Is our educational system impoverished by the lack of instruction in grammar? I set forth opposing views in the form of a dialogue between stalwart interlocutors. This is the third part of a three-part series.

Aristophanes: There’s rampant confusion today on what used to be the simple point of pronouns.

Socrates: Really?

Aristophanes: Yes. The decline in people’s command of pronouns seems directly traceable to the decline in coursework in grammar.

Socrates: I’m not sure it’s any worse today than it ever has been.

Aristophanes: In an interview last night, I heard the president of a major university say Me and the dean are responsible for the new initiative. And later he said between you and I.

Socrates: And now you think civilization is coming to an end?

Aristophanes: It’s unthinkable that a university president would have spoken that way at any time until the last couple of decades. And every one of the last five U.S. presidents has had the same problem.

Socrates: Perhaps the alumni or voters will complain, and people in positions of responsibility will reform their manner of speech. I’d be sympathetic with the objectors, just as I’m sympathetic with you on this score. But languages are self-regulating systems, and when people’s language gets out of whack, there are natural linguistic forces that rein them in.

Aristophanes: Well, this “self-regulating system” isn’t working. You’d let the lowest common denominator dictate the future of the language? That’s not democratic; it’s demotic.

Socrates: Look. Not enough people care about your version of “good grammar.”

Aristophanes: They haven’t been taught it. That’s why.

Socrates: No. Many educated people who would never say I know how to write good will tell a child, after a ball game, You did good! They know it’s informal at best, and they just don’t care. You ask whether it matters if people say This is him or This is he, and they think it’s basically a trivial issue. After all, It’s me versus It is I has been debated for many decades, and reputable experts fully accept It’s me. It’s idiomatic. Most people today handle these points by preference and instinct, not by reference to rulebooks.

Aristophanes: But we’ve conditioned people not to care about effective uses of language — and to be complacent about their own uses of it.

Socrates: Perhaps. But there are many subjects to be taught in our schools. I’m not convinced that grammar is one we should devote significant resources to. In fact, this conversation has rather convinced me that we shouldn’t.

Aristophanes: Wouldn’t you concede that grammar involves classifications, and the ability to classify words and sentences involves the kind of deductive thinking that we need to encourage in lower schools?

Socrates: I would. But I wouldn’t say that grammar is necessarily the course in which this type of thinking must be learned.

Aristophanes: If people can’t employ logic and use language well, they can’t think critically. And if they can’t think critically, they can’t detect propaganda and demagoguery, either. All of society suffers. It’s a threat to democracy.

Socrates: And courses in grammar are your cure?

Aristophanes: In part, yes. I suppose grammar is only a small subset of “good language,” which mainly involves usage — the proper application of words. In fact, when most people use the word grammar, they actually mean usage. The decisions about whether to say preventive or preventative and regardless or irregardless are questions of usage, not grammar. When people ask for a book on grammar, they’re typically wanting a book on usage.

Socrates: Then you’ve just defeated your own arguments.

Aristophanes: No I haven’t. The course title should be “Grammar and Usage.”

Socrates: You’ve certainly shifted your focus.

Aristophanes: Not at all. It’s me is a matter of usage. The point is that the standard form of any language requires an understanding of norms. They can be taught, or they can be incompletely picked up in a desultory way, as you suggest. But if that happens, the norms will shift and slide to a greater degree over time. Standards get muddied. It’s inevitable.

Socrates: Apparently the experts haven’t agreed with you. There’s a reason why grammar has been dropped from modern education.

Aristophanes: There’s no good reason. Linguists drove it out of the curriculum because they didn’t like its “prescriptivism.” But in fact I’ve overstated the degree of its disappearance in education. It’s still taught in private schools to some extent — further privileging the moneyed classes. Only in the public schools has it been fully abandoned — much to the disadvantage of common people.

Socrates: Oh, watch them suffer without their subjunctives! I’d argue that all the 18th- and 19th-century books on grammar actually succeeded. They were right for their time. During that period in the development of our civilization, they created a world in which grammatical norms became established enough that the formal study of grammar books isn’t very important anymore.

Aristophanes: We’re needlessly reentering a period of linguistic destabilization. True, civilization wouldn’t come to an end if college graduates started saying irregardless, with regards to, or anyways, but these markers of uneducated usage are beginning to spread precisely because there’s too little focus on engendering a healthy curiosity about grammar and usage.

Socrates: One thing we can agree on is that civilization isn’t coming to an end — not for linguistic reasons, anyway. I suppose we’ll have to leave it there, Aristophanes, and simply agree to disagree.