themselves as people, and, despite what some pundits might think, when a student can express themselves through proper writing, their self-esteem rises with it. They discover they can understand anything — including the most difficult thing of all: themselves.
I didn’t understand it at the time. But Mrs. Danner was one of the most important people in my life. The books and articles I write contain something of her in each of them, and I will always be grateful.
