The Virginia Board of Education has “dramatically altered the way teachers are licensed” by dropping the math test for teachers who don’t teach math and instituting a much “more rigorous reading and comprehension exam.”
The result is that teachers will have to be more literate and proficient in the subjects they teach, but educators who do not teach math will no longer have to pass a math test.
“We’re trying to make sure every teacher who walks into a classroom knows their content area and is able to communicate well with students and with parents,” said Board of Education President Thomas M. Jackson Jr….
Not only pedants and purists, however, but all those who retain a fondness for traditional good grammar will wince, as I did, at state education czar Jackson’s use of the plural pronoun, their, to refer back to a singular antecedent, teacher. Those of us who care about such things believe Mr. Jackson himself has a few miles still to walk before they can “communicate well.” (I of course meant he, but I threw in that they to show anyone who believes antecedent-pronoun agreement is not very important how we feel when we read what they approve. Stop me before we do it again….)
Hold your horses. I’m aware of the argument that “language changes” and has changed in this regard and that good writers have used their in the sense I disapprove since right before the earth cooled (see here, for an example: “Everybody loves their Jane Austen”). Professional linguists and anti-pedants tend to regard grammatical “rules” as not really rules at all (hence the quotes) but simply as descriptions of how people talk and write. And then there are the progressives, who want to use language consciously to change the world, an example of which is here:
Speakers of English, from illiterate street people to famous writers, have used the plural pronoun THEIR with a singular antecedent for centuries, probably for the same reason we do today–we have no singular pronoun for people that is not masculine or feminine. The trouble is that it has never been quite acceptable to do so, according to the sometimes self-appointed guardians of language purity.
However, one way in which people are changing in many English-speaking cultures is that we want our pronouns to avoid inaccurate or limiting gender implications. We want our language to both reflect and produce social change. We’re hearing increased demands for the acceptance of THEY, THEIR, and THEM as non-gendered singular pronouns in appropriate linguistic circumstances.
This revolutionary use of their is rather charming, and is certainly more benign than most other radical programs of social change, but even it recognizes that this use of their “has never been quite acceptable” to the “guardians of language purity,” and it further recognizes that not all of the latter are “self-appointed.”
That same recognition can be found here:
It is widely regarded as being correct (or correct enough), at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to say Somebody has left their bag on the floor, but many people would object [sic] its being written that way because somebody is singular and their is plural.
Indeed, as A Writer’s Reference points out:
Despite evidence of current usage, few experts are prepared to abandon the rule. When presented with the sentence The typical student in the program takes about six years to complete their course work, 82 percent of a recent usage panel objected to using the plural pronoun their to refer to the singular noun student (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1796).
And this brings us, inevitably, to the Rosenberg Rule of Good Grammar, or RROGG for short: Never speak or write in a manner that will lead people who care about good grammar and usage to conclude that you don’t.
You will note that, as rules go, RROGG is itself quite pragmatic. Why needlessly offend “many people” who find certain usages unacceptable? If you avoid usage that pushes the buttons of those people who do care — even if you regard them as pedants and can point to nods of approval from professional linguists — most people will neither notice nor care, but if you don’t avoid such usage “many people” (including many it would be foolish to offend) will both notice and care.
Especially if you are the head of the state Board of Education.
Sociologist Martin L. Gross once said, “Affirmative action lowers the standards wherever it touches.”
All I can say after reading this item about teacher licensing is, “Amen.”
John, I’m assuming that’s the American Heritage Dictionary 1976, not 1796.
It’s almost always easy to write so as not to impute a gender to an intentionally gender-neutral subject without using “they” or “their” or “them.” Just takes a little care, that’s all.
Exactly. All you have to do is rearrange the sentence some.
For example, “somebody left their bag on the floor” becomes “somebody’s bag was left on the floor.” Of course, if you don’t like the passive tense, that wouldn’t work. You can always change the wording, however, to find something more suitable…
I don’t see what is wrong with the generic “he,” however. Why can’t someone just say “somebody left his bag on the floor?” Or, since the gender is unknown, there’s nothing wrong with assuming that the owner of the bag is a she, and going with “somebody left her bag on the floor.”
Michelle:
John, I’m assuming that’s the American Heritage Dictionary 1976, not 1796.
I dunno. I just copied and pasted. But you’re no doubt right. The AHD is pretty old-fashioned (maybe that’s why I like it), but it’s not that old.
John,
Since you’re quoting him from a written source, is it possible this error was made by the writer rather than speaker? That can happen in un-copy-edited work – the writer was thinking the singular at first, and then errantly realized they were writing about the plural, and typed it out without catching it. Of course, they put quotes around, so you’d expect it to be exact, but I’ve found the media takes some liberty with quotes (copy editing either for, or against, the person quoted).
John, your rule sounds an awful lot like “never set yourself apart from the crowd”, which leads me to an observation: you place commas and periods within, rather than without, quotations, as in the following:
…to the “guardians of language purity,” and it further…
“…a much “more rigorous reading and comprehension exam.”
Why follow this tradition, other than for tradition’s sake and adherence to the RROGG, as it provides no clarity that I can see; means separate rules for different marks of punctuation; and, in limited cases, generates ambiguity, potentially forever corrupting quotations through subsequent incorrect transcriptions?
Gyp,
Some people are offended by the generic masculine, others by the generic feminine, yet others by the third-person plural in place of either, yet others by “s/he” (and yes, I have resorted to that occasionally). In the current case I think I’d go with
Somebody’s left a bag on the floor
and ditch the possessive entirely, because obviously if we don’t know who the “somebody” is, we can’t know that the “somebody” actually owned the bag, can we? But you can’t always get out of such situations as easily as that.
Nels,
The rules about punctuation vis-à-vis quotation marks are American standard usage (generally, commas and periods go inside, everything else outside), and I agree with you that the English way of handling them (i.e., put them inside if they belong to the quoted material, outside otherwise) makes a lot more sense. (Cf. Lynne Truss’s magnificent Eats, Shoots and Leaves, if you haven’t read it already, though I think almost everyone remotely interested in the subject has.)
First, “passive” is not a tense; it’s a voice. Tense refers to time.
“He,” traditionally, had two meanings; one gendered and referring to a specific individual, “John … he” and one impersonal and non-gendered, “everyone … he.”
The foolishness of rejecting this perfectly practical solution, which in no way disadvantages women (many languages have far more “oppressive” gender markings, and many societies that do oppress women do not have linguistic gender) is apparent when you consider what happens, retroactively, to documents written with the impersonal “he” (and other references that are rejected in contemporary writing). The Declaration of Independence, say. Documents that were gender-neutral when they were written suddenly come, in the minds of readers who no longer encounter or use the impersonal meaning, to apply exclusively to men.
If the he/she dichotomy bothered people, they’d have been much better off dropping “she” from the language, so in time documents that really were intended to apply exclusively to men came to apply to all human beings.
Nels – Not to put too fine a point on it, the thing about established and well-settled rules (such as the American standard of putting commas and periods inside quotes; semi-colons outside; and question marks and exclamation marks either inside or outside, depending on the particular sentence) is that they don’t really have to make sense. That is, they prevent grammatical anarchy by relieving all writers of the obligation of decding what makes sense as they write each sentence. It’s rather like precedents in the law; they keep the wheel from being re-invented every time someone puts pen to paper, and they also promote a common standard, which helps readers.
John,
No, the rules “don’t really have to make sense” if they’re generally followed, but I’m puzzled by this particular one. How did we end up severed from English usage in this matter, and why in such a counterproductive direction? The slight differences between English and American spelling (“-our” vs. “-or,” “-ise” vs. “-ize,” “gaol” vs. “jail,” &c.) are neutral at worst, small improvements at best, as more accurately representing how the words are pronounced. But the punctuation difference isn’t an improvement of any kind.
John, Truss is right about this. The American system wrt punctuation marks around quotations is unnecessarily complicated and liable to produce ambiguities; the English one is simpler and more logical, and makes it absolutely clear what punctuation belongs to the quoted material, as ours does not. We’re stuck with it now, of course (and I use it in everything I write), but I’d love to know how the bejeezus we got saddled with the thing in the first place. There just seems no point to it.
Michelle,
Good question. I have no idea why or when the American standard for punctuation with quotations diverged from the British. Let me know if you find out.
I agree that the British system makes more sense, at least wrt to indicating what punctuation was or was not part of the quote. But don’t be too hard on us Yanks (for obvious reasons, I almost never call myself a Yank). Our system does have one virtue lacking in the British, and it is the virtue of rules in general: since commas and periods always go inside, semi-colons always go outside, and exclamation and question marks go inside or outside depending on whether the quote itself in exclamatory or a question, you only have to think about where to put the latter two marks, not the first two. The Brits have to think about all four.
(I know that’s not much of a defense, but then I didn’t create the rule….)
Would you rather not have any teachers in the classroom because they cannot pass this test? It has been a great challenge to get fully certified teachers in the classroom because many otherwise qualified teachers cannot pass the math portion of the PRAXIS I test.
Frankly, I think its a great idea. Now if only they made us only take classes pertaining to our endorsement area, rather than a full spectrum… I’d be really happy.
Teachers should not have to demonstrate any knowledge. Why limit imagination?
They should only be asked to show good intentions by paying dues to the NEA.
The NEA demands high standards from members and has never opposed dismissing inadequate teachers. So far they have never found one; (which is) strong evidence that none exist.