Is Our Children Learning Enough Grammar to Get Hired?

“Grammar is my litmus test,” the C.E.O. of iFixitwrote recently in the Harvard Business Review. “If job hopefuls can’t distinguish between ‘to’ and ‘too,’ their applications go into the bin.”But grammar often seems to be a low priority in education. A student could pass the New York State English Regents exam by writing: “These two Charater have very different mind Sets because they are creative in away that no one would imagen just put clay together and using leaves to create Art.”

Are schools undervaluing grammar, given that employers may rule out applicants with sloppy writing? Or are these employers being old-fashioned and missing out on some qualified candidates?

The Harm When Schools Play Down WritingI can only speak for what’s happening in the U.K., but it seems to me

that attitudes to grammar teaching here are profoundly socially

divisive. Kids at fee-paying schools are likely to be given a pretty good

grounding in the mechanics of language, while the others are largely

taught that grammar is unimportant compared with “expressing

yourself.” This makes me crazy. Imagine it’s the piano we are talking

about. Which would be better: a) to express yourself freely on it; or b)

first learn to play the thing? Of course, the difference is that people

are not judged every day on their ability to play the piano. Kyle Wiens

is right to point out that when young people are taught to undervalue

literacy as a life skill, they are being cruelly misled.

The interesting thing to me about this hoo-ha is that a company C.E.O.

can still put his foot down — that it hasn’t (yet) become illegal to

discriminate against job applicants with poor grammar. In schools in

the U.K., I imagine, such judgmentalism would not be tolerated. I

recently heard an alarmist report that the British education

authorities are proposing to introduce an oral version of the standard

school exams (at age 16), because the traditional written method

unfairly favors candidates who can read and write.

I’m sure Wiens is right that being trained to look at words on a page

makes you generally more attentive to detail. The difficult thing is

breaking the news to people that sometimes they are wrong, when

“wrong” is a concept they have never encountered. The other day a

young airline employee offered to send me “the irrelevant form.” I

said, “Do you mean the relevant form?” And she said, “Yes, the

irrelevant form.” Well, beware. There will come a day when Wiens will

have no choice but to offer that girl a job.

Some public schools teach that grammar is unimportant compared with 'expressing yourself.' But people are judged every day on their grammar.

Good Applicants With Bad GrammarAll will agree that we must require good grammar skills of people in

jobs that involve the composition of text for clients and/or the public.

Language may always change, and most of what we are taught as

“proper grammar” may not even make any real historical or logical

sense (as I have often argued). We cannot help associating “bad”

grammar with low intelligence, sloppiness and lack of refinement.

However, beyond those jobs that are largely about communication —

taking dictation, writing technical directions and blog entries,

teaching school, etc. — requirements that viable candidates write with

Strunk and White on their minds are highly questionable.

For one, flubbing the difference between “it’s” and “its” is not a sign

of mental laxness or congenital inattention to detail. People are

typically more attendant to some things than others. How many

brilliant computer programmers are likely to have kept their

bedrooms tidy as kids? How many do now? Who’d be surprised that a

brilliant jazz artist tended to let his modifiers dangle?

Anyone concerned about applicants’ grammar is probably dismayed at

the state of public education today, and understands that the people

most poorly served by this system find it increasingly challenging to

find work providing a living wage or upward mobility, much less

satisfaction. After we pat ourselves on the back for upholding

grammar standards, how many of us can really justify barring

someone from a decent job because he or she isn’t always clear on the

difference between “your” and “you’re”? Especially when it’s more

likely the fault of the individual’s education than laziness?

There is an extent to which scornful condemnation of “bad grammar”

is one of today’s last permissible expressions of elitism. Here’s one

way we know. Notice how much meaner it sounds if someone says

that they won’t hire someone who can’t do algebra, despite math not

being required in the job beyond elementary calculations. Even with

an additional argument along the lines that algebra trains the brain in

precision, it sounds arbitrary – as if deep down the person just has a

thing about math.

We have a thing about grammar. As I noted, we don’t need to pretend

that someone who doesn’t know how to spell or use commas can write

promotional materials or legal documents. However, if all a new hire

is going to write is the occasional memo – or less – I’d rank giving

people a leg up over throwing away their résumé because they write

“truely” instead of “truly” and don’t quite know their way around a

semicolon.

After we pat ourselves on the back for upholding grammar standards, can we really justify barring someone from a job because he flubbed 'your' and 'you’re'?

It’s Not Just Rules; It’s Clear ThinkingIn a culture characterized less by the printed word than by YouTube

videos, it's easy to cast off grammar as if it were a quaint vestige of

some prim and proper era — a form of good manners or etiquette, like

using the right fork. But without grammar, we lose the agreed-upon

standards about what means what. We lose the ability to communicate

when respondents are not actually in the same room speaking to one

another. Without grammar, we lose the precision required to be

effective and purposeful in writing.

Yes, this is important. Unlike the grunt of pleasure or pain one might

express in the moment, written language endures over time. It takes

the place of live human contact, and stands in for the full array of

verbal and nonverbal communication passing between people who are

together in real time and space. Text extends our speech into the

future. Thanks to the introduction of text in the Axial Age, we were

able to invent contracts, the law and even the covenant that served as

the basis for the Judeo-Christian tradition. Our civilization owes its

notions of ethics, progress and human rights to the durability and

accountability of text. For better or for worse, a person's ability to

participate in the culture of the past thousand or so years has

depended on his or her ability to read and write.

In most jobs, the ability to write clearly and unambiguously remains

an essential skill. It distinguishes the worker who takes direction from

the boss who can leverage the power of text to write down

instructions and leave them for someone else. Only the writer skilled

in grammar is entrusted with representing a company in a letter or an

e-mail. Only the entrepreneur who can persuasively express a new

idea in writing can craft a business plan that will win the faith of

partners and investors.

Language is no less exacting than math. As the book title “Eats,

Shoots and Leaves” demonstrates, a single comma can change a

sentence about the diet of a panda to one describing the behavior of a

dine-and-dash killer. The emergence of digital technology makes

precision in language even more important than before. As the

grammar of standard English extends to the grammar of code, our

errors find themselves embedded in programs and replicating further

and more widely than previously imaginable. Even a poorly

constructed tweet reflects a poorly constructed thought, while

grammatically lacking e-mail messages have become the hallmark of

password phishing scams. Without command of grammar, one can't

even truly read, much less write.

So yes, an employee who can write properly is far more valuable and

promotable than one whose ambiguous text is likely to create

confusion, legal liability and embarrassment. Moreover, a thinking

citizen deserves the basic skills required to make sense through

language, and to parse the sense and nonsense of others.

Even a poorly constructed tweet reflects a poorly constructed thought. Without command of grammar, one can't even truly read, much less write.

Are Olympic Parents Supportive or Overbearing?Between Procter & Gamble’s syrupy-sweet salute to moms and the viral video of Aly Raisman’s mom and dad, parents of Olympians have taken center stage at the 2012 Summer Games — and not all of them will be coming away with a gold medal for parenting.

Are the parents of Olympic athletes an inspiration or a cautionary tale? Where is the line between supporting children’s ambitions and emotionally abusing them with pressure to succeed?

Children’s Needs Should Come FirstThe United States Olympic team comprises 529 athletes, and it’s

difficult to generalize about who they are. They represent 25 sports.

They come from 44 states. The tallest is 7-foot-1. The shortest is 4-

foot-11. There’s a 15-year-old swimmer and an equestrian athlete who

could be her grandmother.

The parents of these athletes are equally diverse. No doubt, many are

perfectly wonderful. For years, they’ve shouldered the responsibilities

of sports parenthood without complaint or expectation. Some go to

Olympic venues where their children are competing and hold their

emotions completely in check. Others like Lynn and Rick Raisman,

parents of the gymnast Aly Raisman, don’t even try. The last time I

checked, video of the Raismans’ synchronized squirming had passed

100,000 views on YouTube.

Exuberant parents aren’t the problem in youth sports. Overzealous,

overly ambitious parents are. Undoubtedly, they are part of the U.S.

delegation too. As parents, we make a horrible mistake when we

confuse our ambitions with what kids truly want and need from

sports. I’ve been writing about the issue for years yet I’m still taken

aback by some of the stories. A noted orthopedic surgeon in Los

Angeles who operates on the damaged elbows and shoulders of youth

pitchers once told me of a recurring conversation he has with

patients. A young person confides that he does not want an operation

and would prefer to quit his sport. But he’s stuck. “I don’t know what

to do because I don’t want to disappoint my parents. It’s so important

to my dad.”

Extreme Olympic parenting has been well documented. In her classic

book "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes," Joan Ryan exposed the culture of

excessive, often abusive, training including the story of a 14-year-old

gymnast who suffered a broken wrist in the gym. Rather than take a

break, she dulled the pain each day with prescription drugs and a

dozen Advil. Subtract the parallel bars and it sounds like child abuse.

All the more reason to celebrate parents who keep things in

perspective -- even if they don’t always stay in their seats.

As parents, we make a horrible mistake when we confuse our ambitions with what kids truly want and need from sports.

Parents Can, and Want to, Keep Life BalancedThe vast majority of parents of Olympic-level and elite athletes are

very well intentioned. The most difficult decisions for them are how to

provide their children with all the resources to help them reach their

full potentials while helping them be well-rounded individuals with a

variety of interests.

Some basic points for parents of Olympic-level and elite athletes to

keep in mind:

• More isn’t always better. More practices, games, travel teams,

aren’t necessarily a good thing for motivation and skill development. 

• Even for Olympic-level talents, playing a variety of sports through

high school, as opposed to specializing in one sport, helps develop

coordination and social networks, and decreases the chances of

burnout 

• Star athletes change. The time commitment to the sport needs to

make sense for who they are today, not who they were last year, or

who you think they may be next year 

• Try to get an objective opinion from another parent whether your

actions are supporting your talented son/daughter, or are putting too

much pressure on the child. 

• With all the pressures on superstar athletes that come from

coaches, other athletes, fans and the news media, parents still are the

biggest influence on an athlete’s attitudes about winning, losing,

success, failure and competition.

Parents of star athletes need to look for stress symptoms in their

children, like multiple injuries without medical evidence, or

personality changes -- “My child just isn’t himself (or herself)

anymore.” Some great athletes will tell you that they are in over their

heads with their sport, whereas others will internalize these feelings

and show them through their actions and behavior.

Along with athletic talent and potential come special challenges.

There is a great opportunity for parents to help teach their star

children about handling pressure when performing.

Help them look for signals that their bodies are starting to feel stress.

Help them find things to say or do to help calm themselves down. Ask

them how you can be helpful. And, most important, see how your

words and actions can show how proud you are of them, and how

much you love them whether they win or lose.

Be ready to adjust to the ways children change and make sure they are enjoying a wide range of activities.