Post by robeiae on Jul 28, 2020 9:13:08 GMT -5
www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-deemphasize-traditional-grammar-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/
What???
I remember grading undergraduate essays as a TA back in the day. I'd meet with students who wanted to discuss why I graded the way that I did (and I'd allow them to rewrite and resubmit). It was truly scary how bad some of these essays were; the grammar failures reflected overall deficiencies in writing coherent essays with well-developed arguments (and given these were mostly from freshmen, it was hard not to fault their previous teachers for failing them). There's no racial angle here, in my view. There's just a failure to hold students to standards in writing, which means that they were probably not held to standards in reading, and therefore in comprehension. That's the end result of this approach, in my view: widespread lack of understanding because of coddling.
The English Department at Rutgers University recently announced a list of “anti-racist” directives and initiatives for the upcoming fall and spring semesters, including an effort to deemphasize traditional grammar rules.
[snip]
Titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” the email states that the ongoing and future initiatives that the English Department has planned are a “way to contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color.”
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.”
[snip]
Titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” the email states that the ongoing and future initiatives that the English Department has planned are a “way to contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color.”
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.”
I remember grading undergraduate essays as a TA back in the day. I'd meet with students who wanted to discuss why I graded the way that I did (and I'd allow them to rewrite and resubmit). It was truly scary how bad some of these essays were; the grammar failures reflected overall deficiencies in writing coherent essays with well-developed arguments (and given these were mostly from freshmen, it was hard not to fault their previous teachers for failing them). There's no racial angle here, in my view. There's just a failure to hold students to standards in writing, which means that they were probably not held to standards in reading, and therefore in comprehension. That's the end result of this approach, in my view: widespread lack of understanding because of coddling.
