me and John

[P. Reich]

 In a small town several hours north of Toronto the school teachers are
 accepting sentences such as:

 Me and John are going to the store.
 Him and me are going to the store.

 The teachers claim that the nominative rule in the case of coordination
 constructions is old fashioned and obsolete.
 This makes me cringe when taught as standard English in the schools, yet
 the English grammars I have in my office are strangely silent on the topic
 of coordination in subjects with personal pronouns.

 As far as I can find, for example Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik say
 nothing, nor does Wardhaugh's "Understanding English Grammar."

 Does anyone have a textbook published in the last few years that comments
 on this?

 Peter A. Reich
 University of Toronto