Ed Clarke

The joy of grammar

After a long period of neglect, particularly in the state sector, the inner workings of language are back on the curriculum

A virulent epidemic has in recent years spread across our island nation. I speak not of bird flu, Ebola or the plague, but of grammatophobia: the irrational fear of grammar, its necessity and its teaching in our schools. This has proven both highly contagious and severe in its consequences. The symptoms have never been more apparent than in the hysterical reaction to the government’s new Spag (spelling, punctuation and grammar) test for 11-year-olds.

‘This curriculum is the direct result of a government’s Gradgrind approach to curriculum development,’ thundered Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the TES. This Dickensian term is used for anyone with the temerity to suggest that children should be taught anything at all. In the Guardian, the former children’s poet laureate Michael Rosen argued that there are no ‘right or wrong’ answers in spelling and grammar, and that much of the terminology is disputed.

I agree, insofar as the consistency of terminology is important, but it is not true that fierce debate rages over every term. Parts of speech and basic punctuation are fixed, and a proper understanding of them is key.

Anyone promoting the teaching of grammar is often accused of desiring it solely on ideological grounds. In fact I support learning grammar for its own sake. It is hugely interesting, beautiful in its way, and the quirks are fascinating — why is it ‘If I were a rich man’, not ‘was’? What kind of verb form is ‘If need be’? What distinguishes ‘who’ from ‘whom’? Grammar’s practical value is also self-evident. Undertaking only ‘detailed comparative work on different kinds of texts, investigating, interpreting and experimenting’, as Rosen suggests, is like asking a young musician to merely to watch others play. At some point, he or she must master the instrument.

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