Whose Job Is It To Teach English?

       I have been fortunate enough to have been working for the CCNY Writing Center for the last four semesters. The reason why this experience is so felicitous for me is because, as a tutor I feel as though I am a hybrid between a student and a professor. From the student perspective, I empathize with having to work assiduously to meet deadlines, research topics from hours to weeks, stay up all night writing papers, and work tenaciously to satisfy all of the professors expectations (if not exceed them). On the other side of the spectrum, I can relate to the professors because it is my job to look at the students assignments and decide what I have enough time to teach them in fifty minutes. Time is always of essence in those ephemeral sessions, this is why my regular students must make numerous appointments throughout the week, so that they can correct their papers with my help, and receive instruction on how to express themselves proficiently by using the grammatical rules of the English language.
       When I talk to my associates who are adjunct professors, some of them tell me how hard it is to teach grammar within a short one hour interval, therefore if the students want to learn grammar they must go to the writing center to get help. Other professors tell me that native speakers of English should have been taught grammar in grade school and it is not their job to teach it, so they sentence the students to the writing center and demand a receipt as evidence of their attendance. Simultaneously, when I went to visit my old high school teachers, they explained that grammar should be taught in elementary. Although I have not had the opportunity to visit any elementary schools, this inane cycle of irresponsibility makes it clearly indicative that the elementary schools will accuse someone else for school children NOT learning grammar (perhaps Sesame Street).
       There is a psychological term called the Diffusion of Responsibility, which can be described in a succinct example such as this one; a group of individuals witnessing an accident and each person expecting another person to help the victim. Instead of standing up and doing what is right to allay the situation everyone feels as if he or she is not responsible and points the finger to someone else to save the day. When I see a student who is taking 200 or 300 level English classes, but can barley write a comprehensible sentence, I feel very melancholic for the student that the public school system has failed him. All I can do is try my best. When I start teaching, perhaps I will try to sneak mini grammar tips into my lesson planning. Most importantly when professors complain about how poor their students are in writing, those words must enter my ears as a pungent cacophony that becomes scrambled in my brain before it processes. I should not listen to such negativity because learning should be fun and if my students are not learning, I must work harder or get some help.