Surviving The Kiln
By A.M. Siriano (01/26/05)
I really don’t like Philip Pullman, author of the popular “His Dark Materials” trilogy, but not because I don’t think he is a good writer. Pullman is the anti-C.S. Lewis, using his books to promote Materialism, which is to say he is anti-Christian. And of course, being so, he is also a liberal.
But that doesn’t mean he is a terrible writer. Reading the trilogy is enjoyable if you can get past the obvious God-hatred. I would have been able to, had his work been targeted at adults, much like most science fiction, which is often anti-religious and leftist. But Pullman’s work is targeted at children, and that is just insidious. As if parents don’t have enough rotten things to deal with!
But what I’m miffed about today is Pullman’s essay called “Common Sense Has Much to Learn From Moonshine,” wherein he touts the findings of the University of York, which published a report that concludes there is “no evidence at all that the teaching of grammar had any beneficial effect on the quality of writing done by pupils.”
My good old professor, Mr. Mehrley, who spent his life drilling kids on conjugations and the difference between an adjective and an adverb, is spinning in his grave.
I don’t disagree with all that Pullman has to say, but no amount of “facts” (as if studies of this type are not weighted by agenda) can prove to me that the study of grammar doesn’t matter. Pullman leans all the way to one side in just the same proportion as diehard traditionalists sometimes lean to the other side. But the truth is often somewhere in the middle.
When I was in middle school, Mr. Mehrley taught me the mechanics of writing, while my literature teacher, Mrs. Luft, taught me about substance—about creativity, about form, even “about play, about delight.” There was no conflict between these two wonderful teachers. Thanks to them I understood that I could enjoy the aurora borealis by merely viewing it, but enjoy it even more if I explore what makes it happen. I could memorize the multiplication table, but know it more deeply if I understood how multiplication relates to addition. Finding the particulars never detracts from the general; rather, it always enhances, expands, and intensifies beauty.
Grammar is the dissection of the language, and while it can be very difficult, it teaches young writers to command the language instead of being commanded by it.
Pullman is absolutely correct when he describes how young people should be taught to write:
Fooling about, playing with it, pushing it this way and that, turning it sideways, painting it different colours, looking at it from the back, putting one thing on top of another, asking silly questions, mixing things up, making absurd comparisons, discovering unexpected similarities, making pretty patterns, and all the time saying “Supposing ... I wonder ... What if ...”
But this is only part of the lesson. Just as a biology student is taught that he will love nature more when he dissects it, the student of writing should be taught in the same way. Yes, work that language like clay, but every good potter knows that merely squishing piles of plastic is not what keeps the kiln from destroying all that lovely creativity. Play is good, but one must know what the rules are—learn them, bow to them ... and then master them. That is the way of it.
Pullman blames “the dismal misery of the ‘creative writing’ drills” on teachers who never had to learn “the joy of fooling about with words.” I beg to differ. Too many schools today are all about play. I remember Mr. Mehrley having to leave his classroom for many minutes, so he turned to one of his better students and said, “Take these sentences and lead the class in finding all the prepositional phrases before I return.” Today, in that same situation, you’re more likely to find a teacher flipping on a movie. That attitude carries over into all aspects of student life. Hard work is anathema. Play, field trips, and a constant stream of days off are the norm.
Don’t be fooled by what may seem a mere literary agenda. The push to oust the rules is at the heart of liberalism. Pullman’s true intent is revealed right away when he makes this remark:
Needless to say, [the conclusion of the report] goes against common sense. That particular quality of mind, the exclusive property of those on the political right, enables its possessors to know without the trouble of thinking that of course teaching children about syntax and the parts of speech will result in better writing, as well as making them politer, more patriotic and less likely to become pregnant.
I have never met a conservative in my life who believes that knowing good grammar makes anyone polite, patriotic, or moral. That is just a low blow, but hardly beneath Pullman, a guy who thinks C.S. Lewis’s books are “detestable.” What he is really saying is that traditional values are not based on facts. Conservatives don’t think, says Pullman, and their loyalty to the superfluous study of syntax and parts of speech is a case in point. Conservatives, especially the ones who actually believe a fairy tale like Christianity, are all about those nasty things called rules, and God knows—er, the Eternal Now, the Great Otherness, or Gaia knows—that we all have had way too much o’ that!
The push to infiltrate the schools in liberal methods of teaching has turned out a whole lot of people who neither read well nor write well. I see it every day, even in simple memos, in newspapers, and in the quality of books being published. Sure, the proofreaders often cover the butts of writers who fail to dissect their own literary frogs, but proofers are meant to catch mistakes, not to revamp underdeveloped writers who haven’t yet mastered the tool they have chosen as their medium.
And Pullman doesn’t even mention the real source of good writing, to which grammar and creativity are mere servants. It’s called reading. Relatively few people read well today. Outside of academia, most readers are obsessed with banal works of “popular” writers or the politically correct and fashionable drivel of “literary” writers. If you want your kids to be powerful with a pen, encourage them to read, read, read. Make them read well and widely. Then have them work that clay and, at the same time, teach them how to make their creations survive the heat of the kiln.
And whatever you do, if they pick up a Philip Pullman novel, make them read C.S. Lewis first.
*The Guardian, UK, January 22, 2005, http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1396252,00.html
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