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As reported recently in a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank, President Bush is once again on the warpath against the English language. Out on the stump and unscripted, the president finds himself ensnared in webs of mangled words and massacred phrases. Fully aware that grammar and syntax represent an even greater threat to his image than Michael Moore or Molly Ivins, the president, while visiting California, admitted that he and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger both “have trouble with the English language.” What Schwarzenegger thought of this rather demeaning comparison we don’t know. We do know, however, that, while Schwarzenegger speaks English with the overlay of a German accent, he rarely, if ever, delivers himself of the grammatical grunge that burbles forth from the mouth of Bush. Schwarzenegger, despite his prattle about “girlie men,” would probably never have come out with such barbaric Bushisms as “the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.” Or, “in a changing world we want more people to have control over your life.” The fact is that people, like Schwarzenegger, who come to English as a second language usually are more adept at phrasing and more aware of correct grammar and syntax than most Americans. Indeed, this is the very reason why Bill Cosby is waging his own war against what is a singularly African-American patois. Cosby has shaken the very foundations of black American culture by insisting, among other things, that the verb “to be” should actually be conjugated. Unfortunately, Cosby’s fears were borne out locally by the latest AYP (annual yearly progress) reports. Both James Blair and Berkeley Middle Schools missed federal targets because of the failure rate of black students on English tests. Yet, the fact is that many Americans, regardless of race, are glossaphobes. They hate the rigors of linguistics. As a result, they mutilate not only their own language but they hubristically shun learning foreign languages in the hopes that all foreigners will kowtow to their need to speak only English. Much of this is a result of American educational faddism and what can only be called the snippetry approach to language study. While our middle schools, for instance, pride themselves on teaching German, Spanish and Latin, the fact is that the approach is less than rigorous and more cultural than linguistic. Nor is there much attempt, beyond mere etymological links, to instill in students the direct grammatical and syntactical relationships between a language such as Latin and English. Indeed, indicative of how important language study is to the public school system is the fact that there are no SOLs for Latin or any other foreign language. Yet, as one college English professor put it, you will never be able to fully understand English etymology, grammar and syntax unless you know Greek and Latin. And herein lies the rub, because both of those languages are demanding, frustrating to learn and dependent on a high degree of discipline. Yet, once you know Latin, all the Romance languages are a breeze, and the clarity of English properly spoken and written becomes obvious. While the public schools eschew teaching Latin in the lower elementary grades, there are moves afoot in the private schools to return Latin to its proper place in the curriculum. One of the best examples of a renewed interest in Latin and English grammar as core subjects can be found at Williamsburg’s Providence Classical School. Based on the classical trivium, or three-tiered educational system, the Providence curriculum introduces students to Latin in the third grade and continues it until grade seven, which is the last grade the school now offers. By the time they reach the seventh grade, students are reading Caesar or other Latin authors in their original language. In addition, the school emphasizes the importance of Latin to English and buttresses the basics of English with courses dedicated solely to English grammar, writing and intense comprehensive reading. In the second grade, believe it or not, students are beginning to diagram sentences. They know what prepositional phrases and dependent clauses are. According to one school administrator, Latin is at the core of their curriculum because of its disciplinary requirements. Students are forced to see that language, like math, has certain fixed constructs, and that we shun or violate linguistic rules to our own detriment. It’s just as important to understand the concepts of declensions, conjugations, parts of speech, and phraseology in language as it is to understand the basics of physics before one makes pronouncements about the structure of the universe. Though there is a strict adherence to things Christian and biblical at the Providence Classical School, and though their insistence on logic seems to be contradicted by their equally strong insistence on creationism, they deserve high praise for re-introducing a classical curriculum. Devoid of the fancy footwork, gadgetry and rabbit-like growth of administrative positions that have overwhelmed the public school system, Providence has zeroed in on the basics and has dared, in addition to Latin, to offer such gutsy courses as Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and the history of classical music. I daresay that had President Bush or those with similarly muddled linguistic agendas gone through such a curriculum they would not now be mouthing the grammatical and syntactical slop that signals chaotic thought processes and causes incredulity at their utterances.
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