The case against grammar worksheets (and what to do instead)
๐ก THOUGHT
Raised to Obey?
A new book by Stanford professor Agastina Paglayan makes a bold claim: Schools weren’t created to spread literacy, boost economies, or even promote democracy. They were built to create obedient citizens. Analyzing historical records across Europe and the Americas, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education, shows that most public school systems emerged not from dreams of progress, but from 19th-century industrial needs. Their primary goal was less about teaching skills than teaching compliance.
Why do traditional schools seem so resistant to change? Why do bells still usher students from class to class? Why do they still sit in rows? Why do we still grade students by the same rubric as meat on an assembly line?
Some innovative public schools are already evolving:
- Flexible seating replacing rigid rows
- Project-based learning instead of rote memorization
- Mastery grading over arbitrary time blocks
- Part-time, hybrid and virtual programs
The question is: How might we update a century-old system for modern learners?
๐ TREND
Want Your Kids to Succeed? Let Them Walk
What if the path to success was literally… a path?
A new study in American Psychologist just connected the dots between walkable neighborhoods and economic mobility. The data suggests that when kids can walk around their neighborhood, their chances of moving up the economic ladder increase significantly.
Is the effect from the exercise? Or is from the agency?
When a child walks to the corner store, they’re:
- Learning to navigate the real world
- Building confidence through small wins
- Developing street smarts (the kind you can’t get from a textbook)
- Testing their judgment in low-stakes situations
Eight states have already caught on, passing “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws, recognizing that real education happens when we trust kids with real responsibility.
โ๏ธ TOOL
The Case Against Grammar Worksheets (And What To Do Instead)
Remember the joys of learning about the past perfect progressive tense or diagramming prepositional phrases? Yeahโฆ neither do we.
When Claire Honeycutt (@HippyMomPhD) tweeted that “most kids don’t need grammar lessons, they need great books,” she sparked quite the debate. While we’re neutral on specific educational approaches, she raises an interesting point:
Kids are learning machines. They picked up their first language without a single worksheet on gerunds. So we may be overthinking this whole grammar thing.
Here’s a simple framework for the natural grammar approach:
- Surround them with great books
- Save formal grammar for when they need it (like learning a second language)
- Focus on the practical stuff (yes, knowing where commas go is useful)
And if your kid genuinely loves diagramming sentencesโฆ that’s cool too. We’re all about letting learners follow their interests โ even if those interests involve subordinate clauses.
What’s your unpopular education opinion? Reply to this email to share.
(TERM) OF THE DAY
Pluperfect Subjunctive
noun: A verb tense used to describe hypothetical situations in the past that didn’t actually happen. Think “If I had known…” or “I wish I had studied…”
Example: “If I had diagrammed more sentences in school, perhaps I would have remembered what pluperfect subjunctive means.”
Fun fact: This is one of those grammar terms that 99% of native English speakers use correctly without ever knowing its name (kind of like how you don’t need to know what a thyroid does to have one that works).
Next time someone corrects your grammar, tell them you’re using the pluperfect subjunctive. They’ll either be very impressed or very confused – either way, you win!
Thatโs all for today!
โ Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)