Ignorance? (was: Oh, That Rush! He's Such A *Kidder!*)

[msbeadsley]

<snip>
> I'm still reeling from the realization that grammar and syntax and 
> other tools for effective speech and writing had been left untaught 
> for nearly thirty years.  As a childless couple, we never really 
> had much interest in what the schools were doing, and I had had no 
> clue about this distressing direction in 'education' until I caught 
> a newspaper article several weeks ago about how a teacher had 
> started teaching grammar, of all things.  I wondered why this 
> was 'news', and read to my growing horror about what the vast 
> majority of our schools had been doing to a whole generation of us!

I suspect the writer of that article of some grandstanding. While we 
are also a childless couple, many of our friends have children. As 
many of those friends are either published or aspiring writers as 
well as "word nerds" extraordinaire, I expect we would have heard 
about any widespread retirement of English grammar in U.S. schools. 
I'm concerned enough to do some research, however. Thanks for the 
heads-up.

> And while being untaught is not the same as being ignorant (the 
> word does mean choosing to ignore things, not simply not knowing 
> them) 
<snip>

I believe the term you're looking for is "willfully ignorant."  
No "choosing" is implied by the word "ignorant," at least according 
to our copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sandy, nitpicking rather assiduously herself