Abstract
We report here on our efforts to incorporate linguistics into the high school curriculum in a large midwestern metropolitan area through a university-based initiative — Linguistics in High School (LxHS) — spearheaded by the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. We offer a brief history of the project, and explain our strategy of targeting non-public schools and the practical nature of the reasoning behind this decision. We chronicle the ups and downs of our efforts, ultimately reporting on our success with implementing a linguistics course and a linguistics club at a small local STEM-oriented high school. This partnership between the school and the Linguistics Department has allowed, among other things, for on-site visits by the students to phonetics and sociolinguistics labs. By presenting our challenges, strategies, failures, and successes, we hope that others may be encouraged to evaluate how they can make a difference in their locale and with the resources they have.
Highlights
It is universally agreed in the linguistics community that knowledge of linguistics among the general American public is negligible, and this includes the average American high school student
While students are exposed to English grammar and to foreign languages, the discoveries of language scientists and especially the methods of linguistic analysis are generally absent from the typical high school curriculum
We chronicle the ups and downs of our efforts, but we turn to our success at a small local alternative high school, where we are currently offering an elective course in linguistics
Summary
It is universally agreed in the linguistics community that knowledge of linguistics among the general American public is negligible, and this includes the average American high school student. By way of addressing such concerns and encouraging action on the part of LSA members and other interested parties, we detail here our efforts to incorporate linguistics into the high school curriculum in Columbus, Ohio through the Ohio State University Linguistics in High School (OSU LxHS) initiative.
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