No doubt you, like most others, think the professorial life is all glamor, fame, leisure, wine, and women. That’s just what I wantyou to think with my frequent vacations and the fact there’s a good chance I might still be in my bathrobe at 3pm (working at home, mind you). Such perks do have their advantages.
Nevertheless, there’s nothing more mind-numbing than, at 1AM, correcting and editing writing assignments filled with basic grammar errors. I can’t help but wonder why my dear students didn’t learn sentence structure in high-school? Trying to teach basic writing skills–and taking the time to assign and correct writing assignments–may be the most important thing I do for my students. At least that’s what I tell myself. But it’s not what I thought I’d being doing when I got my PhD. Nor is it fun. Hour for hour, I’d prefer to be policing (does that bumper sticker exist?). So here’s to high-school English teachers… or at least the ones that teach good old-fashioned grammar.
And then, just when I start thinking of complaining, I think of what my dad always said about being a professor, “It beats real work!” And you can’t beat summers off.
[Update: here’s a great link from the comments section: Death to High-School English, by Kim Brooks. And here’s my attempt at a solution: Grammar 101.]
Have you seen this article in Salon? "Death to High School English"
salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/10/death_to_high_school_english
That's great! Hits the nail on the head.
And even goes to my high-school, which taught me to write very well, thank you very much. But I graduated in 1989. I had good English teachers three out of four years.
I only remember one teacher, a middle-school teacher, who taught grammar the old-fashioned way. But I was 13 and not ready for her. I hated it so much that I managed to get transferred to a difference English class where the peppy young teacher, in class, had routine breakdowns (pretty big ones).
It also helped that I had parents who wrote and took writing seriously.
I noticed that you end sentences with prepositions (i.e. to) and linking verbs (i.e. is). Technically speaking, that is not correct.
Blogger went down for a few days. Upon return, all the comments were stripped from recent posts (ie: this one).
But to he who criticized my ending sentences in prepositions… you've got to be kidding! There's a difference between writing in proper English (writing in complete sentences and observing subject-verb agreement) and following arbitrary grammar rules invented by 19th-century Latin freaks. The latter, to quote Churchill, is something up with which I shall not put.