People are always coming up and asking me why grammar is important. Well, mainly my students.

But it comes with the job. I’m a grammar teacher. It’s my job to get kids to say things correctly, while simultaneously reminding them that they shouldn’t talk in class.

“These are the rules. Don’t practice them now.”

This is why we’re falling behind countries like Japan in the subject of English Grammar.

And the thing is, every book I’ve ever read on the subject says you should learn grammar. Without exception. People who think grammar isn’t important are severely underrepresented in the book department.

But it definitely doesn’t help me that the kids have decided that certain expressions are proper English based on the fact that they’ve heard people—perhaps adults—use them.

For example, when my kids were in camp this year, a major war broke out between red and blue, whatever that means, because certain colors just cannot get along, and everyone’s hot and irritable. And one of the songs (every war has songs) included the phrase, “We’re going to win the blue team.” This bothered me, because “win the blue team” means that they’re going to receive the blue team as a prize. There’s no reason they couldn’t have written, “We’re going to beat the blue team.”

But I understand that people make mistakes. What bothers me is the permanence. They made up a catchy song and wrote it down and drilled it into these kids’ heads over and over—loudly—and in a few years, a lot of these kids will be in my class, and I’ll say, “Beat the other team,” and they’ll say, “No, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people say, ‘win.’”

And then what? I tell them it’s wrong? At best, the kids are going to say, “Well, who am I going to believe? The guy who spent two weeks trying to convince me that not only is there a difference between adjectives and adverbs, which there clearly is not, but that it’s going to matter for my life? Or the guy who took me swimming and taught me fun songs about how blue is number two and red is going to knock them dead?” (Which I’m also not convinced is proper English.)

And it’s not just one class of students who fight me on this. It’s not like your kids, where once you teach them something, they know it, barring constant reminders. (“I said no feet on the table!”) When you’re a teacher, no matter what you teach your class, the next year you get a brand new class and you’re back to square one.

Being a teacher is like being on the front lines on the field of education. And it’s like a battlefield in the old days, where basically, they had two crowds of people run at each other, and whoever had more soldiers left standing at the end was the winner, and they got freeze pops. Also, there were singing competitions. (“We’re the North, North, and we’re gonna set forth!”) And even if you were an amazing warrior who could kill the first 100 rows of soldiers, eventually you’d get tired, and Row 101 would come at you, all fresh from doing nothing but standing in traffic of people from their crowd trying to run into your crowd, and extra mad about it. So the soldiers on the front line never came back.

And that’s kind of how I feel. The kids ask, “Why do we have to learn grammar?” and I tell them. And then the next group of kids asks the next year, and I tell them. And eventually, after enough years of doing this, I’m like, “Why DO we have to learn grammar? Maybe they’re right.” Hundreds of kids are saying we don’t have to learn grammar, and I’m one person saying we do, and I already know grammar.

So now I’m doubting myself. Will the kids need grammar when they grow up? I think so. I need grammar. But then, I’m the wrong person to ask. I’m a grammar teacher. Of course I need grammar. (I’m also a writer.) Do people who aren’t writers need grammar? They don’t seem to. But that’s like walking into kindergarten and going, “Why do I need to learn to use scissors? I’m never going to be a barber.” Well, sometimes non-barbers need to cut straight. Someday you’ll be a parent, and you’ll have to cut box tops. For education.

But the thing is that even if my students win the argument against me, it doesn’t really matter, because this whole education thing is an agreement between their parents and the school’s business office, and parents choose a school specifically because of which subjects it teaches. So in other words, the parents want the kids to learn this. It doesn’t matter if the kids don’t. If the kids wanted to learn it, the parents would just teach it themselves.

But I do say that if the parents want their kids to learn proper grammar, they should stop misusing it in front of them. In fact, stop talking to your kids altogether if you think it’ll help. Otherwise, we’re never going to win them.

Over.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press, and Aish.com, among others. He also has four books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].

By Mordechai Schmutter