Blog 08

Patrick Hartwell, 20 pages and an hour of my life I will never get back. 20 pages and I am still trying to figure out if anything that was said in Hartwell’s article had any point beyond “RAWR TEACHING GRAMMAR BAD! ME SMASH GRAMMAR!” Yes, that sounds cocky and rude; after all I am nothing more than an undergraduate who seems to have an unfounded grudge against the system. However, going against what Harwell is saying - or at least what I think he was saying considering by the time I got to the math part I was reading it like the teachers on in Charlie Brown – has merit, at least some. I may be wrong but what is being said boils down to the idea that by teaching grammar or at least grammar as we can quantify it either hurts or adds/improves nothing to the writing process and as such grammar education in its current form needs to be eliminated. This despite the fact that grammar seems to be making a comeback of sorts in the school system after my generation played guinea pig for the grammar elimination idea. Obviously grammar instruction has its place and is needed, without grammar I would currently be talking like Yoda and not find something wrong with it or typing “I wrasled ah bare tadey” and be perfectly fine in how I use it. Yes, grammar is far more than just spelling it’s how you place your words, the proper order and Hartwell gives a good example on how we subconsciously already know how to order our words without instruction with the “French the young girls four” (203). However as anyone who has ever used Microsoft Word knows messing up proper word configurations is an easy thing to do and in doing so we as writers make the Great Paper Clip an angry and vengeful god.

Just for general information I am sick an tired of these damned hippie conspiracy evil “MAN” theories we keep reading about: “It is, after all, a question of power … to take power from the teacher and to give it that power to the learner” (217). Yes! Exactly! Teaching grammar is nothing more than a bunch of cruel and evil people on a power trip! Oh God, it is so clear now! Well, I guess this means I can write my next paper any way I want. “Relateship my readin’ wuz ah buy ‘egan …” After all grammar instruction is a power trip not an effort to make sure people write coherently. (Yes, I am exaggerating)

One question before I move on: Who are the “alchemists” again?

Probably the only thing I have come to like about the Smith readings is the almost Zen like (and I mean Zen in the Karate Kid “Zen Bowling” way) fashion that Smith presents writing. It certainly feels as such when a person becomes a “writer,” the clarity of the idea, knowledge and direction. It is a beautiful thing. Try as I might I am having a hard time finding my position against him this time, although I do not think that it is as simple to learn the technicalities of writing as he says. However, as First Sergeant V always said: “if you don’t have a solution when you complain, don’t complain.”