"Your Great"

Tonight (Wednesday), I attended a University of Memphis NIT basketball game. The previous Saturday, we played Louisville for our Conference Tournament championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Our year, until the Conference tournament, had been inconsistent at best, but we managed, quite unexpectedly, to reach the finals and played a terrific game against Louisville. The last play of the game actually took place at the free throw line when our freshman point guard, Darrius Washington, had a chance to win the game with three free throws or force overtime by making two. He made the first, but painfully (for him more than anyone else) missed the last two. We lost the game and, in due course, received an NIT bid rather than going to the NCAA "dance." Hence our game tonight, which we won by 35 points. Darrius Washington played very well, receiving a standing ovation from the hometown crowd before the game started.
Sometime during the game, the on-court cameras panned the crowd, looking as usual for signs or pretty faces to put on the Jumbo-Tron scoreboard. Part of the modern reality of attending a game: nothing problematic with it as far as I am concerned. There remain, however, some realities that bother me quite a bit.
As the second half progressed, one camera came across a hand-held sign that said "D. Washington--Your Great." Our young point guard has already established himself as a very good player with the potential to be one of our school's historically best players. That's not the problem nor is it my issue. Upon reading that sign, I did roll my eyes with frustration and wanted to say "what else is new?" The word "your," as used on the sign, is a possessive pronoun, employed in cases such as "your book," "your car," and "your basketball." In other words, the person holding the sign (and its maker) used a pronoun in place of the verb "You are," here contracted to "You're great." The older I get, the more unwilling I am to allow misuses of words or to endure horribly incorrect grammar. Children, of course, are an exception, but if we as Americans really believe in education, it seems fair to ask that if their parents or guardians are not willing to instill reasonably decent English (I always get confused about the uses of "to lie" and "to lay," so I by no means claim perfection) in their children, then the schools must do so. Unfortunately, in seemingly far too many places, paid school teachers and their administrators mangle subjects and verbs, confuse the nominative and objective cases ("between you and I" among other such jewels) and would think nothing of "Your great," even if they recognized its incorrect useage.
I speak of one town where I served pastorally in particular. To provide truth in packaging, my anitpathy toward these people extends far beyond the manner in which many of them butcher our God-given language. The misuse and wholesale destruction of basic grammar, however, on the part of school teachers and principals provides a picture of the overall problem as I see it. If children hear verbal pronunciations such as "He already done it," or "They is running late" from those who receive salaries from state tax money to teach them, something remains dreadfully wrong. The end result becomes a university whose students don't know the difference between a contracted verb and a pronoun. I react, but despair about what to do. My students in Carbondale, however, know that I will correct them if I recognize improper grammar. At least in part, I get paid to do so.