NCTE Ch. 4: "Teaching Language" --Stephen Tchudi

Summary: 

 In his chapter, Tchudi provides a seemingly comprehensive (and at the very least, extensive) examination of grammar and English language instruction in US education. Throughout this exploration of history, Tchudi, in his own words, focuses explicitly on three themes, including 

"[1]. NCTE’s ongoing efforts to understand social contexts for schooling and language, including the need to serve diverse student populations while meeting the expectations of the general public, the media, and school governing bodies who seek students’ mastery of “Standard” English; [2.] The integration of current or “modern” views of the nature of language itself, including grammars, usage, and sociolinguistics; linguistic scholarship; and the burgeoning volume of knowledge and understanding of the role of language in human consciousness and learning; [and 3., the] Discovery and dissemination of best practices in the learning of
language, including both first and second language learners and speakers of a variety of dialects and registers." (126).

In spite suggesting that his chapter is intended to focus explicitly on NCTE's role in the "hundred-year dialectic over language," Tchudi, provides an even more expansive overview the linguistic and pedagogical movements that effected language instruction over the years. Beginning with the now notorious role Harvard played in the formation of language and writing pedagogy in the US, he also highlights the functional grammar movement of the early twentieth century, the impact had by Hatfield’s 1935 An Experience Curriculum in English, the New English (and linguistics) of the 1960s and '70s, the emerging concerns over dialects and students' rights to their own language in last two decades, and the return to calls for explicit grammar instruction in the 1980's and even today. After highlighting what he calls the recent "backlash" against the "New English" curriculum and the concerns of government officials and even those within NCTE for the lack of explicit, Standard English-centered grammar instruction, Tchudi closes his chapter with  a bold move, suggesting, "As we celebrate the Council’s centennial, we certainly can regret that the grammar idol has been so difficult to topple. The
Council has much more interesting and vital ways to spend its time and energies than in responding to those who want to worship a discredited god" (160).

Some Thoughts:

Wow! I’m so glad we came back to read this chapter. Not only does it give what seems like a really thorough outline of the history of language and grammar teaching in the US, it also ends with quite the argument. I'm glad that he ended with a strong statement of what/where he thinks NCTE and its members should be putting their energy and its not on grammar teaching. 

Since taking a Sociolinguistics course years ago, as part of my undergraduate work, I have been deeply interested in the issues of language and grammar--both broadly (politically and within the larger culture) and as they play out in my own teaching. Tchudi credits "enlighten confidence in learning through rule study" and methods of language instruction borrowed from the teaching of Latin, as two of the primary pedagogical traditions from which our continued concern with grammatical correctness emerged (125(. I think, however, it must be something more. If it were just that we had inherited these traditions, than why, after decades of trying topple the tower of grammar correctness, have we remained unsuccessful? Clearly, this concern with a particular kind of "correctness" is serving someone's--those in power--agenda. Just as it did at Harvard and just as in the early debates over Black English, and just as in today's concerns with students not scoring well on nationally standardized writing assessments; defining "correct" writing and speaking--defining literacy--in a particular and fixed way, serves as a gatekeeping function that, I think, in many ways keeps power connected to "literacy" out of the hands of the "unwashed masses." 

That having been said, I think that while "Students' Rights to Their Own Language," was clearly a step in the right direction, Pritchard (who Tchudi cites) was dead on in his concern that the Resolution (and others like it) were/are "unclear about what kind of teacher behavior would result if the implications of the statement were carried out" (152-3). While agree whole-heartedly with concerns over students’ rights to their own language and am far from a proponent of grammar instruction and Standard English, I remain troubled about how to enact these beliefs in a classroom. For instance, when a black student who struggled deeply with the conventions of Standard English (and with writing that cohered enough to be understood) came to me and said, "fix my grammar. I want to write right," what should I have said? I suspected that some her problems in writing coherently came from what appeared to be a fight in her head between Standard English and her own natural dialect, resulting in her writing successfully achieving neither. However when I suggested she begin by trying to write as she talked to me (or wrote me e-mails), she said, no, she wanted to learn to do it "right." Who was I to 1.) ignore her wishes and pretended that real power structures aren't bound up in language and that a particular dialect does have cultural capital, and 2.) try burden her with attempts at lengthy explanations about these power differentials embedded in language and that she should consider questioning thee power structures? 

Moreover, if I can't even figure out how to enact this language-conscious pedagogy in my own classroom with twenty students, how are we supposed to encourage policy and assessment that reflects our knowledge of this "discredited god" of grammar instruction? Can we blame NCLB and other local and federal policies like it that reify the notion that there is only one correct English, when the pervasive national culture insists "writing is grammar" and as teachers we (or at least I) can't seem to figure out how to call this assumption into question without disempowering particular students by ignoring cultural and social realities?