Let me start by saying the unthinkable: I LOVE GRAMMAR! I like how concrete it is, allowing you to see the right ways and wrong ways to speak/write.
The best teacher of my entire school career was my seventh and eighth grade English teacher. He threw away our text books and (literally) handwrote his own, a few pages at a time, copied them on the school's ditto machine **oh, the smell of ditto copies!** and we put them in binders to make our own books. The following year, he paid out of his own pocket to have them professionally typed and copied.
We learned definititions of 70-something parts of speech, and had one-on-one oral exams with the teacher several times per year during which we were expected to know the definitions verbatim. He even tested us our first week back to school after summer vacation in 8th grade. We learned to diagram sentences. Eventually, we analzyed grammatical structure of various pieces of literature.
I don't know whether my interest in grammar would have come anyway, or whether I responded to this teacher's passion and very high expectations. He obviously placed importance on us and the content. He worked very hard and expected us to do the same. No slackers allowed. AND WE HAD A GREAT TIME IN HIS CLASS, so it can be done!
I think it's vital for children to learn the rules of grammar, and I think not knowing them is a great disadvantage, like not knowing your math facts when you're trying to do calculus.
I find it unfortunate to see how many people I encounter in work and social life who have no grasp of basic grammar. It can really make a person seem less intelligent and knowledgeable than he/she really is. I think it's like having a clean house. Nobody really notices when it's clean, but if it's messy, people have a hard time seeing past it.
I enjoyed my trip down memory lane on this one. DC's school focuses on grammar in 7th/8th grade. In fact, the English teacher for that grade has been at the school for 40 years, and I run into people all the time who say he was their best teacher, and how much they learned from him. Unfortunately, he'll be retiring before my kids get there. Hopefully, they'll find someone equally as great.
Sorry I got off on a tangent. I think I'll go rummage through my stuff and find that old binder again.
