Olde Englishe?

“Tear a sheet out of your Golden Rod tablet. Before you can go out for recess, diagram the five sentences on the blackboard.”

Those instructions from my elementary school teacher summarize huge changes in the teaching of English over the past fifty years. I don’t know if I became very good at diagramming sentences because I was genetically endowed to become an English teacher or if I was, as we say nowadays, a spatial learner—or perhaps I simply wanted to get out to recess. In any case, daily, before our afternoon break, we all diagrammed sentences on our yellow paper, copied from ones on the chalkboard.

Change #1: We ALL diagrammed the sentences. No one looked around the room and said, “Those of you who are spatial learners, use this diagram structure to help you understand grammatical concepts in a format suitable to your learning style.” We did what we were told. Our kinesthetic learners—those needing physical activity to enhance their learning—had to tough it out through diagramming before they could get up, go outside, and move—activity perhaps more linked to their learning style.

Change #2: The sentences we were to diagram were written on the chalk board. In fact, EVERYTHING in school was written on the board. Advanced technology was, if I had a teacher energetic and artistic enough, use of a bulletin board. Occasionally, a teacher would use—and we would be awed—colored chalk. It seemed amazing and exotic. The only technological glitch was the dreaded screech of new chalk, which at the wrong angle in the fingers of a new teacher, was spine-tingling and awful.

Change #3: Diagramming sentences. When I say these two words to my classes now, in the 21st century, I have two responses. One is a blank stare. Most students simply do not know what I am talking about. The other reaction is—well, it is that squealing chalk on the blackboard: instant revulsion. The simple fact is that English teachers don’t ask students to diagram sentences. We no longer teach diagramming as a means to understanding grammar fundamentals or a preliminary to writing skills.

So. Is such change the decline of civilization? Have educators gone berserk? Have we tossed out rigor for accommodating laziness, perhaps labeled “learning styles”? In kissing the chalkboard good bye, have we sacrificed something at the altar of ‘sexy’ technology? Have we lost the academic rigor of activities like parsing sentences and analyzing the abstractions of grammar for easier routes to learning—from diagramming sentences to “Hooked on Phonics”?

Is this change in the teaching of English bad? No. As anyone who has memorized “Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote . . . ” can attest, English has changed. Chaucer’s English in “The Canterbury Tales” is not our English. Changes in language are inevitable—as are changes in how we teach. What we teach remains. Good writing still is organized, detailed, and grammatically correct. Just watch this dependent clause fly in from the left in my PowerPoint presentation.

Carolyn Schneider has taught English composition for over thirty years and is Division Chair of Arts and Sciences at Guilford Technical Community College.