Big Ideas are important

Big Ideas are important. Geoffrey Pullum argues that the rules of grammar can never be absolutely strict or absolutely loose. This is a bigger idea than it may seem at a glance. First, it suggests that in the real world grammar must be flexible to be functional. Secondly, it implies that there is no  Eternal Grammar Truth. Rules, usage, function will change over time according to their situation and century.

I functioned as a Middle School English teacher for thirty-some years. It’s a great age to introduce really big ideas like - The rules are always changing, and doubt what you hear, question everything because Eternal Truths are hard to sort out.

Hopefully, you are asking: How did I try to get those big ideas in their young heads while teaching basic grammar? (Good! someone must have taught you to question everything.) First, I made them diagram hundreds of sentences. Sentence diagrams are intricate and difficult to do. They have lots of rules. When completed they are beautiful visual proofs that English has a structure, a framework under the surface. However, staring at a diagram of a sentence with lots of complex and compound clauses and modifiers — you begin to doubt the rules. See, you can move things around and the meaning changes! Is there something more to language than rules?

Finally, to affirm their doubts, I taught a few weeks of Latin. I used the excellent and engaging Cambridge Latin series.  Here all the rules are sorta different and sorta the same. The words are familiar; the order is not. I rarely found a student who rejected Latin Lessons. It was too much fun, and I cheated by having a closet full of togas and props.

When my students left me, they knew language had a basic structure, but that it was flexible and changed over time. The bright ones also had a lot of questions about the whole thing.