Wired for Grammar

Our brains are wired for grammar.  We use it to make sense of the world: this is round, that is square; my shoes are blue and made of suede, your slacks are beige and don’t reach down to your sandals; I cried yesterday, I’m smiling now and I’ll be laughing my head off tomorrow; you are not me, it is not them, and we are not her or him; my views are sensible and rational, your prejudices are irrational.  And so on.

Words and their arrangements describe, delineate and order experience and, importantly, give you distance and more control over your situation.  Understanding an experience by giving it words makes you less of a slave to it, though other encumbrances, such as poverty and low status may still bar the way.  Even then, the words will help you pinpoint the problem.

Discussions of grammar and creativity are dragged into the usual Platonic stramash between traditionalists and progressives, the prosaic and the passionate, the precise and the unpredictable.  Such extreme positions, however, are like wallflowers on opposite sides of the dance floor.  On the ground, in the classroom, it is not one or the other.  It’s more a case of starting with some sort of plan then adding improvisation: a combining of knowledge of the structures plus a willingness and desire to explore new pathways.  It has to be this way because, as a teacher, you’re dealing on the spot with children’s different levels of understanding and needs.  Those distant authorities – academic or political – who would like to keep tabs on things either for well-meaning educational or dodgy ideological reasons, may have something to contribute but they are not dealing with a child’s needs on a Monday morning.  Whatever strictures are placed on the content of the classroom and however much it is monitored by Ofsted (or your country’s school inspectors), it will always be more like jazz than either a pianola roll or a cat strolling along the piano keys.

You could say, ‘Well, I can play piano perfectly well without having to read music or knowing what an arpeggio is.’  Of course, you can and your improvisation skills are impressive.  But when it comes to communicating – the medium of education – you’re going to need some words, some terminology.  Have you listened to kids teaching each other how to skateboard?  They describe doing ollies in half-pipes, and goofy-foots performing fakies and McTwists.  I’ve no idea what I just wrote, but they do because it’s part of their linguistic community.  It comes with membership.