Learn First, Break Later

June 22nd, 2010 posted by admin
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At school I didn’t really enjoy English. It wasn’t the subject that bored me, because I did like to read, it was more the structure of the lessons. Each one seemed to be about grammar and punctuation and nothing else, and whatever we were reading was ripped apart and analyzed according to these apparently crucial ‘rules’. In other words, it wasn’t exactly music to my fun loving ears. Most of the time I switched off, we all did, and that’s something I now very much regret.

What confused me was this: our teacher, Mrs Eggington (nickname: Eggers McSmeggers, which I still think holds up) used to go on about how writing was an art form. This confused me a great deal. Surely if it was an art form then there were no rules to speak of? Surely if it was an art form then we could do whatever we wanted and nobody could tell us any different?

And it gets even more confusing when you look to professional writers for advice and guidance. Many of them break or bend the rules, and unless you truly understand grammar then you are unlikely to understand why they can get away with it. For example, Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic thriller has practically no punctuation to speak of, while other author’s don’t even use double quotation marks (instead favouring an em dash) to punctuate speech! Not to mention, it has been ages since I have seen marketing banner stands without grammatical errors.

In my opinion, more fun needs to be injected in to English at schools. Not only that, teachers need to point out just how crucial spelling and punctuation is, and let it be known that you can’t break or bend the rules until you understand each and every one of them.