The Shortcomings of the Linguistic Education System

The right to education is unquestionably a fundamental, inalienable right within the context of modern Western society. Humankind as a whole strives to create educated, knowledgeable individuals capable of fulfilling jobs and duties in society, and this desire results in institutions being created that serve to educate the masses, institutions that spend billions upon billions of dollars in an effort to further the advancement of our educational system and of the knowledge of society as a whole. Education stimulates our economy, helps us understand our own being, and furthers the cutting edge of science and knowledge. Every day we further our knowledge even more; each day the apex of the knowledge we have amassed as a race through history is pushed further and further. Now, this seems all fine and dandy, and, indeed, these institutions do serve a great purpose. Without these institutions, we would still be stuck in the Stone Age. Yet, our education system as it stands today has an unsettling number of fatal flaws. Perhaps the strongest example of our failings in the educational system is our system of linguistic education.

The study of language is not done justice within the standard modern Western middle and high school English curriculum. What the average American or European youth is taught barely scratches the surface of the fascinating world that is language, and of the measly amount of language covered in a standard high school education, never are we shown the depth or the beauty of the study of language. We learn simple rules like subject-verb agreement, which homophones we should use in their respective contexts, and the basic gist of how to use a semicolon; this is what we, strictly speaking, need to know in order to make our writing as adults not sound like it was written by the kind of blundering idiot that would confuse their and there. Understandably (and predictably), the aforementioned topics of grammar explored in standard elementary, middle, and high school curricula bore children and teenagers, and rightfully so; the manner in which they are presented and the depth to which they are explored is thoroughly, painfully shallow and uninteresting. Moreover, learning rules and guides to one’s native language seems pointless and a waste of time to the youth of today (though it really isn’t.) The lack of depth of grammatical and linguistic study and the presentation of the measly smattering of what we are taught is the sad origin of the disinterest and loathing of English grammar and linguistics that we find in today’s native-English speaking middle-high school youth.

Ask the average high-school or lower educated individual who Robert Lowth is, and perhaps one out of a hundred will be able to answer you. Robert Lowth was an important figure in the development of modern English grammar, and yet the youth of today know nothing of him, a man who created one of the most infamously annoying, illogical rules of modern English: He proposed in his 1762 publication, A Short Introduction to English Grammar, that a sentence should not end in a preposition, referencing and applying his study of Latin grammatical structure. I'm sure that many people have heard this rule time and time again; it is, after all, one of the most common grammatical errors that an English class will attempt to address. Thus, we hear it very often. It's drilled into us over and over that we may not end a sentence with a preposition.

This is a prime example of why the modern English education system fails us: Never once are we taught the reasoning for this rule, or its origin, only that we must follow it. Wander into any English classroom where this rule is being taught, and it would be a rare coincidence to find a student questioning the origin of aforementioned rule, for in the study of language, we are taught not to be curious, but to sit down, shut up, and blindly obey the rules put in front of us. Of the perhaps one out of thirty students who dare question a rule that we have been told is an unmoving, set-in-stone law of English grammatical structure, I guarantee that an even significantly smaller number will be given an answer that isn't, “Because that's just the way it is.” No English teacher dares to give any history of grammar, nor do they dare to involve any sort of depth in their study. Perhaps this seems illogical; after all, wouldn't someone who becomes an English teacher have a vast, passionate knowledge of the linguistic melting pot known as English?

The simple fact is that our system of education does not allow this. In our system, teachers are tightly bound to a curriculum; they must meet certain quotas every year, they must teach us watered-down studies of classical literature. Today's English teacher is so tightly bound to the rigid structure of the bureaucratic construct of curriculum that they have no freedom to diverge and, say, discuss how Lowth was criticized for stating that formal English structure should follow the rules of Latin or discuss the irony of him denouncing the use of prepositions at the end of a sentence by opening with, “This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to.” We are so tightly bound by what the principles and expectations of what we now call “education” that teachers can no longer truly educate, can no longer pique the intrinsic curiosity for learning within every human being on this planet. This is, truthfully, the worst failure of the education system (and this transcends just English education): that we, as students, are taught not to love and take joy in learning, but rather to view it as dreadful, needless work that must be done. The rigidity of the structure of curriculum and the approach to education as a necessary burden that must be completed ruins the very purpose of learning and turns what should be a jovial, enthusiastic pursuit to further our knowledge both as individuals and as mankind as a whole into an evil beast of burden that causes us anxiety and stress and amounts to working at a lifeless, hateful job and gigantic, insurmountable student debt.

It's distressing how simple it is: our educational system is fatally flawed. It encourages a hate of learning, discourages depth of discussion, and deters students from otherwise fascinating subjects. Every student has somewhere within them a curiosity for learning, and rather than encourage this curiosity and enable further studies, our educational system pushes that curiosity further and further down and force-feeds us skin-deep knowledge, then forces us to regurgitate it a few times every semester for upwards of 16 years. We must turn this around, and we must turn it around quickly; our world will be in the hands of those whose knowledge and humanity we are spoiling very, very soon. Knowledge is the most important defining factor of humanity, and without excellent education, we have neither knowledge nor true humanity.