From Ælfric to John of Cornwall: Evidence for Vernacular Grammar Teaching in Pre- and Post-Conquest England

The discipline called English grammar, as taught to schoolchildren, is widely, if vaguely, said to be ineffective - for various reasons. The best reason, and the only one relevant here, is that it is not the right kind of grammar. [...] It seems obvious that English grammar at the elementary level (and that is where the urgent pressures lie) is just the application to English of Latin grammar.