‘Language facts are important, too’

I am reading the English Language Arts common core adopted by the Monroe-Woodbury Central School District. I know that I come late to the discussion, but I wish students could be taught so that they were prepared for college English. There should be no excuse for an M-W graduate to fail a college placement exam. The Monroe-Woodbury Central School District has our children for 13 years. Why must M-W choose between teaching important terms like “theory” (an explanation of facts) and “onomatopoeia” (a word whose sound reinforces its meaning, like “buzz”)? Why, in 13 years, can’t children be taught both? “Theory” is important for all studies, but “onomatopoeia” is one of the terms useful for discussing poetry. Certainly “homeostasis” and “Pythagorean theorem” are taught in biology and math. Why shouldn’t appropriate terms be taught for literature as well? Or are students taught that literature—one of the ways we make meaning out of life and pass values from one generation to the next—is unimportant? Children should be taught “theory” from the beginning, as well as “genre” and the esoteric terms of literature just as thoroughly as the terms of math and science. And then they should be taught how to use literature to express ideas in argument. On a college placement exam, literature goes a long way toward establishing students’ credibility as writers and keeping them from shameful and expensive remedial writing courses—shameful for the school district, expensive for the parents. Finally, M-W teachers have mislearned the difference between “principal” and “principle” (as well as many other language facts) and so are teaching our children incorrectly. I wish that M-W would get it right. Math facts are important. Science facts are important. Language facts are important, too.

K.J. Walters Monroe