Teaching grammar and political incorrectness

Abstract

The discussion on the teaching of grammar is not new in Argentina. The disappearance of this teaching has been erratically proclaimed since the foundations of the Federal Education Law of the Menemist period, even when the same grammatical contents were recovered in the Common Basic Contents. Although the anti-grammar (orational) discourse was deeply rooted in schools due to the supply of the publishing market, many voices in the academy counter-argued this position. The didactic discussions in the country have been solid and even propositive, so it is worthwhile to analyze the reasons for their persistence, taking into account the diagnosis of the classrooms and running the risk of being politically incorrect. In this paper, we review relevant moments that constitute the discussion on the teaching of sentence grammar in Argentina; we review what we assume to be the necessary bases for a change in the way of looking at the problem of the area of language in schools; and we reflect on the importance of the inclusion of non-standard varieties in language classes in order to give meaning to what we assume to be the objective of the area: learning to think on language and with the language.