My grammar is entirely intuitive, learned from reading voraciously as a weird, bookwormish kid. I have never diagrammed a sentence in my life. No one taught me those standards. I got a graduate degree from the University of Chicago, and no one seemed horribly concerned about my potential comma splices (I am not kidding when I say I learned exactly what that was THIS YEAR).
I don't know the rules, yet I'd be willing to bet that overall my writing passes "the standards." I think the idea is that you are supposed to learn the rules to acheive the standard, but my own disjointed relationship to this system has me in a constant state of pedagogical schizophrenia. "Do as I say, not as I do" feels disengenous to me. But I am brand new, and dependent on the system for its Powerpoints and its rules and its meager little paycheck. I work in a system of standards; I teach in an institution. I am supposed to make managable, reducible and presentable the chaotic, personal, occasionally violent act that is writing, which is really the process of thinking, over which no one really has control. And the grammar instruction, ugh, the worst tool of them all, meant to contain the arbitrary in a false cage we label important.
Grammar and mechanical usage are the high holy measurable standards, the real big dicks, the elites. This, this is what the other teachers expect. " Oh, you teach Composition? My students sure need that. Some of them can't spell the days of the week!" What is this to do with me? I don't teach spelling. I am expected to GRADE on spelling, to punish offenders, (or at least have a joke at their expense. I will confess that someone's fear of the Government using the state educational system as a " genie pig" was worth a chuckle) but not really to teach it. The "shouldn't they know that already?" defense.
The problem with grammar and spelling is that everyone forgets it should serve meaning, not the other way round. The standardization is there to make communication clearer, to transmit more perfectly (or as asymptotically close as possible in this crazy system of thought, feeling, word). Whatever standards exist ( and I have my doubts about some of these) are there for convenience, not because on a tablet from the ancient hills the Old One spake a comma shall follow an adverb clause only if it comes at the beginning of the sentence. Like almost everyone else you encounter, Grammar is a little messier and confusing when you get to know her well.
This is my favorite:
John likes bacon, while Ed prefers eggs.
The use of "while" indicates that this MIGHT be an adverb clause, in which case you would need NO comma since it comes at the end of the sentence, but if you remove the comma it changes the meaning of the sentence to be about two events happening concurrently, for example, at a diner. Why do you use a comma?
ANSWER: You use a comma because it is a strong contrast. WHO KNOWS THIS STUFF?
Try explaining this shit to ESL students, who want to assimilate all the rules precisely and perfectly and then apply them like studious human translation machines. And for the purposes of their quizzes, they do. The rules work out beautifully in the quizzes where they have to track down the missing semicolon in " The work was hard therefore, he was tired when he got home," a sentence that lives in a different galaxy than the ones they are actually asked to compose. The problem with the "grammar cage" is that it beautifully, maddeningly, constantly fails to actually contain the thoughts and ideas that run riot from their pens. This drives them nuts and makes me look a fool, when the things I taught them break down in the face of complex syntax in a single sentence. How do I turn this frustration into appreactiation? How do I teach the rules out of the corner of my mouth and endorse the freedom out the other?
One of my colleagues said "sometimes what they do in my Beginning Writing is just poetry." It seems to me this is systematically destroyed by the time they make it up to Advanced Writing and they are all clamboring for the rules, the rules in EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE like a herd of demanding, grammatical zombies.
So, should we start a campaign to destablize the unjustly warranted power of grammar? Let me know what you think, friends.
This is all part of my larger quandry of what the hell we mean by standards. Whose standards? Standards for what? What is a measurable standard? How do you measure it? Who gives a fuck? Stay tuned for more probing questions in next week's RANT: Standardization