At last, The Australian shows how education should be reported

Have my prayers been answered? The front page of today's Australian runs a long, detailed report by education writer Justine Ferrari about the national introduction of a grammar curriculum.

It's balanced, fair and comprehensive. It explains the different types of grammar.

Did you know that in addition to Traditional, there are other grammars: Transformational or Generative; and Systemic Functional. Like most people, I'm all for traditional grammar, but the others have their place in academic theory and understanding the way we use English.

If you go back a couple of posts to April 30 ("Time to say adieu to The Australian"), you will see criticism of the Oz's reporting of education issues. Some might call it bias, but as I said:

. . . when the Oz reports only one side of an argument, it's not because the editors are biased. The editors know children should learn to read by phonics alone – they know every other approach is
discredited. Me? I'd like to make up my own mind by evaluating the differing arguments. I'd like the news reports to lay out those arguments, even briefly.

Ms Ferrari's report today suggests my comment is out of date.

Note added Saturday, May 9:



Several letters in The Weekend Australian support the introduction of tradional grammar, but correct some points. Read them here.

This summary from yesterday's Australian wasn't published online, but is invaluable in explaining the various grammars. I hope the Oz will forgive my scanning it to assist understanding.

WHICH IS BEST? -- The different types of grammar
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR: Classifies words based on the eight parts of speech: verb, noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. This grammar also describes the function of words in a sentence, with the typical construction of subject verb object, as in: "The boy hit the ball".
TRANSFORMATIONAL OR GENERATIVE GRAMMAR: An analytical grammar used to look at the possibilities of a language within the constraints of its deep structure. No matter how complex the sentence, it can be reduced to subject verb object -"the boy hit the ball". It's not possible to say: "hit the ball the boy".
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR: An analytical grammar that examines language on three levels: what is being represented (ideational); who is being affected by what is being said (interpersonal); and what is the intent of the sentence (textual)
An example of systemic functional grammar analysis:"Who's seen my screwdriver?"
Textual meaning: Who (theme or what it's about) 's seen my screwdriver (theme or the outcome)
Interpersonal meaning: Who (subject)'s (finite) seen (predicator) my screwdriver(complement)
Ideational meaning: Who (sensers)'s seen (mental process) my screwdriver(phenomenon).

Literature, literacy . . . The Weekend Australian knows it all

As the editorial writer suggested, I read it again, and yes, the passage (above, highlighted) did get muddier every time I did so.

But the sentence might have been a little less confusing if The Weekend Australian's editorial writer had quoted it correctly.

Flick back to education writer Justine Ferrari's Page One report (below), on which the editorial comment is based. If you look hard, you may spot the difference.

It might seem trivial, but one would expect an editorialist who pontificates to the nation about literacy would understand that omission of the hyphen changes the meaning of the sentence. “Meaning-making” does not say the same thing as “meaning making”.

And surely a professional journalist – and I presume the editorial writer to be one – knows he or she should not modify any part of a passage placed within quotation marks. The editorial writer has omitted two commas from the material he purports to quote. Trivial, perhaps, but careless too.

But then, the editorial writer may have taken his quote from copy sent to the artists (probably from a sub-editor) for the graphic reproduced below. The copy sent to the artists also omitted the hyphen and the commas.

I may look like just another blogger attacking The Australian. That would not be right. I believe the Oz to be Australia's best newspaper.

It's thrown over my front fence six days a week. Well, yes, on a discount deal. A call centre person rang me and offered me The Daily Telegraph for $4.95 a week. You'd be joking, I said. How about the Oz? Done!

It's not the perfect arrangement. The Australian has an excellent website, and I was happy to read it there. I'd rather read The Sydney Morning Herald in print. Although it has dumbed down its news website, the print newspaper remains readable and, on controversial issues, even-handed.

The Australian is good but should try to do better if it is to dominate as Australia's national newspaper. Too often, its editors' ideological positions show in its news coverage.

I'll return to this topic soon. In the meantime, you may choose to read Justine Ferrari's report, the editorial which fired me up, and the Oz readers' letters on Monday, March 3.