Is Good English Important?

. [This is a work in progress, and I'll try to add links to relevant articles as I find them.] I have been teaching for 32 years in the USA (also known as the US in certain quarters, but let's say no more about that. One of these days we may get down to just the U, which should serve to distinguish from the UK. Unless they go for the U first. They're into abbreviation too; e.g. "Half five" means 5:30). In the course of this travail, I have learned to use proper grammar, to be understood by the younger generation, and spell words properly, such as "fanilly" (And fanilly they fall in love), and "alot" (And fanilly they fall in love alot). I must not forget to mention "definately". (And fanilly, they definately fall in love alot.) Nobody seems to read my blog (well, hardly nobody, that is; or nobody hardly reads it. Gosh, I hardly write it,) and I think it's because I haven't really got my grammar good. In the teaching profession, especially, it's important to be understood by your pupils, and you can't do it unless you speak their language. Just like the tree falling in the forest, is it not appropriate to judge language by its ability to express the ideas rather than by its correctness? If there are only trees in the forest, hearing the fall of the particular tree that has been singled for study, does the tree not make a sound to them? Indeed it does. Who are we to deny the noise of the fall simply because we are not there? If you're there, and I'm not, why should I take your word, rather than the silent word of a mass of patient flora? When they are cut, do they not bleed their green blood? Just so, perhaps it is the happy language of the younger generation that matters, since they will be the ones to write the laws of this century, and one hopes that the laws will not be written in the strained prose of a bygone era. And the Supreme Court will have to labor alot over the meaning of them, until fanilly they figer a definate meaning of them, lol! [Added 2009/3/16: At right is an article in the New York Times sometime in 1906 deploring the quality of public education of the time. Note: this article is from the distant past, and the little fragment of the article that follows the one about English should not be taken seriously as policy for the present day.] Arch