Written
by Dr. David Mulroy
I have taught classics at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1973. During these years, I have noticed a
decline in the verbal skills of my students.
It is embodied in the difficulties that they have in reading
comprehension and English composition, as well as in the fact that few are
capable of studying a foreign language successfully.
The cause of the decline has never seemed mysterious to me. My
students generally lack an understanding of basic grammatical concepts. Put
most simply, they cannot classify words by part of speech. Most can identify
prototypical examples of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, but beyond that
they are in the dark.
Until 1996 I did not suspect that anyone questioned the value of
knowing the parts of speech. But in 1996, Wisconsin’s Department of Public
Instruction was drafting a new set of academic standards for the state’s public
schools and invited suggestions from the general public. At a public hearing I
recommended that high school seniors be required to identify the eight parts of
speech in a selection of normal prose, expecting that such a modest and
reasonable suggestion would be immediately embraced by all concerned. I
followed this recommendation with a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee
Journal.
To my surprise, I found myself embroiled in a controversy. I
discovered that my suggestion ran directly counter to conventional wisdom among
experts in K-12 education.
As I went on to discover, the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE), the nation’s leading professional group of English teachers—the
equivalent of the American Medical Association or the American Bar
Association—opposed formal instruction in grammar. That the professional
association of English teacher should issue a warning against the rigorous
teaching of English grammar struck me as both ironic and symptomatic of a
serious problem.
