(Post by Tracy)
“When are we ever gonna use this?”
That’s one of my favorite questions. When are you not gonna use this? When are you going to say, “You know what? I don’t need to be able to communicate with my peers today or try to learn more about and understand my community. I don’t need to treat people with kindness today. And I certainly won’t be diagramming any sentences.”
Ok, so I don’t tell them. That last part is true.
As far as I can tell, it is not essential to your successful adult life to be able to diagram sentences. And I should know. I am a teacher of language arts. Then again, my students don’t know how to diagram a sentence anyway. I don’t teach it. Why? Because. It’s confusing. And when are they gonna use it?
But it is an art. Language Arts. The art of knowing how a subject and verb can work together, alone or in a larger group, to form a bond larger than themselves – the bond that is a sentence.
The art of being able to take a simple noun and mold it, modify it, into any number of meanings under our big, bold sun. Red hat. Ugly hat. Spectacular hat. Iridescent hat. Invisible hat.
The art of blending all of these small, tedious elements into a beautiful, larger whole, bigger than oneself. A solitary speech, work of fiction, or essay, that could change a nation or shape history.
That’s when you’re gonna use this.
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