The Role of Linguistics in the Elementary School Curriculum.

TLDR: The linguist's concern with language is quite different from the educator s concern with education, and there is little reason to suppose that what linguistics does not do for its practitioners it will do for elementary school children.

Abstract: The answer depends on what one conceives the study of grammar to be. If one conceives of the study of grammar in the same terms as the theoretical linguist, then surely grammar has no more place in the elementary school curriculum than does the study of quantum mechanics or high temperature physics. Linguistics is concerned with developing a theory to formally characterize the knowledge which a speaker of a natural language possesses. The questions which he asks are questions about formal properties of grammars based upon the facts of a natural language.2 A study of such facts and correspondences can tell him a great deal about the abstract principles according to which natural languages appear to be constructed. One thing which this inquiry will not tell the linguist, however, is how to read better, or write better, or speak better, or listen better. There is little reason to suppose, then, that what linguistics does not do for its practitioners it will do for elementary school children. This is not to say that the subject matter of linguistics is irrelevant to elementary school teaching. It does say, however, that the linguist's concern with language is quite different from the educator s concern with