# Teaching Language as How We Think By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-03-09 Language is essential, but we tend to focus on the wrong things. Instead of learning how language formulates our thinking and how language is the structure for a logical basis of knowledge, we focus on spelling, vocabulary, and proper grammar. We measure childhood development by how many words they know and whether they speak in complete sentences. As we grow up, our essays are graded primarily on grammar and the structure of the sentences that become paragraphs. All of these elements of language provide the scaffolding of basic communication within a society, but the foundational connection between language and thoughts is left out. As a result, the default understanding is that language conveys our thoughts, needs, and arguments. Thus, learning how to use language properly allows us to convey these things more effectively. The trouble is that the "proper" use of language is arbitrary and constantly changing via social, geopolitical, and economic norms. Words come and go, and the proper way to phrase a sentence is based on what some academics fought about before someone finally won. Someone who asks why these rules exist will quickly discover the shallow reasoning and perhaps decide that the art of language is quackery. Fundamentally, I believe this describes nearly everyone who is not naturally gifted in language arts and following the rules. While these rules and scaffolding are essential to facilitate assimilation into society, they do little to drive an understanding of the nature of ideas and humanity. What might the world look like if language was instructed as thinking and not an outcome of thinking? The differences are subtle but significant. We would no longer teach language as a vehicle of thoughts but as the thoughts themselves. Understanding language would be understanding how we think. Objects, predicates, and other parts of language describe our thought processes and limitations. If one wants to learn to think, one learns language constructions just as one learns mathematics (another language). As someone who dismissed language at an early age and is only now coming around to its more meaningful importance, this educational adjustment may be an antidote to the pendulum swinging too far toward thoughtless STEM training. #### Related Items [[Language]] [[Education]] [[Analytics]] [[Science]] [[Technology]] [[Mathematics]] [[Thinking]] [[Paradigms]]