Good Grammar

“I’m going to think about that, yes — writing a book,”
- President George W. Bush pondering the possibility of writing a book after he leaves office

Grammar, having been battered incoherent by politicians and bloggers, is stubbornly standing between middle school students and their desire to attend New York’s most elite public high schools.

I am coaching my daughter for the specialized high school admissions test. The first hurdle is the scrambled paragraph. The idea is to read the first sentence of a paragraph, and then figure out the correct order of the subsequent sentences. This exercise will demonstrate your ability to grasp the main idea and to understand the most logical way to support the main idea.

Try writing down the correct order of this sample test paragraph:

The human male, hearing for the first time about the heartrending love-life of the male praying mantis, would wonder that the species continues.
Q. The anxiety comes from an instinctual awareness that he is likely to quite literally lose his head during mating; this dread seems to slow the process for up to several hours.
R. In response, the female who is locked beneath him turns her head and, if she can manage to, bites his head off.
S. Though now dead, he remains locked in mating position, and the course of the anxiety is ended.
T. The release of his sperm speeds up after his demise, assuring a large supply of future praying mantis (who, in the manner of insects, have no further use for the progenitor).
U. But in the insect world, romance is not an issue – the drive to reproduce is – so the male praying mantis mounts the much larger female despite his anxiety.

You don’t get partial credit, so make sure you’ve got the right order. Otherwise, you are likely not eligible to attend Stuyvesant High School.

I have to wonder about the wisdom of discussing the lethal sex habits of the male praying mantis on the entrance exam. I suspect that admissions officers put this question on the test to see which kids will get distracted by the mental image of an insect ripping the head off of her sexual partner. Only applicants that score among the top 3- 5% of aspiring New York brainiacs get admitted; they apparently are nonplussed when watching Animal Kingdom.

Here’s the answer key:
UQRST

Excellent writing skills have been on the decline among graduates over the years. Voters have rarely valued the proper use of the English language when choosing U.S. Presidents. After Warren Harding died, E.E. Cummings said, “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.”

The Bush era of freewheeling grammar is nearing its end, though if Palin is elected she may continue his practice of throwing the administrations full support behind the value of scrambled paragraphs. Just in case traditional grammar does rise again, however, those who have reveled in a world where articulate speech was so very passé may be wise to join the middle schoolers for test prep.