Education as it should be, not as it is

If you would like to see a post explaining why grammar and spelling are so important, and why we do our children a great disservice by allowing fuzzy substantive to overwhelm coherent form, check out Anne's impassioned post at PalmTree Pundit (love that alliteration, with a morsel of consonance thrown in too). As Anne says:

All of this leads me to conclude, yet again, that the classical model of education makes sense. The trivium - grammar, logic, & rhetoric stages - fits a child's mental development and takes advantage of it. When children are sponges (usually elementary age), they should be taught the rules of grammar, math, etc., with plenty of drill and memorization. As they reach that "pert" stage of challenging ideas and asking questions (usually middle school age), they should be taught logic and explore the "whys" of subjects. The rhetoric stage is saved until approximately high school age, when the student puts the rules and logic together and articulates ideas. Current education theory has it backwards, in my view. It seems common for a teacher to share a little about the American Revolution (politically correct version, of course), and then ask the second-grader how he feels about it. And whatever the child feels is deemed correct, because, again, feelings trump everything else.

As the proud mother of a child who correctly uses "I" and "me", I shout out loudly, "Ditto!"