Don't worry, this is not a crazy English teacher rant about using correct punctuation. Quite the contrary, it's a near rant about the perception of absolutism in the rules. I could go on and on about the uselessness of many kinds of rules, but I'll limit myself to a few words about the dots, curves, lines and combinations of these we call punctuation. I hate it. I don't always do it right. I can't remember half the rules and generally allow the voice in my head to do the work. "Learn the rules so you can break them"--that's what I heard and absorbed as a teenager reading postmodern stuff like Kesey's Garage Sale , alongside modern works like ee cummings, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, etc. So, while not totally ignorant of the rules, I give myself liberty to ignore them or follow them as I choose, at least enough to make meaning. Of course, I do strive to teach the right stuff to the kids. And because it is a complex system, some of my more left-brained students take great delight in knowing the rules and love to catch me in an error. What a rambling intro--let me get to it.
Each Friday at lunch time a group of my students from last year gather in my classroom for discussion. It's student-led on a variety of topics, often spiritual in nature. The kids came to me to propose the idea after a lesson on religion in one of their classes. The group varies in number but we have quite a few Christian kids, one Islamic girl, and a handful of professed atheists. Mind you, these kids are turning seventeen this year, so they are exploring beliefs with interest. But I'm off-track again. Yesterday we looked at the MSNBC Week in Pictures. They insisted I send # 13 of fighting squirrels to another teacher, so I composed the e-mail with their help and attached a screen shot of the picture, feeling like I was committing a minor crime in front of them, but that's yet another post. Anyway, we must have spent seven minutes discussing the appropriateness of a colon before the series of their names. It was lighthearted and fun, and fueled by a smart boy's need to be right (when he was wrong). Now, I'm all for using the right punctuation, because it does create meaning, but I'm not keen on worrying or arguing over it. At least, not today. And when our conversation flowed from a first hand account of the celebration of Eid-ul-Adha, to fighting squirrels, to the rules on colons and commas, I marveled again at the lovely, random nature of learning, and the small tyranny of punctuation.
