Another e-mail to Fragrant Hills

To the Principal:

Younger Daughter missed the bus to school today because I discovered at the last possible moment that she was supposed to wear black. She refused to go to school without black clothes. She doesn't have any black clothes (I'm not a fan of black clothes for young children.) I eventually put her in one of her older sister's black shirts.

Then I found the notation in her homework folder that she's supposed to wear black for a PSSA pep rally! I am completely opposed to the current focus on standardized tests, which in my (widely shared) opinion is wrecking public education. It's bad enough that you're holding a pep rally for a standardized test, but to ask me to dress my child to show support is too much. Please don't do this again.

Sincerely, FedUpMom

She Had to Wear Black

Another fun morning in the FedUp household ...

I woke Younger Daughter about 10 minutes before her bus would arrive. I got her some new clothes and told her to get dressed.

Younger Daughter: "I have to wear black* clothes today! It's for a game!"

Me: "What? You don't have any black clothes! Nobody told me about this! The bus will be here in 5 minutes!"

I dug around and found the darkest clothes I could — dark purple and green. She sulked and refused to put them on. After a brief tantrum (mine), I eventually found a black t-shirt belonging to Older Daughter (as a card-carrying teenager, she has plenty of black clothes), which Younger Daughter wore as a sort of dress over her own clothes.

You can imagine my feelings when I finally found the notation in Younger Daughter's homework folder — she's supposed to wear black for a PSSA (standardized test) pep rally. AAARGH!

* I suppose I should explain that the school colors are black and yellow. Since when does an elementary school have school colors?

Jessica Lahey and the Myth of Too Much Homework

In the NYTimes Motherlode column, Jessica Lahey opines on The Destructive "Too Much Homework" Myth.

She claims that there is no problem of homework overload, and if there is, it only applies to "uptown" middle-class parents, so it's not worthy of national attention. Thanks a whole arfin' lot.

Interviewing a Family Member

Please do let me know if there is an assignment such as interviewing a family member — something that simply couldn't be done at school but that is important to the things you're doing in class — and we'll be happy to work on that together. — from an anonymous parent letter on Alfie Kohn's website.

The above quote is one reason I initially thought that Alfie Kohn had written the parent letter himself — it's right out of his book The Homework Myth (which I mostly recommend highly):

"Why can't they just do this at school?" is a reasonable question to ask ... But it's a question that answers itself in the case of certain assignments, such as having children interview parents about their family history ...

Interviewing parents is one of those ideas that sounds good in theory but, in practice, is a raging pain in the rosy arse*.

First of all, many kids don't have a family member who is available to be interviewed, even in the high-achieving suburbs, and it's not fair to put these kids on the spot.

Second, parents and kids alike are burnt out by the constant demands of school. I know we are in my family. The interview assignment would not come across as a welcome "meaningful" assignment; it would come across as one more invasion of what used to be our free time.

Third, I can't believe the parent of a first grader would mention the family interview as a reasonable assignment. Maybe her kid is precocious, but I think an interview would be way beyond the capacity of most 6-year-olds. My 8-yr-old second grader couldn't conduct an assigned interview (although she does a good job of quizzing us on certain subjects, like her adoption. But I digress.)

I would like to see no more homework that requires parent participation. Let the teachers teach the students, and only assign appropriate homework that the students can reasonably take complete responsibility for. That means no homework in elementary school, when kids aren't old enough to have the organizing skills that homework requires. Then, when the kids are old enough for homework, it should be minimal, and only assigned when necessary for learning the material (yes, there should be actual identifiable content that the kids are learning.)

It shouldn't be a part-time job for parents to send their kids to school. Enough already. Involve me out!

* please excuse the British spelling; I've been watching too much Downton Abbey!

Truy Misplaced Modifiers

After a long and rather confusing discussion over at kitchen table math, I believe we've reached a consensus that Groucho's sentence, "I shot an elephant in my pajamas", is NOT an example of a misplaced modifier.

In the interest of helping Catherine's writing students, I proposed the following example of a truly misplaced modifier:

Some years ago I was listening to the radio and an ad for an amusement park came on. The slogan at the end was: "XYZ Amusement Park — it's just not for kids any more!"

Now there's a seriously misplaced modifier ("just"). They wanted to say that XYZ Amusement Park was fun for both adults and kids, but instead they implied that they don't even allow kids any more. Of course, they should have said "it's not just for kids any more."

Readers, if you have more examples of truly misplaced modifiers, please send 'em on in!

Bad Advice from English Teachers

Older Daughter is in an English class where they write multiple drafts of every paper. One recent draft was "corrected" by other students. Older Daughter got a comment from the correcting student that said "Remember, don't use ; or :. They're not formal!"

Sainted Husband sent the English teacher an e-mail saying that he's published several books and served as the head of the linguistics department at a famous university and has never heard that there was anything wrong with ; or :. He got an e-mail back from the English teacher, who said that he discourages the use of ; and : because "the kids write so many run-on sentences."

Well, wouldn't it be better to teach the correct use of ; and :, instead of giving the kids the impression there's something wrong with them?

In another example of bad advice from English teachers, I was very surprised to read this post on Catherine Johnson's teaching blog, about Groucho Marx's famous elephant joke. I usually agree with Catherine, who is a founder of the kitchen table math blog, but not this time.

The Groucho joke is not an example of a misplaced modifier; there's nothing wrong with his original statement, "I shot an elephant in my pajamas." Linguists would describe it as grammatically ambiguous but pragmatically unambiguous. That's why the joke works; grammatically, it's possible that the elephant is wearing the pajamas, but pragmatically, everyone hearing the statement for the first time assumes that the speaker is wearing the pajamas.

Catherine's proposed "correction" (really, there's nothing to correct) is that the statement should have been "Wearing my pajamas, I shot an elephant." This is in no way more correct or preferable to "I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

Ambiguity is an inevitable part of natural language. It's not a bug, it's a feature! There's no getting rid of it.

Here's an example of ambiguity used by linguists: "I saw a man with a telescope." Did the speaker see a man by looking through a telescope, or was the man that he saw holding a telescope? This one is both grammatically and pragmatically ambiguous.

Here's another one: "Visiting relatives can be boring." Is the activity of visiting relatives potentially boring, or are the relatives visiting you potentially boring? Again, this one is both grammatically and pragmatically ambiguous.

For more discussion of different types of ambiguity, see this post about writing recommendations: Linguistic Humor, Ambiguous recommendations.

Duty of the Student

From The Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermyer:

It is the duty of the student
Without exception to be prudent.
If smarter than his teacher, tact
Demands that he conceal the fact.