Why did teachers of English in American secondary schools stop
teaching sentence diagramming and why did teachers of humanities
subjects stop docking students for poorly written papers?

When I was in high school (1954-57), we were taught to diagram
sentences, a process that not only gave us a better grasp of their
construction, but also an appreciation for rigor (not to be confused
with rigidity) in English usage and syntax. Our history teachers
deducted points for bad spelling, punctuation, and sentence
construction, which taught us that good writing was important in
courses other than English. When I went on to college, the same was
true.

Nowadays few young people can craft a decent sentence, and I attribute
that result to the foregoing reasons. Why did we let this happen?

I haven't a clue about why this has happened, except that it may be
associated with other laxities in the rearing of young people. Simple
etiquette and table manners used to be expected of children. The
social graces seem to have gone by the wayside, along with the quaint
notion of respecting one's elders.

I find a small amount of comfort in the knowledge that middle-aged
folks have been grumbling "what's the matter with kids today?" for
many millennia, and the world hasn't ended yet.

My parents' generation was wrong when they foretold the downfall of
civilization over the earthshaking issues of Elvis's gyrations and the
Beatles' hairstyles.

This time, though, we are right. A handbasket to Hades is leaving on
the quarter-hour. ;-)

Pink,

Amen (for lack of a better word). 

You want my take on why this is so? You don't? Darn. I'll give it to you anyway.

I don't think that today's secondary school teachers are academically
equipped to recognize bad writing, much less to correct it. And I
don't fault the teachers colleges for that, but rather the high
schools from which those teacher candidates graduated. How can we
expect students to be taught both the rudiments and importance of good
writing, if their teachers don't have a clue either?

<mutter, mutter>

Incidentally, when (at the age of eleven) I first encountered sentence
diagramming, I was totally enchanted by it. Along with algebra (which
I discovered at around the same time,) sentence diagramming became an
obsession. I diagrammed sentences for fun. My mind was filled with
diagrams; I even dreamed about diagramming sentences. Imagine my
dismay when I learned that there was no adult occupation of "Sentence
Diagrammer," and I wasn't going to be able to do this for a living.

Pink, I CAN imagine that, and my heart goes out to that little girl
who wanted nothing more than to continue diagramming for the rest of
her life.

Well, at least I finally found a job where nice people will pay me for
knowing stuff. Until the day when I appear on "Senior Jeopardy!" and
win a boodle by bamboozling the other geezers, Google Answers is my
dream job.

Pink, are you familiar with this website?

http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/diagrams.htm