The Decline of the Noun

This may sound silly, but today's blog is an exploration of the decline of the "Noun" in the English grammar lesson of the past eighty years. Call it a synopsis of some studies because only 3 books, actually used in English high school curriculum, will be referenced. Somewhere in the 'Symposium,' Plato refers to the the fact the golden age of education predated him; whenever that period was, the current status of the study of the "Noun" is an example of when it was not...

In the Gage Learning text, "Language Power", published 2002, there are 3 sections on nouns: the defining section, pages 39 and 40, singular and plural nouns, pages 41 and 42 and possessive nouns, page 43. According to the editor, there are 2 classes of nouns; there are differences between concrete and abstract nouns. Collective nouns are studied in the same section as abstract and concrete nouns and the physical changes between singular and plural nouns are examined in the final section. There are 112 exercises in total. There are a further 75 exercises on pro-nouns, antecedents and relative pronouns. Please note the defining section on the noun is absent a definition and the definition of a pronoun is reliant on the assumption the student knows what a noun is and how it functions. The Gage text is in current usage for the grade nine component of the high school curriculum.

"The English Workshop: a review course," Canadian edition, was published in 1981 and used in following years at a high school in Toronto; in particular, it was a grade nine text. Some of the book's material was drawn from earlier editions; the oldest publication occurred in 1955. The text is premised as a review; therefore, an assumption may be made that grammar was taught in elementary schools. The first lesson is on nouns and defines a noun as the following:

A noun is a word used to name a person, place, thing or idea.
A proper noun names a particular person, place, thing or idea.
A common noun does not name a particular person, place, thing or idea.
A proper noun begins with a capital letter.

There are no exercises on the usage of nouns except in relation to their sentence position or with adjective usage. However, there is a chapter on the correct use of pronouns and it is 15 pages long absent the cumulative review and additional vocabulary exercises.

The final text, "Ontario High School English Grammar," authorized by the Minister of Education for Ontario and published by the Canada Publishing Company, was published in 1925. It defines a noun as "a word, or a group of words, used in the sentence as the name of anything." The chapter is 15 pages long and there is a second chapter on pronouns. Common and proper nouns are differentiated; collectives, gender, and pluralization are studied. Nominative and predicate nominative are examined as are appositive nouns and the role of the noun as object and objective predicate or adverbial objective and the differences between direct and indirect objects; possessive, phrasal possessive and the double possessive are studied. There are exercises for every section and most sample sentences are drawn from poets, Victorian and Romantic, Shakespeare and the Greco-Roman classics.

The text with the shortest definition of a noun has the most rules to learn and exercises to practise that relate to each rule; ironically, the modern text has no definition and obscure rules but the most exercises. The role of the "Noun" has not actually changed in eighty years presumably. So, the question must be asked, what has happened to its teaching? Certainly, a golden age existed in 1925 in comparison to 2002. What has caused such a decline in expectations? (Or, maybe, this blog is being silly and these real text books are anomalies when compared to the other standard texts of the periods.)