As a jazz musician once said, you’ve gotta know the rules to break them.

You need to learn the fundamentals first before you break them.

It's almost like English teachers are supposed to teach traditional writing norms. You know, like, as their jobs or something ...

Given Lemmy's demographic we can put it like this:

If you invent an entire programming language from first principles, you're probably pretty smart.

If you're in a a class at uni learning C++ and you submit code written in your new language, then you're going to fail

English prof up on a soapbox here.

Comments like "you have to learn the rules before you break them" are kind of missing the mark. For the most part, those of us who teach English/composition/literary criticism/etc aren't particularly concerned with "rules" (with the exception maybe of English as a second or foreign language, where conventions/rules are used to scaffold learning rather than as universal truths). English teachers are familiar with linguistics and the fluid, messy nature of language and all the fun things we can do with it. The "grammar Nazis" you encounter online are VERY unlikely to be English teachers (though they likely were our most insufferable students), who are often the first to point out that language is constantly changing and that what's considered "correct" depends heavily on ... everything, really.


But we're talking here, ostensibly, about a "class." And if we're talking about a class, we're talking about a syllabus. Specific outcomes on which a course is responsible for improving and checking proficiency. Your English class isn't necessarily about "learning English," especially if English is your first language. It's about getting you to become proficient at doing a specific selection of specific things with your language. Very often these things aren't even about rules or grammar, but that doesn't mean the expectations aren't strict- and what most people read as strictness is usually just specificity.


It's damn near impossible to know whether a curriculum, teacher, method, or activity is successful without an outcome to measure. Lack of specificity makes measurement difficult and potentially unfair. If you're told to "write a persuasive essay," what exactly does that mean? What separates an A from a C? How does the teacher justify that distinction, and how does the student know what they need to improve? Without very specific target structures or a "can do" inventory, assessment becomes messier and we leave students guessing about what an given teacher might want from them, which isn’t especially fair (or useful, from a pedagogical POV).


A teacher can understand perfectly well that language is flexible, that different contexts call for different kinds of language, and that conventions change over time, while still expecting students to demonstrate a particular skill according to given criteria. There isn’t one correct way to use English, but a class DOES needs to establish what it's trying to do, what students are expected to be able to do, and how anyone can tell whether they've been successful. That's not necessarily prescriptivism, it's just how a curriculum works.

A young man asked Mozart how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You are too young to write a symphony.” The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years of age.” Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn't ask how to do it.”

TLDR;; if you're a student then you're a student, if you disagree, don't ask, just do it and you will be recognized if your aim is true.

Get your homework published and fight your teacher.

I think you kinda have to learn the rules and prove you know them before you go wild breaking them.

That's not always the case. Sometimes a writer is like Jimi Hendrix where there's no need for elaborate theory backing them because they can just straight up fucking play. But it's usually the case, and the overwhelming majority of teachers are teaching extremely usual people.

I remember in my one college-level creative writing class I had to read other people's work and it read like an eight year old wrote it.

You have to know the rules, why they exist, and what breaking them implies.

If you are in a class designed to teach the rules, it doesn't even matter if you already did all 3 steps. You'll fail the class because the class is testing if you CAN follow the rules.

You need to know the rules to know how to break them with intention.

Yeah, you’re not good enough at it to do that.

If your essay has a line of reasoning that requires more than a room temperature IQ to follow, you get a C. If a text analyzed by the class requires a whole unit, lectures, and discussions to get a line of reasoning, it is genius.

To break the rules you gotta first learn the rules.

It's the same with music theory and songwriting. You have to know the rules first so you can break them properly.

almost every english teacher in a university/CC, has thier own english writing pet peeve, it annoys the hell out of the students, when there is nothing standardized. One could want you to have a flair in writing fiction thrillers,,,etc and another wants a "literary circle"

Novels are art. English teachers are not teaching you how to write as an art form. This is because our schools are designed to make good little worker bees. They are teaching you language so that you can then go on to learn technical writing. Now, I do think they should split the two apart, and let kids experiment and have fun with writing. That does not mean that they are wrong. Technical writing requires precision and a strict adherance to rules. It is the same concept as it being entirely fine to have a bit of fun when painting a mural, but not when you've been hired to paint someones house.