The War Against Good Grammar

It is well enough know by now, but bad grammar is bad for business. When you send a barely literate text or email, the recipient will judge you ill if it is riddled with grammatical mistakes.

And yet, in New York schools today, grammar is an afterthought, when anyone teaches it at all.

Apparently, teachers believe that they must choose between individual self-expression and good grammar. Yes, you heard that correctly. This, from the Wall Street Journal:

Whether in public or private schools, teachers worried that their students with bad writing mechanics would suffer in college and the workplace. Some felt torn between their desire to enforce the rules and their fear of sucking the joy out of self-expression. And many were uncertain about how to help teenagers who weren’t taught—or didn’t learn—the foundations of grammar in earlier grades.

Apparently, the Self that you are being told to express is a functional illiterate. Of a lower social class. 

And, how will these children succeed at an SAT verbal aptitude test if they know nothing of grammar? Will they be going to college? Evidently, it is not in their future.

As it happens, there is a social class aspect to all of this. Having bad grammar, speaking barely literate English will consign an individual to a lower social class. No one is going to sit around a dinner table with people who do not know how to speak correct English.