How Homeschooling Taught Me to Love Grammar
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Why I Hated Grammar in Grade School
I went to public school in the 1960s in the most progressive town, Mill Valley, California, which meant that a solid foundation in grammar was being removed from the public school curriculum about as fast as I was growing up.
I remember having one grammar class in the third grade, that was it. Being on the younger side of the class, according to current research on child development, I was developmentally immature for an analytical subject like grammar.
Grammar was a puzzle I could not solve no matter how hard I tried, and I wouldn't say I liked it. Nothing the teacher said made sense. Spot was a dog in the book, not a noun, and my interest in knowing why Spot was running was the extent of my interest in verbs.
“If we do not use words rightly, we shall not think rightly.”
I never did learn much grammar back then. I remember wanting to study French in high school, inspired by my older brother, who was living in France then, so I signed up for a French language class my first year.
When my first test results were handed back to me, I wanted to hide under my desk. The grammar had tripped me up, and I knew it could only get worse, so I dropped the class.
It was evident that I would have to learn French some other way.
(I eventually learned French by moving to Paris, where no grammar prerequisite was needed.)
My Decades Long Grammar Complex
I never thought that I was very smart after my experiences in school, and that feeling lurked in the minuscule brain cells that governed my memory for years.
Later, I studied the sciences and completed a Master's degree in Chinese Medicine. But when I finally settled down to raise a family and homeschool, my children, I again came face-to-face with my lack of understanding grammar.
“It is my position that the prescriptive approach to grammar, the one that says some things are right and some things are wrong, rather than merely describing things as they are, is the only correct approach.”
Rather than feel incompetent about what I didn’t know, I decided that I was finally going to conquer my ignorance of English grammar, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would succeed.
By then, I had discovered the strength and power of my mind, something my public school experience had deprived me of.
You're probably wondering, "How did you teach grammar to your children if you didn't know much?"
There's an old Latin proverb attributed to the philosopher Seneca the Younger, which you'll hear me repeat again and again because it helps us homeschoolers to remember this: “Docendo discimus" or
"By teaching, we learn."
That's how I taught grammar, and that's how I learned to love grammar.
The Importance of a Poker Face
Little did my kids know that as they learned, I learned beside them. I kept a poker face while I taught them.
As an adult, the basic grammar they were learning was easy to understand, so I wasn't bluffing, but I didn't want to let on that I knew less grammar than they thought I did.
I would have lost all credibility, so I was careful to stay one step-ahead of them.
That's all it really takes to teach a subject to a grade-school student. If you can stay one step ahead, they'll think you're a master of the subject. From their tiny perspective, you are.
But one day they may call your bluff as my kids called mine.
When It's Over, It's Over
It happened during my seventh year of homeschooling, to be precise. I'll never forget it. I was at the dining table with my son to my left and my daughter to my right.
She was doing the exercises in her seventh-grade grammar book.
Please understand that her seventh-grade grammar book contained more grammar than most people know by the time they graduate from college, even with an English degree.
And lest you should wonder, I tell you this story not to humble myself but to demonstrate that no matter how much your public-school education failed you, you can teach yourself when you homeschool.
Educating ourselves is another critical reason to homeschool. And, on a purely selfish level, it was my favorite homeschooling perk.
To continue my woeful tale, it was a parenthetical phrase that betrayed me. Which ones get a comma and which don't? They still trip me up, even today.
As we were enjoying our grammar session, my daughter floundered over a parenthetical phrase. She looked to me for guidance. Only I didn't know the answer to where that lilliputian comma went.
I put on the face of one who did know and pretended to be a little side-tracked as I quickly scanned the page in the grammar book, desperately looking for the answer.
"Boom!"
The hatchet fell.
"Mom, you don't know the answer, do you?" she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye."
"Well, if you must know, it's temporarily slipped my mind."
The twinkle was still in her eye as I saw her process the truth of the situation. She knew as much grammar as her mother did, and her mother knew as much grammar as she did.
And then she passed me up.
The grammar became more challenging in seventh grade, and my aging brain was no match for her young, vibrant, three pounds of grey and white matter doing gymnastics between her ears while mine could barely sit up.
She taught herself through most of her seventh-grade grammar book, and that was when I knew that I had succeeded.
My daughter had successfully learned how to teach herself. It wasn't that she hadn't taught herself anything before, but she had now tackled her first complex subject alone, and for the most part, successfully.
And a couple of years later, she was teaching other homeschooled children grammar.
“For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”
In my defense, I did eventually catch up with her. I just needed to do a lot more sit-ups.
It was during the time I was teaching my children grammar that grammar and I slowly became friends.
Eventually, I even learned to love grammar.
There are no metaphysical realizations to share with you (I'll save that task for greater minds). Still, through homeschooling my children, I discovered the joy of playing around with words in a sentence, of trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together, and to fit them together in the best of ways.
There's something precise about grammar, with all its rules, a certain comfort that comes with knowing exactly where everything should go.
But there's also the spirit of language that emerges with a deeper understanding of the rules; the intentional breaking of the rules in deference to the art of using language well.
A seasoned writer knows when he can break the rules.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
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