Shot in the Dark

All Those Thems And Theys

Another day, another DFL policy to turn black and white into a rainbow of grays:

(Center of the American Experiment) — Starting this fall for the 2025-26 school year, Minnesota’s public schools will be required to teach third graders how to use non-binary gender pronouns in writing sentences.

The Minnesota Department of Education’s new K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) standards and benchmarks were adopted in 2023 and are scheduled for full implementation at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. Reviewed and revised on a 10-year cycle, Minnesota’s ELA standards and benchmarks are organized into three strands: 1) reading, 2) writing, and 3) listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas.

Under the writing strand, a third-grade benchmark requires students to “use nouns (collective and irregular plural), verbs, frequently used adjectives and adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns (including reflexive pronouns and male, female and non-binary gender pronouns) [emphasis added] in simple and compound sentences authentically in writing.” (3.2.1.3)

 

If it’s a day ending in “Y”…

Know the part that annoys this English major?

There was a time – like, in the past decade – when referring to someone whose gender you didn’t know, or where the gender was immaterial to the discussion, as “they”.   In common usage, it was a perfectly acceptable third-person pronoun – a “Neutral” one, for those of us who speak gendered European languages like German, French or Spanish.  

Now it’s a poiltical and social statement – for both sides. 

It’s almost like they’re trying to make human communication impossible, or reduce language down to the bare minimum needed to express compliance.  Almost like the quacking of ducks…

Oh. 

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Mitch Berg

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3 responses to “All Those Thems And Theys”

  1. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Totally agree, when you change meaning of words, you change narrative, including the past. But this caught my eye: 1) reading, 2) writing, and 3) listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas. – no arithmetic and rudimentary science? STEM out, FEELINGStm are in?

  2. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    I’ve always kinda hated English teachers. I think it dates back to high school, but maybe it goes back further.

    In earlier grades, my English teachers taught both literature and grammar. I’ve always thought that literature teachers over thought the imagery and meaning in a story and attributed more layers than the author intended. One of my favorite meme’s is something like;
    The wall was blue.
    The lit teacher has a whole list of all the symbolism the author meant to impart to the story.
    What the author meant is that the f***ing wall was f***ing blue. Period. End of sentence and no deeper meaning.
    So in that regard, I dislike literature teachers.

    In 9th grade, my English teacher, at costly, highly esteemed college prep Academy, taught us that in English, the male gendered pronouns are also used as gender neutral (it’s not just for Spanish, German, or French, etc.) Saying “he or she” is not proper English was the lesson, nor was, officially “they,” despite its increasing usage. He then created a sexist rule. Boys were required to use masculine pronouns when gender was unknown, but the girls could use either masculine or feminine pronouns when gender was unknown. They was a plural pronoun, and therefore not allowed to be used as the singular. “He or she” was also not allowed. Yeah, SPA really puts the “Liberal” in “Liberal Arts” education. This is another moment that cemented my dislike of English teachers (though my Shakespeare and Greek Mythology literature teacher was pretty cool).

    Now I fully understand that language drifts over time. New slang is adopted. Sometimes phrases get condensed into single words. As a linguistic concept, I can understand that argument against enforcing “proper” English or any language. I categorically reject that nonsense for one single reason. Law. Our laws are written down, and they can continue to be the law of the land for centuries. And what do we do about it? We argue about what the words meant, or even worse, use the changing definition of certain words to effectively rewrite the law. This is a terrible thing. And it’s why we should continue to insist that Literally only means literally, not figuratively, and it’s why we should teach pronunciation as well. Sorry, not sorry, I don’t like people excusing “axed” as just the racially appropriate pronunciation of “asked.” Axed is its own word, and it’s honestly racist to say that black person is incapable of pronouncing asked properly.

  3. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    Jpa, the quoted standards were for language arts. Different instructions for math.

    My personal rule for math is … don’t. Just say no.

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