syntax

(with thanks to Rachel, who first posted this poem on her blog)

I've written before about some of the issues involved with teaching language, writing, etc.

There's much more to say; I think about this all the time. I would like to post summaries and reflections on some of the ideas I've found most useful, such as James Gee's discussion of how grammar and spelling are used to exclude those who are not born into privilege—and how grammar & spelling are perfect tools for exclusion because both are so arbitrary, so incredibly nuanced and persnickety, that it's almost impossible for a non-native speaker to master them completely.

This came back to me forcefully when I was talking with one of my students, who had just received her scores for the ACT. She had earned a 12 in English (out of 36; some googling shows that this is the ninth percentile, as in, only 9% of students did worse than that).

She was understandably dejected and talked about how she had found the English multiple choice questions impossible since "all of the answers sounded right."

It really hit me that there was no real reason why one syntax should be "correct" and another "wrong"—why one must say "she went" instead of "she gone." There's no rational reason—so if you don't know, you can't figure it out, no matter how smart you are.

You just have to know.

So basically, it's like a big giant secret code. A secret code whose sole purpose is to keep kids like my student (a smart girl, but with two disadvantages: she was a native speaker of AAVE, Black English, Ebonics or whatever other term you want to use, and her family was extremely poor in material resources) from having access to the educational and ultimately career resources that are available to her classmates.

It's no wonder I've been mired in despair. This job is impossible. Have I mentioned that this job is impossible?

Anyway, as I said above, Rachel posted a wonderful poem to her blog, which I enjoyed and wanted to share here.

Syntax
by Wang Ping

She walks to a table
She walk to table

She is walking to a table
She walk to table now

What difference does it make
What difference it make

In Nature, no completeness
No sentence really complete thought

Language, like beast,
Look best when free, undressed

Rachel reports that "Wang Ping, the poet, lives and teaches in St. Paul and has published poems, short stories, a novel and a more academic book about footbinding in China."