Proposals to make English the official language of the United States frequently get pitched in legislative halls and the popular media.

One feels obliged to ask, nevertheless, is this concern for the English language rooted in an appreciation and love of its wealth for potential expression on the part of its users? Or is this simply based on a xenophobic hatred of recent immigrants to the United States who have entered the country illegally?

Whatever the causes for the sentiment on behalf of giving English an official legal standing in the United States, how much interest is there among these outspoken partisans on behalf of English in how well American schools are teaching the subject to children and concern for the possibility that many of those teaching English are not too well versed in the nuances of grammar and either do a sloppy job of teaching it or ignore the teaching of it altogether because they find the subject matter boring?

Another reason correct use of the English language is not taught adequately in so many public and parochial schools is because we are living in a society where commercial values are paramount, where Mammon is really the god before whom everyone is obliged to genuflect. In a society where pursuit of the dollar is the ultimate concern of nearly everybody, intellectual values are bound to be neglected, if not held in actual contempt.

Nowhere was this phenomenon more perfectly illustrated when the late Sydney Harris pointed out that we had a semi-literate president who did not know the difference between the nominative and the objective case. According to Harris, President Reagan used the phrase "to my wife and I." This was the person who had been doing everything in his power to make this country safe and comfortable for plutocracy regardless of the dire consequences for the economy.

But why pick on the late President Reagan, the St. George who slew the Red Dragon of Muscovy? So-called educated people do that all the time. Many of them while calling for a law establishing English as the official language of the United States of America.
This is not to say raising grade-point averages required for prospective teachers might not be a step in the right direction, as some people have suggested. But we are talking about teachers of English, more precisely, teachers of English grammar. I would like to suggest a few added requirements for those who will be teaching this discipline – needless to say we have to raise English grammar to the status of a discipline before these suggestions could become operative.

Would it be asking too much to oblige all teachers of English to have one year of Latin on the college level or two years on the high school level? This course would weed out the people who are obviously grammatical incompetents. Also give future teachers a basis for at least one year of French; 70 percent of English vocabulary is simply mispronounced French.

Since the rest of the English language rests on what was spoken in England before 1066 –Anglo-Saxon – why shouldn’t teachers who are going to teach English grammar study this language for two semesters and learn the grammatical basis of that language?

Moreover, since the Danish invasion of England had a marked influence on the English language, prospective teachers of English grammar ought to be obliged to study a year of Danish or a year of Norwegian. (Written Norwegian is almost the same as Danish).

Finally, Middle English, the language of Chaucer, should be studied by the would-be teacher of English.

It goes without saying, of course, that modern English grammar should be studied for about four semesters, giving the future English grammar teacher the opportunity to become acquainted with all those nuances which always seem to plague him years later in the classroom.

I would like to suggest that on the state level, where certification takes place, the all-purpose secondary (seventh through 12th grade certification in English) be abolished, and instead, teachers be specifically certified in English grammar. We should also have separate certification for the teaching of writing. There should also be separate certifications in literature – one certification for American literature, another certification for English literature, and still another in world literature. A prospective English teacher might be obliged to take the English grammar major as a requirement and be allowed to choose between the writing and literature options cited.

Of course, these reforms would cost more money than is presently being expended on the English curriculum. These reforms would assist in creation of a body of professional teachers of English grammar, who have respect for the teaching of the grammatical foundation upon which the language rests.

My experience has been that most English teachers despise the teaching of grammar and regard it as an unmitigated bore and a depressing chore. Worse, many are hung up on the dubious scientific claims of transformational grammar, an invention of linguistic professors who have been trying for years to inflict this monstrosity on teachers of English in elementary and secondary education.

While transformational grammar may serve to amuse and delight professors of linguistics, it is only a source of befuddlement and confusion when one leaves the hallowed sanctum of the graduate seminar.

One final point, courtesy of the present recession, teachers are being laid off en masse. If our society were really serious about education, it would not lay off any qualified teacher. Instead, class sizes would be reduced around the country, with children receiving more individual attention, with the result that their levels of literacy could be substantially raised.
But this is not about to happen. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will allow the Pentagon to continue to claim the lion’s share of our resources, thus producing even greater profits for the profiteers in destruction while not giving us one ounce of real security. But then, what can one expect from a nation that once had as its ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who criticized the government of Costa Rica for being proud of the fact that it had more teachers than policemen? This person was appointed by President Reagan.

There is more to the problem of education than ivory tower commentaries such as this can touch upon. But it is imperative to recognize one brutal fact: America s disdain of intellectual and cultural values.George Babbitt still lives, and he is the person who is really in charge of American education as recent events in Texas have shown. That is the problem in a nutshell.

Hail Jefferson Davis!

Could it be that the Republican Party is no longer going to honor Abraham Lincoln with an annual Lincoln Day dinner as they have been doing since Lincoln’s death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth? We have had the spectacle of Republican Governor Rick Perry telling his crowds in the Tea Bag movement that Texas may have to secede from the Union. And then we have the Republican governor of Virginia making a donkey of himself.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has proclaimed Confederate History Month. McDonnell is a Republican. What is a Republican doing celebrating the history of the people who committed treason against the United States of America, precipitating a war that lasted four years and resulted in the loss of more than 600,000 lives?

Was the Confederate States of America founded on the principle that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" The answer is no. That ideal was repudiated by the people the Republican governor of Virginia wishes to glorify.

Alexander H. Stephens, shortly after he was sworn in as Vice President of the Confederate States of America, repudiated the founding ideal of the United States of America in his infamous Cornerstone Speech of March 21, 1861, delivered in Savannah, Ga., with words that were probably endorsed by Adolf Hitler if he had ever learned of them:

"The prevailing ideas entertained by (Jefferson) and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. ....

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."

So Gov. McDonnell wishes to glorify 384,000 slave owners who brought such terrible devastation upon the USA? Until Republicans speak out against this idiocy we can only assume the party of Abraham Lincoln has become the party of Jefferson Davis!

It does indeed appear that the Republican Party is going to dump Abraham Lincoln from its pantheon of honored notables and replace him with Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. One wonders if the Republicans of Winnebago County and Outagamie County will now begin a tradition of holding Jefferson Davis Dinner? In 2009, retired Neenah public schools psychologist Ed Hudak was recruited to portray Lincoln at the Outagamie County Republican dinner honoring Lincoln. Perhaps in 2011, he may be called upon to portray Jefferson Davis.

And then, who knows, a special gala may also be held to honor Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Perhaps the Republicans will even honor as martyrs for freedom the four conspirators involved with Booth who were hanged.

Republican longing for the Confederacy and secession is fueled by people like Rep. Michele Bachman. At a "tax-day" Tea Bag party rally held on April 15, Rep. Bachmann made the following statement: "We're on to this gangster government, I say it's time for these little piggies to go home."

If the United States government is truly a gangster government, gangsters must be running it. Rep. Bachman failed to inform us who the gangsters were in charge of the United States government. Is she referencing President Obama? Vice President Biden? Secretary of State Clinton? Rep. Bachman is telling us that America has a government of the gangsters, by the gangsters and for the gangsters. In other words, she is saying, the heirs of Al Capone, "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Murder, Inc., are in charge.

But she did make a reference to "piggies." Are they the "gangsters"? People feeding at the public trough. Well then, she herself is one of the "piggies."

Without going into detail with evidence that would prove that the United States government is a "gangster government," one has to wonder how this graduate of Oral Roberts University can justify taking $251,973 in federal subsidies for dairy and corn price supports from 1995 through 2006 for her farm, according to Wikipedia.

It would appear that Rep. Bachmann herself is indeed one of those "little piggies" with her snout in the public trough, enjoying the kind of "socialism" for the rich and affluent that she opposes for people who are not part of the economic elite.

Let us hope that the voters of the sixth congressional district of Minnesota will have the good sense to send Rep. Michele Bachmann back home into her political kookoo-land where her public displays of political idiocy and lunacy will no longer embarrass the people she represents, not to mention all thinking Americans.

Unfortunately, this lunacy is being fed to a movement called the Tea Party movement by people like Rep. Bachman. This movement is composed of people who have no bona fide grievances against society in general or government in particular. They are not living under an oppressive racist regime in our southern states as African-Americans experienced until quite recently. They are free citizens under a Constitution which appears to have made it possible for them to thrive as prosperous citizens. So what the hell are the members bitching about? The truth is they have no real grievances. The Tea Party movement is a collective bowel movement because the movement itself is full of intellectual dung.

The Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower appears to be headed for extinction with the intellectual cretins now dominating it such as Perry, McDonnel and Bachman. On the other hand, we could see the rise of an American fascist party calling itself "Republican," tooting the horns of personal liberty and freedom while preparing to fasten a form of totalitarianism on us. The political climate in America today is too reminiscent of the Germany of the Weimar Republic.