OT and SIAP: Rutgers' new stance on grammar: "Me fail English? That's unpossible."
Political reasonings aside (and I was very hesitant to put this up because of that), this is an atrocious act. No "Big Ten school" should take this position. This should be grounds for immediate expulsion from the conference.
Language is a social construct. The rules of grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc are determined by common usage, not university English departments. There are countless dialects that are employed in different communities around the country and around the world. They are all correct usages of language.
Counterpoint: If you can do whatever you want, why do we spend billions of dollars teaching and instructing it as a core class, using it on standardized tests, etc.? What about when standard usage is used in contracts, agreements, legal documents, etc.?
If all uses of language are correct usages of language, then it should be de-emphasized in schools to place it on the same level of (un)importance as art, music, etc.
Not saying that the study of English shouldn't be taught and carried out in schools. I'm just saying that there is no single correct form of English. Different dialects, vernaculars and vocabularies are appropriate and acceptable in different contexts.
Those different dialects, vernaculars, etc. are developed socially for the purpose of social interaction. They don't need to be taught in schools.
If your group of friends says something is "fire" that others call "cool" or if your family chooses between soda/pop, that has never really mattered. The same can be extended to sentence structure and use of periods if you're writing poetry, texting, etc.
Just like anything, if you want to take the most advantage of "breaking the rules," you need to know the rules first.
Um, excuse me. You bake with soda and you drink pop. End of story.
Preach
In Boston, you drink “tonic”.
When I was young and lived in Georgia, any soft drink was a Coke-Cola.
There's no Boston accent. It's just a whole city of people saying most words wrong.
-Louis CK
Isn't that the whole point of Rutgers' new approach to teaching English composition? They are trying to teach critical thinking skills that allow students to evaluate contextually appropriate uses of language.
I don't think we are disagreeing here. It's just that the headline of the article and the op's spin on what it says are not reflective of what Rutgers is trying to do with their approach to teaching English.
It's not really clear in the article, but it depends on what level of English you're talking about. When I read it, it seems like the whole department is de-emphasizing standard English rules. IMO, that should be saved for higher level classes that you would take in your third or fourth year. Let's face it, there are a lot of kids going to college who don't have a great handle on sentence structure as it is.
”One of the initiatives is described as “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.”
It is listed as one of the efforts for Rutgers’ Graduate Writing Program, which “serves graduate students across the Rutgers community. The GWP’s mission is to support graduate students of all disciplines in their current and future writing goals, from coursework papers to scholarly articles and dissertations,” according to its website.
Under a so-called critical grammar pedagogy, “This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” the email states.
“Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”“
If this is what everyone is freaking out about, it seems to be clearly focused on the graduate level.
This is exactly correct. What Rutgers is (quite rightly) calling for is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes how certain grammatical styles are associated with socially constructed ideas about intelligence. Ironically (and something the linked article above misses because of its political orientation) is that this approach calls for MORE attention to grammar, so that students can better be aware of how their writing choices are associated with ideas about intelligence. David Foster Wallace has a terrific (and very long) essay on these battles over grammar and how to teach it (attached below).
This whole thing has come to attention because of a story on a right-oriented clickbait website that was picked up and amplified by the author of the Harpers letter on cancel culture (Thomas Chatterton Williams), who misinterpreted this whole thing because he's much less astute than he thinks he is (as his recent interview with the New Yorker shows, fairly painfully).
Here's the DFW essay: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWAuthorityAndAmericanUsage2005.pdf
And here's the New Yorker interview: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/thomas-chatterton-williams-on-race-identity-and-cancel-culture
Here's one key paragraph from the DFW essay that lays all this out (SWE stands for "Standard Written English")...
I'm not suggesting here that an effective SWE pedagogy would require teachers to wear sunglasses and call students "Dude." What I am suggesting is that the rhetorical situation of an English class — a class composed wholly of young people whose Group identity is rooted in defiance of Adult-Establishment values, plus also composed partly of minorities whose primary dialects are different from SWE — requires the teacher to come up with overt, honest, compelling arguments for why SWE is a dialect worth learning.
These arguments are hard to make — not intellectually but emotionally, politically. Because they are baldly elitist. [38] The real truth, of course, is that SWE is the dialect of the American elite. That it was invented, codified, and promulgated by Privileged WASP Males and is perpetuated as "Standard" by same. That it is the shibboleth of the Establishment and an instrument of political power and class division and racial discrimination and all manner of social inequity. These are shall we say rather delicate subjects to bring up in an English class, especially in the service of a pro-SWE argument, and extra-especially if you yourself are both a Privileged WASP Male and the Teacher and thus pretty much a walking symbol of the Adult Establishment. This reviewer's opinion, though, is that both students and SWE are better served if the teacher makes his premises explicit, licit and his argument overt, presenting himself as an advocate of SWE's utility rather than as a prophet of its innate superiority.
How about calling students brah....
Works in East Landfill...
Just to prove that my pomposity is greater than the poster's or Magnus', I propose that all of the positve/negative points given are based on whether you believe that the commenter actually read the email from the English Department (not the summary from "right-minded" College Fix).
Why don't you actually read what the actual intent of the program is instead of swallowing the misleading propagandistic swill from this ideologically biased website that the OP purports as "news"?
So when you can't get a job because your cover letter and resume are written in your preferred "dialect" at least you'll be comforted knowing you stood up to the oppressive American system of enforcing language standards.
For the record, cover letters suck!
As someone who's read thousands of them in my lifetime, I couldn't agree more.
I wrote the best cover letter recently.
Didn’t seem to make a big difference.
You sent it to me, and it was trash.
I think that most people that grow up in communities of color or non Anglo ethnic origin learn early on to code switch depending on with whom they are communicating. Dialects that are appropriate for the field of study or chosen career of students should be taught. But the vocabulary and vernacular of attorneys is not the same as the vocabulary that is taught to scientists, linguists, school teachers, etc. The language that is employed in the cover letter of an applicant to a fortune five hundred company is very different than cover letter language of an applicant to a museum that specializes in Greek antiquities.
Definitely. Code switching is something I didn't even realize I was doing until I got to UM. But once I noticed it, I realized I had been doing it quite seamlessly since elementary school.
I have to say that I don't agree with de-emphasizing proper language and grammar. All languages have varying dialects but there needs to be standardized rules and understanding throughout, in my opinion.
Yes, there needs to be a standard, and if universities aren't upholding the standard, who will?
And actually this should all be decided by the academy in England because it is their language.
I t’nod wonk tahw ruoy gniklat tuoba? ?
*er'uoy
U knat?
But there is a thing called academic language, or CALP, that you need to have in order to accomplish things in order to be a successful learner. If you skew that to fit someone's dialect, then potentially important concepts and ideas in the subject matter get distorted. How would you know if they learned them? Context clues only go so far.
Doesn't sound like Rutgers is doing away with academic writing styles, they are just looking for a more inclusive and socially aware method of instructing students about grammar and syntax. They want to teach students the language skills that are necessary to succeed in college while honoring their cultural background. The emphasis is on teaching awareness of word choice and writing style that is appropriate to the context of the subject matter while acknowledging that other word choices and styles are correct and acceptable in other contexts. At least, that's what I gleaned when I read the article. Did you get something different from it?
They are all correct usages of language.
Not in all contexts. That's the critical thing here. In professional contexts there is a standardized American English grammar/spelling that we are expected to follow, which is why we have "spelling and grammar" checkers and certain words we type get underlined, etc. You can also be judged negatively based on how you speak in an interview, if you do not stick to the standard dialect.
It may not be necessary to use the standard dialect all the time, but it's certainly helpful to know how to use it. If students aren't properly taught it, they are being done a disservice.
And Rutgers is teaching students how to critically evaluate which language choices are correct in which context. I completely fail to see why this outrages anyone. This whole thread is a dog whistle.
dog whistle? you want a dog whistle go play that scene from the movie 'airplane'
I still say "chump don't want da help, chump don't get da help" in a variety of social contexts.
good news: at the rutger you would be an A student in english, not just virology.
Anyone who is complaining about this has never even taken a basic introductory linguistics course, otherwise they would already understand that language is spoken first before it has any formal written form and contains different grammatical rules depending on the community of speakers.
Yes. Thread should end right here.
So are morals and ethics.
Embrace nihilism.
Eat at Arby's.
Sure, let's make it harder to understand each other.
Rutgers’ football team has been grounds for dismissing from the Big since they came onboard.
Yeah, this is a bad take. This is a critical examination of the use of language by Rutgers, and exactly the type of thing that a good English department should be looking at. One doesn't have to agree with the decision that they made, but to say "This should be grounds for immediate expulsion from the conference" means that you have very little understanding of academia and are trying to leverage it uncritically as an argument for issues you have regarding athletic inclusion in the conference.
Obviously critical examination is good! But:
- The point of freshman comp is to teach certain college-level writing skills. Part of that writing skill is writing "professional/academic English," which has certain expectations. The reality is that being unable to communicate in professional/academic English is a capital p-Problem for students, and Rutgers is failing them by not giving them that skill.
- Who ... asked for this? I mean this quite seriously, I haven't seen any college activists saying "we want grammar standards relaxed." I've seen calls for a more diverse faculty, broader coursework, concern for racial issues, etc. But I haven't seen calls for this. It feels like a thing a bunch of academics designed in a bubble that's not going to help anyone. (Indeed, if anything, I have seen the exact reverse of this, with URM / 1st gen students looking for mentorship and education on the unwritten rules!)
- What's the point of an English department? To my mind, it's critically engaging with texts. It seems that the English department here is going far, far afield of that mission.
The curriculum being discussed is Grad Level. Presumably the students enrolled will already have taken freshman comp as well as many other writing courses.
Yeah, I've gotta eat it. I got got by the headline. Upon further review, it's quite deceptive -- doesn't mention that it's a grad program, doesn't mention that Rutgers is committing to more grammar education, etc. Egg on my face.
I appreciate you going back and UFR'ing your comment!
Instead of English, maybe these schools could focus on ditching the imperial system for the metric system, if only because I hate having to buy two sets of tools.
To be fair, you should have ditched the Fisher-Price set a long time ago.
I saw you trying to build those cornhole boards with that plastic yellow screwdriver...
That's more of a moonshine problem than anything else.
Agreed, just try selling moonshine in 500ml jars instead of 16 oz jars and you'll get laughed off the mountain even though they get more mooshine in a 500ml jar.