Small Strokes Big Oaks

This is a cross post from Equality 101.

I wrote a post the other day about Standard English Privilege that has garnered quite a bit of attention.  The main argument of the post (I won’t bore you all with the details again) goes a little something like this:

Why is it that so often on the internet I see people revert to the argument that so-and-so writer or commenter can’t spell or construct a grammatically correct argument and therefore the entire argument has no validity in this sphere?

Is literacy so important to credibility here? (One could argue that being literate in this way is vital to the credibility of the author of the post, but is it for commenters?) Or, let me rephrase: Is Standard English literacy so important to credibility here?  Or, let me rephrase again: Is white, upper-or-middle class English literacy so important to credibility here? (I am not saying here that you have to be white or upper-or-middle class to have a command of Standard English.  Just that it is no secret that Standard English is the language of white, educated people.  For more on this, see this article.)

When we discount people and their arguments because of their command (or lack thereof) of grammar, what we are really saying is: Your thoughts are useless because you don’t use the kind of grammar I’ve come to expect from literate people on the internet.  What we are also saying is far worse: You don’t have the privilege to have learned the “correct” way of writing or speaking, and, therefore, your ideas are worthless.

In this previous post, I was referring specifically to blog authors and the surprisingly widespread tendency I’ve seen to discount arguments because the commenter “can’t even write a grammatically correct sentence! So they must not be very smart!  [giggle]” However, I think this has some interesting implications for teaching, as well.

As teachers, we are taking into account our privilege all the time.  Some of us have white privilege or male privilege or class privilege or any number of other privileges, and those of us who fall into those categories must realize that we have these privileges and be constantly aware of them as we teach our students who may or may not have those privileges, as well.  But there is another privilege that isn’t very often discussed that is almost a non-negotiable privilege for teachers that we don’t usually talk about: Standard English privilege.

Standard English (SE) privilege means that you, one way or another, have a good command of SE grammar.  As stated above, this usually means a few things: 1) You grew up speaking SE at home; 2) you have had access to enough books, articles, and other written works to teach you what SE is supposed to look and sound like; or 3) you have had access to enough education to teach you what SE is supposed to look and sound like.

We know that 1) SE has been dubbed White English Vernacular (WEV); 2) books and articles cost money and parents have to have a lot of time to read them to their children; and 3) education is often expensive.  We blog and talk about these sorts of things all the time in our education communities, and yet there are still teachers out there who see three grammar mistakes and hand the paper back for the student to correct it before he/she will read any further.  This type of behavior – the type that makes grammar mistakes more important than the ideas in the paper – reeks of white privilege and class privilege.  I think my favorite literary character said it best when he said: “That’s something else that gives me a royal pain.  I mean if you’re good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas.” ¹ When we mark up a paper with our red pens – circling every spelling error, crossing out every extra word, pointing out every missed comma – and hand it back to the student and ask him or her to revise, it’s no wonder all we get back are corrections of grammatical errors and no real revisions of ideas.  When students think all we care about is grammar, all they’ll edit is grammar.  Far worse than that, when all we care about is SE grammar, we call their entire literate identity into question, and when we tell them their grammar is “wrong” – if that’s all we tell them – what we are really saying is that their argument is worthless because their command of SE grammar isn’t good enough.

I know there are still a few grammar sticklers out there, clutching to their red pens for dear life.  (“But it’s on the ACT!!!” you scream.  “We MUST teach grammar!!!”)  I’m not saying we should stop correcting grammar all together (although maybe we should stop calling it “correcting”).  I’m just saying that with practice and the nurturing of a student’s ideas in a paper, the grammar will come.  And, really, aren’t the ideas more important, anyway?  What, really, is “good grammar” without interesting thoughts?