See Mrs. Watkins, I Was Right

I remember freshman year having a discussion with Mrs Watkins about diagramming sentences. My stance was basically it didn't make sense and I didn't see the point. Her stance was it helps you learn the different parts of a sentence, and besides, it was the curriculum and I had to learn it. My wife remembers doing it in Pennsylvania too.

Well, I was right. They don't diagram sentences anymore, at least not in Indiana. When I described it to my two teens they had no idea what I was talking about. Now, they did get to word tenses in the first grade and I thought that was a bit fast, but so far no diagramming.

So I guess they will have to find some other way to tell their verbs from their adverbs and keeping their participles from dangling.