All Is Not Good

I would like to ask you all about something I've been wondering over lately.

I sometimes wonder whether I am too uptight with my children about using proper English. My parents were never very strict with me about it when I was young but they both were highly educated and always spoke properly, especially around the dinner table.

My children sometimes say things like "I did really good," or "I don't want to do nothing." I always make sure to correct them politely when they do this. "You did really well?" I ask. You don't want to do anything?" I correct.

In general good is an adjective and well is an adverb so it makes no sense to say "did good", but it is also not quite so simple. See Grammar Girl's excellent post on the subject for more details. Double negatives are much simpler of course, because if you DON'T want to do NOTHING, then logically you WANT to do SOMETHING.

There is nothing wrong with speaking incorrectly on purpose, to be cool, hip, or for humor, but I believe that you ought to know how to speak (and therefore write) correctly first.

I mean I can speak regional slang with the best of them:

In Boston my skills would be wicked pissah, boyo.
In New York they would be game tight, son.
In Los Angeles they would be the shizzle, dog.

Anyway that sure was silly but my point is that to truly understand slang and colloquialisms I believe you must truly appreciate proper English. I'm by no means an expert grammarian, just ask my critique group, but I do have a decent vocabulary and I believe in knowing the meaning of words, both the denotation and the common connotations before you put them to use. I hope to instill a similar love of language in my daughters.

The reason this came up is that last night my fourth grader was talking about her Horizons classes. Here in Georgia that is the accelerated track for reading and writing in elementary school. For some reason the terms B.C. and A.D. came up. She got Before Christ right but when she said that A.D. meant After Death I was surprised. When I asked her where she heard that and she said her Horizons teacher, I got a little upset.

A brief breakdown: A.D. stands for Anno Domini or sometimes Anno Domine which is a Medievil Latin phrase that roughly translated means In the Year of Our Lord. It is sometimes specified more fully as Anno Domini Nostri Iesu (Jesu) Christi (In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ). Basically these two terms are used in the Gregorian and Julian Calendars to refer to the era before Christ's birth, and the era after. There is no year zero; 1 A.D. directly follows 1 B.C. It would make no sense for A.D. to stand for After Death (or after his death, or whatever) because then there would be no calendar reference for the 33 years he was alive.

Needless to say I was a little upset that her accelerated teacher didn't know this. This kind of thing seems to be pretty common in public education here in Georgia. Then I calmed down, reminded myself that I am sometimes an uptight and total nerd about stuff, and that this teacher was probably not a history or a latin major, and I calmly explained the correct usage to my daughter, throwing in a little B.C.E. (Before Common Era) for good measure.

She wasn't very interested, but she did listen politely. Hopefully she'll remember it.

Here endeth the lesson.

So what do you all think? Is it important to teach our children proper English? If so how high of a priority should it be? What do you do when you hear of a teacher telling your child something that you know is incorrect?

P.S. Sorry I made it to almost no one's blog yesterday. We have hired new people again and I spent most of the day training one of them. I will probably make it to very few blogs again today. I'm going to need a BA meeting very soon. Where's my sponsor?!? Beth?!?