The Harm When Schools Play Down Writing

The Harm When Schools Play Down Writing

The New York Times

14 August 2012

Lynne Truss is the author of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”

[Excerpts]

Kids at fee-paying schools are likely to be given a pretty good grounding in the mechanics of language, while the others are largely taught that grammar is unimportant compared with “expressing yourself.” This makes me crazy. Imagine it’s the piano we are talking about. Which would be better: a) to express yourself freely on it; or b) first learn to play the thing? Of course, the difference is that people are not judged every day on their ability to play the piano. Kyle Wiens is right to point out that when young people are taught to undervalue literacy as a life skill, they are being cruelly misled. 

The difficult thing is breaking the news to people that sometimes they are wrong, when “wrong” is a concept they have never encountered. The other day a young airline employee offered to send me “the irrelevant form.” I said, “Do you mean the relevant form?” And she said, “Yes, the irrelevant form.” Well, beware. There will come a day when Wiens will have no choice but to offer that girl a job.