Midwest Chick's Place

 And now they’re destroying grammar and spelling.  

The University of Nebraska writes that they:

“advocate for writers from historically marginalized or oppressed groups and for writing that counters traditional accounts of ‘standard’ academic English by extending conceptions of audience, purpose, and meaning.”

Not to be outdone, Rutgers’ English Department writes:

“writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage;” 

To be honest, I’m not terribly surprised.   In a previous life I worked as an administrator in a in an education department at a university–the people who (are supposed to) teach teachers how to teach.  In a particular meeting, they were discussing core assignments–a specific assignment taught to the same standards across several classes.  It was decided that this assignment be a five page paper.  It would be graded on grammar, punctuation, thesis statement, sentence structure, and a conclusion.

However, in this meeting, one tenured professor stood up and said that they would accept a well-written poem in lieu of this paper.   I couldn’t help it– I spoke up and asked the question that no one else would…  “How on earth can a well written haiku meet the criteria of this assignment?”  The death gaze was instant and laser-like.

This was over a decade ago.  Academia has always been on the forefront of woke–this latest lunacy is just a continuation and acceleration of the dumbing down of America.