Writing Harmony

Last night, when I was earnestly wishing I was fast asleep, a thought came to me that I thought (it being very late or very early) was quite profound. It went something like this, though of course all the profound illumination of the insight has faded with the light of day:
The soul delights in harmony. On [...]

On the Necessity For Long Sentences

We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

That is the [...]

Reflections on Progressive Education

For the Progressive theorist, education is one great, extended experiment for which society is bound to pay. Here in America the progressive experiments (it would not be just to call it a single experiment) have continued for nearly 100 years, during which the inevitable resistance and the internal contradictions of progressive theory have convinced many [...]

The Simplified Curriculum

When we think of curricula, we tend to think of classes or subjects and materials to read or study in those subjects. That’s a very fine thing to do and we should keep doing it. I want to suggest that there might be more to think about and it’s one of those “mores” that make things [...]

Why Grammar matters to Christians

When God created the world, He did it by speaking. When He created man, He made him in His own image, giving him, among many other gifts, the ability to speak, listen, and communicate.
 
When the serpent wanted to corrupt the world, he did it by speaking, or rather, by corrupting speaking. “Did not God [...]

The War Against Grammar

At Earl Nelson’s recommendation I secured a copy of The War Against Grammar by David Mulroy. After an hour or so in its company, I am here to recommend it to you. Here is a quotation he includes in the final chapter that sums up the practical use of the disciplines and rules of grammar [...]

Teaching Grammar

Teacher Magazine posted this fine article today by Cindi Rigsbee about how to teacher grammar in this day of IM and pop culture. She makes some very sound suggestions, like mini-lessons and connecting to students in their actual experience.
One valuable point she makes is to distinguish the levels of rhetoric. In classical rhetoric they spoke [...]

Nature and Convention and the culture wars

RV Young puts it this way:
According to the reigning heterodoxy, absolutely nothing is “for all time”; and works of literature do not bespeak the “soul of the age,” so much as they conceal, even while embodying, its ideological and economic imperatives. Hence the clamor from powerful forces within the academy of the”opening up” or dismantling of [...]

Like or as?

When I was a child, my creative writing teacher (the immortal Mrs. Holm) mentioned a then current cigarette commercial that used the tag line, “Winston takes good, like a cigarette should. So what do you want, good grammar or good taste?”
I had a way of being distracted from the point by the wonder of the sounds [...]

Grammar and tyranny

Here is a grammar teacher, let us call her Mrs. Malaprop.
And here is a grammar student, let us call him Billy Blood.
Mrs. Malaprop has been trained in the conventions of the contemporary University and has come to believe that correct grammar is determined entirely by the usage of the community and has no authority or [...]