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What education and discussions about education lack is attention toe certain basics
that are frequently missing. Something in the nature of a
CHARTER OF EDUCATION is needed.
It might include the following:

Learning is work, not play; like all work, it can be enjoyable if one is curious about the subject and if one gets some kind of satisfaction or other reward from doing the work. The first task of an educator is to stir up curiosity over a subject. Not all teachers have the ability to do this. Of course, some students are curious from the get-go.

DIALECTIC (the basis of ancient education) is basic for being educated; it involves learning how to argue without falling into fallacies, the most common fallacy being the confusion of a premise or assumption with a fact or a truth.

The idea that there are appropriate TIMES for most subjects other than maths or science: Since the language window closes by the end of the first year of puberty, teaching modern languages later is as pointless as is the way languages are chosen. Similarly, teaching history and geography before the social window opens (by the end of the first year of puberty) is doomed. Teaching history strays if it doesn't not lead to an understanding of how our culture has come to be what it is─why we think the way we do, why our culture-specific aspirations─e.g. our notions of conformity and individuality (freedom)─are what they are . . . and yes, the effects of religion on our ideas of the material and spiritual worlds, on acceptable behavior, etc.

Teaching in terms of LISTS of items (e.g. dates in history) rather than in terms of a SYSTEM in which the causal and other relations or inter- connections among the items deal with is clarified and understood as much as possible. Connecting the dots is not only the proper way to understand the items we learn; it helps us remember them.

Is EDUCATION just learning information−facts, opinions, et al.? Isn't EDUCATION

--learning how to analyse subject-matter: This means seeing the RELATIONSHIPS among the various items and among their sub-items; the most practical way to do this is to present the matter graphically in tabular forms, where relations in both dimensions (up and down; left and right) and subcategorizations are obvious. Some people seem to be unable to "connect the dots"; perhaps teaching them to make a table of properly relating A, B, C, etc. with a, b, c, etc.--and later adding a', b', c'--might help.

--learning how to argue: (CLICK HERE for an essay titled "Schools should teach how to argue logically−not just how to arghue.) To think rationally and objectively—i.e. without the prejudices that blind an ideologue—includes being able to distinguish a PREMISE (an assumption that is neither true nor false) or a SLOGAN from a truth-vulner-able (i.e. potentially falsifiable) STATEMENT

FACILITIES FOR SUBJECTS THAT CAN BE STUDIED ON THIS ISLAND (THE SOUTHERNMOST OF THE HAWAI'IAN ISLANDS) INCLUDE ASTRONOMY (WE HAVE OBSERVATORIES OF VARIOUS NATIONS ATOP OF MAUNA KEA), VULCANOLOGY (WE HAVE THE WORLD'S MOST ACTIVE VOLCANO), OCEANOGRAPHY, TROPICAL AGRICULTURE, AND OF COURSE THE CULTURE OF THE HAWAI'IAN PEOPLE. A NEW, LAVISHLY FUNDED CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES (CONNECTED WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT HILO) IS IN THE WORKS. HILO IS THE CLOSEST AIRPORT TO MOANI LEHUA GARDENS, WHERE THE PROPRIETOR LIVES IN A JUNGLE SETTING; SEE PICTURES LINKED TO HERE.

What is the main problem that those who plan language curriculums
have with the grammar of English or a foreign language?

They may FAIL TO UNDERSTAND HOW TIGHT A LANGUAGE SYSTEM IS IN THE HUMAN BRAIN; if a language-user deviates from a given language system, one is not so much erring as utilizing some other system!

The worst part of the curriculum mess is not mathematics, the one that gets a lot of attention and indeed improvement. Awful as history-teaching sometimes is, there is something worse, viz. something on the level of the

--foreign language curriculum. Planners appear not even to know that teaching a spoken foreign language after the first year of puberty (which is earlier for girls than boys) is a waste of time . . . or that if two or three native languages are learned by that age, one can go through life learning new languages more or less as easily as a child--although the writing system will not be any easier. (The choice of languages seems to be made on the basis of available teachers rather than any logicorational priniple!) An ad that I have just seen in a Protestant magazine for a teacher of Latin at a private academy goes a long way to show how planners can succeed in tossing their thinking on the subject down the tube in an apparent effort to be as irrational as the situation allows. You would think that one would realize in that sort of academy would opt for the commonsense approach of offering (in the absence of a spoken language) New Testament Greek, no more difficult than Latin. Those who wished to be cultivated (presumably those attending a private academy) might wish to proceed to Classical Greek--if they could obviate the (at least once typical) silliness of beginning the reading of Greek by trying to plow through Homer!!!! Classical Greek is less help for the New Testament than some might guess. A student at the private academy in a certain Southern State obliquely referred to in these remarks has perhaps one chance in a hundred thousand of using Latin later or in profiting from its learning in some other manner.

Every educated reader should learn the principles of pronouncing Latin expressions in English--per diem (see below), per se (like "purr see"), a fortiori (discussed below), plural endings such as -i (pronounced as eye stimuli), -ae (pronounced as "ee"; see below why algae is pronounced as aljee), as well as other information (data is a plural), including the following:

---other instances of ae and oe (like ee, but changed to the lighter -e- according to the principles that change "e" in proceed to "e" in procession--i.e. before two consonants in the underlying representation or before two unstressed syllables (other than unstressed //i// plus a vowel). Notice how stressed "i" becomes "eye" before a vowel in the English pronunciation of per diem and sine die. Theoret- ically, sine should have the "i" of kick, but the open syllable (in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, but hardly in English) often changed stressed "i" to the sound of "eye"; a contrary regular change of "i" is discernable in comparing ignition with ignite. Cf. the antepenult "i" in memorabilia, where the "i" in -bil- is like that in billy. How these got from Late Latin into Anglo-Saxon and from there into Middle English can be easily explained, although the vowel-shift that changed all of that is a good deal more difficult to present accurately. Classical Latin lost its vowel length in Late Latin, ae became one kind long-e, and oe became another kind of long-e. You can take all kinds of Latin courses in school and not know that!

---g before i, e, ae/æ, oe/, y like "j" (cf. giroscope)

---t occurring before unstressed "i" plus a vowel (cf. a fortiori, pronounced as ay forshiori) lis ike "sh" (cf. ignition)

That would be a good start, one that a fifth-grader could pick up fairly quickly if the information is presented in an academically profitable manner. It is assumed that students know which letters represent vowels and which represent consonants.

Another point is that Greek "y" should NOT be changed to "u" (cf. dynamic, psychic, hybris [hýbris is underlying //hybrids//, where //s// is the nominative singular ending; the sounds change to hýbrits to hýbriss to hýbris]); writing "u" is about as pseudo-educated as one can pose as. One can postpone the principles of diëresis and hyphenation to a higher grade level.

Often neglected is the principle of teaching irregularities before regular form classes; the other (and usual) order makes irregularities and excep-tions needless hard to remember. It is not defensible when the worth of the recommended order has been demonstrated. Besides, the irregular forms are the most frequent (infrequent forms cannot sustain irregulari- ties); compare the forms for "be" in English or any West European languages that you may know!!!

Readers are recommended to HERE, HERE and to other pages on the /AL/L part of
this website, many of which receive frequent additions over time

to which should be added (as Stew Beckley has pointed out, in addition to remarks cited above)--how to understand a business

−e.g. the costs, etc. of running a lemonade stand) and, I would add, how to examine or get dvice from a legal aide organization about a contract, especially one involving a lot of money and covering several years.

Concerning the etiquette of academic titles: A professor should be called "Prof." or (at the best universities in America and Europe, other than Britain) "Mr." Since "Prof." normally includes "Dr." (whereas many holders of doctoral degrees are not professors), "Dr." is incorrect; it is in fact sort of demoting whe used to address a professor. While, there are some beginning professors who may still be working on their doctoral degrees, it is wrong to call them "Dr." "Prof." or "Mr." are always right!

The Institut that I belong to was on the 13th floor of the "high-house" at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, a few blocks from the center of what was once West Berlin

The brilliant (except me) Berlin team (all Dr. titles
except one later became Prof.) were:

Dr. Jerrold Edmonson (later dept. head at UTArlington)
Dr. Thomas Perry (later dept. head & dean Simon Frasier)
Karl Maroldt, Dr. Dan Maxwell
Dr. Frederick Jones (Dept. head / dean universities in Raleigh, NC)
Dr. Eva & the late Dr. Willi Mayerthaler (Inst. head at
Klagenfurt, Austria, inventor of reversal theory) me
Dr. Peter Mühlhäusler (Dept. / Inst. head, Adelaide, Australia)

In the foregoing, you see, in the upper row, a helper, me,
Peter Mühlhäusler, Karl Marold, Jerry Edmondson, and a helper;
in the second row, three helpers, Fr. Brummenbaum (my secretary), and Claudia (i.e. teacher whose family name I cannot at the moment recall) [Martyn Phillips, a Brit, is missing from both pictures; an Akademischer Rat, he was seldom around and not seldom held classes in cafes]

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