English Archives - The Minnesota Sun

Commentary: Classical v. Unclassical Curricula

October 3, 2024 American Greatness

Chad Aldeman, a Virginia-based researcher who focuses on education-related issues, recently detailed the educational experience of his daughter, who completed sixth grade in June. He writes that her teachers didn’t use textbooks, assign homework, or expect kids to study at home for tests, didn’t teach kids to sound out words, and didn’t drill times tables. He also mentions that there were no spelling tests, students didn’t practice handwriting of any kind, cursive or otherwise, and didn’t learn the 50 states and their capitals, let alone world geography.

Aldeman is very concerned by this shift, arguing that her educational experience has “reduced instructional time devoted to science and social studies and emphasized isolated skills such as critical thinking or reading comprehension over teaching students a coherent body of knowledge and facts.”

Commentary: For the Love of English, Stop Changing Definitions

June 25, 2023June 24, 2023 Minnesota Sun Staff

There has long been a debate in linguistics about how to approach language and how language should be used by native speakers. The two traditional schools of thought are prescriptivists and descriptivists. The former are concerned with establishing norms for language and formulating rules and proper ways of using said language. On the other hand, the latter believe that a given language should be understood by how it is used, without establishing certain rules and parameters.

It seems that the English language today, at least in America, is in the throes of taking the descriptivist position to the extreme. We are now seeing a concerted effort to overturn the traditional definitions of words and terms in order to push certain political and social agendas.

Commentary: The Woke Revolution Is Erasing the Past

April 26, 2023 RealClearWire

Students of English and history are going the way of the dodo bird.

During just the last decade, their numbers at colleges and universities have dropped by a third – and humanities enrollment is down by 17%, Nathan Heller reports in his recent New Yorker article, “The End of the English Major.”

Commentary: One-Size-Fits-All Education Doesn’t Work Well, but Diversity Advocates Are Hitting the Accelerator

February 24, 2023 RealClearWire

There’s a world of difference in the abilities of elementary school students in the Trotwood-Madison City School District, outside Dayton, Ohio. Some low-performing fifth graders are only capable of reading first-grade picture books with basic words like dog and cat, says Angie Fugate, a district specialist focusing on gifted education. In the same classrooms, the aces read at a sixth-grade level, devouring thick novels that adults also enjoy, including the Harry Potter series.

Professor: Telling Someone You Can’t Understand Their Accent is ‘Linguistic Racism’

January 11, 2021January 10, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

A linguistics and education professor from Michigan State University claims that telling somebody that you can’t understand him is an example of “linguistic racism.”

More specifically, it’s “racist” to ask a person to repeat what he said because you “don’t understand [his] thick accent.”

Commentary: Who Owns America?

January 28, 2019January 27, 2019 Minnesota Sun Staff

by Pedro Gonzales Anywhere from 11 million to 22 million illegal aliens reside in the United States today. The most recent research suggests that the higher number is closest to the correct figure. In and of itself, that is a crisis. New arrivals – legal and illegal – come to America…