David Mulroy, Why Did We Revert to Tribalism?

David Mulroy, The War Against Grammar (2003), pp. 17-19

The tendency of modern teachers to disparage the importance of literal meanings reinforces and is reinforced by the low status of grammar, since the rules of grammar play an indispensable role in establishing the literal meanings of statements. Grammar and literal meanings have both become pariahs, and this fact lies at the root of several troubling tendencies.

To a teacher in the humanities, the most obvious of these tendencies pertains to reading comprehension. We increasingly encounter students who can speculate about the "hidden meanings" of literary texts but miss their literal sense. To gauge the extent of this problem, I recently asked members of one of my large mythology classes to produce brief paraphrases of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I was looking for a restatement of the proposition expressed in the main clause, that respect for public opinion makes it necessary for parties who are abandoning an established union to explain why they are doing so. It was disconcerting that of sixty-one students who tried to paraphrase the sentence, none seemed to recognize its source. Some thought that it had to do with ending a romance. I estimated that twenty-five comprehended the gist of the sentence. In making this assessment, I tried to be fair, taking into account the fact that the students were writing extemporaneously. I counted as correct any paper that seemed to get the essential idea even when it was expressed somewhat incoherently. For example:

When people decide to fight/separate among countries, cities, themselves, they should say why they are fighting.

In life, people dissolve political bands that connect them with another, in order to join earth and its powers, by following Nature's and God's path, should declare why they separate.

Yet, even without nitpicking, a majority of students seemed to miss the idea altogether. For example:

In people's lives, things may happen that would cause them to no longer want to be part of a certain government of which they are part. These things would give them reason enough to become their own ruling body.

Most disturbing, however, were a large number of students who responded to the assignment with misguided enthusiasm. It should be noticed that in many cases the students' difficulty in comprehension evidently does not arise from a deficient vocabulary.

When dealing with events in life, one should drop preconceived knowngs and assume that everything that happens, happens for a reason, and basically life goes on.

I believe it is saying that as a group of people everyone is equal, but when it comes to laws of nature, only the strong will survive.

Cut your earthly bonds and wear the mantle of Nature and God. Wield the power and declare justly your ascension from man's law. Then shall all bow before your might.

Every human encounter is special and is an important piece of an intertwined quilt. Every man and god's creatures should have the respect and the dignity they deserve.

I think it means that people should look at their own morals. They should follow the laws of Nature and Nature's God, but also in their own way follow their own morals.

As life proceeds down to the very moment through which we perceive our existence as, indeed, separate entities of perception, transformation is key to our understanding of the necessity of change, and its living role, within all of us, in relation to time.

People must have true facts to back up their thoughts on a god if they are different from the thoughts of the majority.

If doesn't matter where you came from. In the end we are all human beings. Humans are at the top of the food chain, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't respect nature. Because we have one earth, learn to preserve it.

And, finally:

I can't paraphrase this sentence because I'm not sure what point is being prevailed. Politics? Nature?

I was taken aback by how poorly the students had done on this test and repeated it twice with essentially the same results. Most recently, in November 2002, I offered the paraphrase exercise as an opportunity for "extra credit" on a mythology test. Sixty-four students of 118 attempted it. Thirty-three seemed to have grasped the essential thought. Among the others were some more vivid examples of interpretation by free association. For example:

Mankind is in a state of separation. There will come a time when all will be forgotten, and man will be one with mother earth.

When man loses all political structure and is reverted back to tribal and instinctive nature, man should figure out what happened, so it won't happen again.

These responses seem to me to exemplify a kind of higher illiteracy. The students who suffer from this are proficient in spoken English and can express their own thoughts in writing adequately. They lack the tools, however, for the precise interpretation of the meaning of complex statements. This kind of illiteracy boils down to an ignorance of grammar. If a student interprets the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence as an exhortation to "preserve the earth," then how can you demostrate the error? There is no way to do so that does not involve grammatical analysis: the subject of the main clause is "respect to the opinions of mankind," the main verb is "requires," and so forth.