Craig,

Bruner states that "any subject can be taught effectively in some 
intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development," 
and talks about a "spiral curriculum:" 

"A curriculum as it develops should revisit this basic ideas 
repeatedly, building upon them until the student has grasped the full 
formal apparatus that goes with them."

As a linguist I know, of course, that grammar (morphology and syntax)
is part of linguistics together with phonetics and phonology, 
semantics, pracgmatics, discourse,etc., but I believe that students 
should be taught what they need to know at their stage of 
development,while the means employed for their instruction should be 
those which prove effective in a learning process which considers 
their background knowledge and provides them with exactly that kind 
of information which builds on what they know. 


Eduard 


On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Craig Hancock wrote...

>Ed,
>   Are you trying to say that Jespersen is not a linguist? That 
syntax an=
>d
>linguistics are exclusive fields?
>   We have had many talks on list about the failure of linguists to
>address the public needs.  Dick Hudson's "English Patient" article
>traces it pretty well on that side of the ocean. Martha and I co-
wrote
>an article that tries to describe the context over here. There are
>linguists, though, and I would include Jespersen, interested in a 
view
>of language that nonscholars can use in their everyday lives. 
Linguists
>have had a hands-on role in the national curriculum in England and in
>the genre focused approaches in Australia. It seems silly to discount
>linguists from the discussion.
>   To extend Cornelia's comparison, I hope biologists are deeply 
involved
>in the textbooks my children read. The books are, of course, trying 
to
>introduce people to the field, not carry on the cutting edge
>discussions of the day. Even linguists are capable of that 
distinction.
>
>Craig

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/