This is, they tell us, an age of technology, and that what we need to know is how to program computers, not how to devise grammatical sentences in orderly sequence. As it happens, computers work by reading and devising grammatical sentences in orderly sequence. When we read a sentence whose subject and verb don t agree, we don t reject it as meaningless and useless. We may shake our heads and sigh a little, but we know what the poor fellow meant, and we go on. And you will swallow anything if you believe that we can teach all that computer stuff to whole herds of people who haven t been able to master the elementary logic of subject-verb agreement.
All logical thought goes on in the form of statements and statements about statements.
We can make those statements only in language, even if that language be a different symbol system like mathematics. If we cannot make those statements and statements about statements logically, clearly, and coherently, then we cannot think and make knowledge. People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought. For a printer friendly version of the entire volume, go to ShareText.