All your base

I have learned more useless information about the English language in the last four weeks than I ever thought possible.

And these kids will never use most of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for proper grammar. Poor grammar and misspelled words chafe me. But some of the stuff we have to cover is just, well, I don’t get the point of it.

In all my years as a professional writer and in my years as a college student and law student, I never had to use it. I cannot recall, at any point in the last 15 years of my life, EVER thinking, “I can’t use an indirect object in this sentence! It has a preposition for crying out loud!”

The problem with English textbooks is that they were written by English teachers. If they were written by writers, the book would be a pamphlet that read, “Write. If it sounds good, leave it alone. If it sounds bad, rewrite it.” I should put that in a fortune cookie. Instead of textbooks, we could just pass out some shrimp lo-mein (and an egg roll, of course) on the first day of school. Their parents would save a mint.