Re: Grammar

Joni Rathbun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
 
> You're telling us that smarter children will automatically connect and
> apply what they see on television. In reality, however, it just doesn't
> work out that way most of the time. 

You need to remember that we're only talking about learning grammar and
pronunciations here.  Let me give you an example.  When I was a little
guy just learning about the world, back in the very early '60s, we
could only get one TV channel (rural Georgia), and it was snowy some
of the time IIRC.  Most days I was home with my mother all day, as my
father was away much of the time.  Now, my mother, who was a high school
graduate (and valedictorian of her class 20+ years earlier) was (and
still is) somewhat lazy, intellectually, IMO, and she didn't do a very
good job of teaching me, and correcting me, on some of the basics 
early on as she should have.  I remember asking her one day why we
apparently had different moons in the sky at different times (I thought
the different phases of the Moon were actually different moons).  She just
blew off the answer that "that's why they're trying to go there, to
find out things like that."  Anyway, I also had the idea that the word
"chimney" was pronounced "chimley."  Also "Chicago" was "Chicargo."
Well, I would hear these words (and others) pronounced differently on
TV, which made me begin to doubt the validity of my own pronunciations.
So, the TV was instructional to me in this respect, without any assistance
or guidance from anyone else.  My wife has told me similar things from
her own childhood (about how watching TV taught her about things she
wasn't learning very well at home).

>Like adults, they might tune in to
> something for which they have a paricular and passionate interest
> and take that information a step further. For the most part, however,
> it's in one ear and out the other, even for adults unless there is
> an opportunity given (guided for example) to put that info to immediate
> use. 

Again, we're only talking about grammar here, not the details of
a program that they'll hear only once.

 > How many people who place quotation marks incorrectly have read
> magazine articles and books up the ying yang that demonstrated
> correct usage? 

Many I'm sure, because professional writers and journalists know
and use the correct usage, but MANY people still don't see it.
I have to question the intelligence of people like this.

<snip>
> A banana or a steak to a child - WRT television - will be something
> they're especially interested in. A special on dinosaurs might be
> a steak to a dino fanatic. Most programming, however, is little more
> than pablam (sp?).

Pablum. <Don't you have a dictionary handy?>

> And many children, especially those who've
> not yet developed abstract thought (most children under 10 or 11
> years of age) might not even know a steak when they see one, will
> not understand the importance of that steak to their overall nutrition
> or well being and will make no more of it than the pablam. Interest
> and how they act on that interest has nothing to do with intelligence.

But you keep missing the point.  We are talking about correct grammar here,
nothing more.  When a kid hears (or heard), say, Mr. Rogers speak on
TV, he or she should be expected to conclude that, most likely, the
way Mr. Rogers (or Barney, or whomever) pronounces words and puts 
sentences together is *probably* more correct than the jabber they're
hearing at home.  Is this too much to expect from children today?

--
Regards, IM