Hey Mrs. D. It's been a while, I know. I'd be lying if I said I thought about you often, and I have no idea if this letter will find you doing well or not, but it came to me as I was walking home from a lesson. An English lesson. In Italy, where I'm teaching English lessons as a form of making a living.
I have a bit of a bone to pick with you, Mrs. D. It's nothing personal (although you told me I'd never be a good writer, and I'd be happy to write you a letter that really shows emotion and conveys a central theme about whether or not I can write a letter that shows emotion and conveys a central theme), I just think you did a disservice by pounding the rules of grammar into our heads to such an insane degree.
Yes, I realize it was funny to have to write "To plus a verb is an infinitive" a crazy amount of times as punishment for misinterpreting a verb form while diagramming sentences. And yes, I realize that that's a fairly important rule. But I also realize that language is a living thing, and I didn't realize that until the past year - probably because you forced a couple hundred kids a year to think that it was as rigid as the uncomfortable wooden desks in your classroom (and I think that was a simile - I'm doing OK with this language stuff!).
You see, language is constantly evolving. Every time you told us that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, you were telling us how things currently are and you gave us no indication as to how things might be in the future. And while I took it in stride and even admonished people for their incessant use of questions like "where are you at?" I am finally thinking that it's time to relent.
You might wonder why I suddenly feel so strongly about this, or why I've chosen to pick you out of the crowd of teachers I had over the years. I can answer the latter by saying that every other teacher I had would give some wiggle room in allowing a student to express themselves in a personal way while you seemed to favor a path that led all writing to become similar and structured. I'm not saying this is bad, I'm saying it's boring.
I'm also saying that if we stuck to your guns and were careful about living by the rules of English and not allowing things to change in tune with the times, we'd still be saying "God be with ye" instead of "goodbye" or pronouncing "ache" as "aitch" like they did until the 1500s (unless it was a verb, in which case they spelled it "ake" and pronounced it accordingly - look at this! I did some research!). Even worse, we'd be spelling everything completely differently than we do now.
In fact, if we didn't acknowledge that language was ever-changing and ever-growing, we would still be grunting to each other like monkeys or communicating in no way at all like we're some kind of bacteria (for the record, that's applying the theme to an outside point to strengthen my argument).
In sum, I don't know if you're still teaching or if you even liked teaching in the first place, but I felt like I needed to get these things off of my chest.
I hope you're cringing at how I've done this in a single draft, not proof-read, and not listed the citation for the source about "aitch" even though it's literally in my hand right now.
And if you are still teaching, lighten up, because pretty soon you're going to be wrong about a lot of these "rules."
-Kevin Nye
PS: I started that final sentence with "and" and nobody was killed because of it.
I have a bit of a bone to pick with you, Mrs. D. It's nothing personal (although you told me I'd never be a good writer, and I'd be happy to write you a letter that really shows emotion and conveys a central theme about whether or not I can write a letter that shows emotion and conveys a central theme), I just think you did a disservice by pounding the rules of grammar into our heads to such an insane degree.
Yes, I realize it was funny to have to write "To plus a verb is an infinitive" a crazy amount of times as punishment for misinterpreting a verb form while diagramming sentences. And yes, I realize that that's a fairly important rule. But I also realize that language is a living thing, and I didn't realize that until the past year - probably because you forced a couple hundred kids a year to think that it was as rigid as the uncomfortable wooden desks in your classroom (and I think that was a simile - I'm doing OK with this language stuff!).
You see, language is constantly evolving. Every time you told us that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, you were telling us how things currently are and you gave us no indication as to how things might be in the future. And while I took it in stride and even admonished people for their incessant use of questions like "where are you at?" I am finally thinking that it's time to relent.
You might wonder why I suddenly feel so strongly about this, or why I've chosen to pick you out of the crowd of teachers I had over the years. I can answer the latter by saying that every other teacher I had would give some wiggle room in allowing a student to express themselves in a personal way while you seemed to favor a path that led all writing to become similar and structured. I'm not saying this is bad, I'm saying it's boring.
I'm also saying that if we stuck to your guns and were careful about living by the rules of English and not allowing things to change in tune with the times, we'd still be saying "God be with ye" instead of "goodbye" or pronouncing "ache" as "aitch" like they did until the 1500s (unless it was a verb, in which case they spelled it "ake" and pronounced it accordingly - look at this! I did some research!). Even worse, we'd be spelling everything completely differently than we do now.
In fact, if we didn't acknowledge that language was ever-changing and ever-growing, we would still be grunting to each other like monkeys or communicating in no way at all like we're some kind of bacteria (for the record, that's applying the theme to an outside point to strengthen my argument).
In sum, I don't know if you're still teaching or if you even liked teaching in the first place, but I felt like I needed to get these things off of my chest.
I hope you're cringing at how I've done this in a single draft, not proof-read, and not listed the citation for the source about "aitch" even though it's literally in my hand right now.
And if you are still teaching, lighten up, because pretty soon you're going to be wrong about a lot of these "rules."
-Kevin Nye
PS: I started that final sentence with "and" and nobody was killed because of it.
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