Say It Ain't So!

A new word has come into my home. "Ain't." Jonah picked it up at school, and now his little brother Mills is saying it too.

Growing up, I couldn't tell my parents about how "me and Melissa went to the store," without being interrupted with barely a syllable out - "Melissa and I went to the store," my mom or dad spoke over me grandly. Or else they'd ridicule: "Would you say, 'Me went to the store?'" Sometimes I would give up and refuse to tell the story. It drove me nuts, like they were more interested in correcting me than in hearing what I had to say.

Now I teach legal writing to law students, some of whom have never heard of subject-verb agreement. I can get a little nit-picky at times, I admit. But I know my students will lose the respect of some future clients (say, my parents) if their writing is incorrect.

I try not to be all over my own kids on grammar and usage. I mean, Jonah's only six, and Mills isn't yet four. I don't want to stifle them so that they don't talk to me anymore. Given my upbringing and occupation though, I can't always help myself. Still, it can be counterproductive. For example, now that Jonah knows I don't like "ain't," he uses it at every possible opportunity.

Lately, I've gotten used to my kids picking up language habits from their classmates in their racially and socio-economically diverse schools. A little Ebonics comes with the package, to be blunt about it. Parents whisper about this, but it's a pretty uncomfortable subject, fraught with race and class.

So I gently correct when Jonah pronounces "dead" as "deeyid" or when Mills tells me what another friend "brung" to school that day. It's a delicate balance - correcting their speech without judging their peers or the cultures they come from. I listened to Jonah exclaim "DANG!!!" for a couple straight days before I suggested that he might try to restrain himself.

The other day, when Jonah came home saying "ain't" I assumed it was more of the same. Wrong.

His teacher read a book to the class that day, entitled, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!" So in kindergarten, where the children learn new words each day from their teachers, one of those words apparently would be "ain't."

I have a problem with this.

I wonder if there is a problem with me having a problem with this.

Jonah has a wonderful teacher. This year, he learned to read, to add and subtract, and much more. His teacher is so wonderful that I haven't been able to bring myself to mention my displeasure with the whole "ain't" thing. (Plus, I feel like the hyper grammar parent.)

On the sly, I looked up the offending book on Amazon. Supposedly, it is some award-winning beloved delight. Only a couple of grammar grouches like myself gave it bad reviews.

It's not like these are fully literate young minds reading Mark Twain. They don't know what is proper English and what is not. Their teacher is the wise guru at the top of the hill. If she says "ain't," it must be ok. But it isn't.

I remember a day in elementary school when the teacher taught us that the word was "ask" not "ax" and other similar lessons. Some students honestly didn't know until that moment. It wasn't their fault - they'd just never been taught the difference between colloquial speech and formally correct English.

I would think that this kind of teaching would still be a priority today.
Maybe it is.

Maybe it ain't.