Simply put, in the Basic School, building community is the first and most essential goal, with teachers and the principal and parents engaged in common cause on behalf of children. Language is, without question, central to all learning. Our sophisticated use of symbols distinguishes us from all other forms of life, the porpoise and the bumblebee notwithstanding, and connects us to each other. Consider the miracle of this very moment. I stand here vibrating my vocal folds, and molecules go scurrying in your direction, they hit your tympanic membrane, and symbols go up your eighth cranial nerve, and there's a response deep in your cerebrum that, I trust, approximates the images in mine.
Children encounter language even before birth.
My wife, Kay, who is a certified nurse-midwife and has delivered many babies, including seven of her own grandchildren, convinces me that language begins in utero, as the unborn infant monitors the mother's voice, and then following birth language exponentially explodes. By the time a child marches off to school, she or he knows at least three thousand words and is able to use them in powerfully penetrating ways, not only to show affection but as weapons of assault. So the task of the elementary school is not to teach children language. The task is to build on the symbol system that's God-given and already well in place. Lewis Thomas, the great essayist, captured the spirit of the Basic School when he said childhood is for language.