In her essay “Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar,” Anne Curzan encourages students to question the teaching of English grammar. According to Curzan, students often think narrowly about the English language, allowing prejudices against different dialects and discouraging individuality. Curzan claims “Standard English has been elevated to the status of being more correct than anything else rather than simply being a shared standard. As a result, nonstandard English becomes substandard, illogical, sloppy, wrong. But it ain’t so” (875). The author explains that students are taught that they are not allowed to question what they learn. The concept of Standard English has come to be viewed as the only “correct” form of English when this is not the case. To confront this, Curzans advises teachers “to foster systematic, informed, and reflective knowledge about the English language” (878). Teachers accomplish this by encouraging students to question everything. Society understands that rules cannot be ignored simply because their origins are understood. In the same manner, students will learn that it is okay to question everything, but overturning a rule requires careful reasoning.
Works Cited
Curzan, Anne. “Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 3, 2009, pp. 870–879. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25614330. Accessed 11 Mar. 2021.
