Linguistics and Discovery Teaching

Abstract

IN THE LAST FEW YEARS high school curricula throughout North America have undergone important revisions to emerge as the math, the social studies, and the sciences. We are just beginning, however, to feel the impact of a major revolution which is basic to every subject, new or old. Perhaps there is still time to assess its significance. I hope it isn't too late. In some progressive schools, the revolution called linguistics is already firmly established, but many educators have failed either to discern its real value or to exploit its potential. Curriculum planners, for example, identify linguistics primarily with new theories of grammar, ignoring the research done in many other areas of language study; having substituted structural or transformational grammar for traditional grammar, they assume that they have done their duty. To this shortsighted view many classroom teachers have responded in kind, changing their facts but keeping their approach. The teacher who once told students that