Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context.The earliest known linguistic activities date to Iron Age India (around the 8th century BC) with the analysis of Sanskrit.

The first is the study of language structure, or grammar. This focuses on the system of rules followed by the speakers (or hearers) of a language. It encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words), and phonology (sound systems). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds and nonspeech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.

The study of language meaning is concerned with how languages employ logical structures and real-world references to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. This subfield encompasses semantics(how meaning is inferred from words and concepts) and pragmatics (how meaning is inferred from context).

Language in its broader context includes evolutionary linguistics, which considers the origins of language; historical linguistics, which explores language change;sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures; psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which looks at language processing in the brain; language acquisition, how children or adults acquire language; and discourse analysis, which involves the structure of texts and conversations.

Although linguistics is the scientific study of language, a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to language and intersect with it. Semiotics, for example, is the general study of signs and symbols both within language and without. Literary theorists study the use of language in literature. Linguistics additionally draws on and informs work from such diverse fields as acoustics, anthropology, biology, computer science, human anatomy, informatics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and speech-language pathology.Semantics and grammar, modularity of meaning: 
Laboratory linguistics: 
Representations in phonology: 
The notion of derivations in linguistics: 

50 years ago, in the fall of 1960, Jerome Wiesner, director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and William N. Locke, head of the Department of Modern Languages, proposed to MIT the formation of a graduate program in linguistics whose faculty was to include Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. At the time, Noam and Morris were affiliated with both RLE and Modern Languages.

Wiesner and Locke’s proposal was approved and the new program was slated to begin the following fall. No efforts were made to recruit students. Nonetheless, a group of at least six graduate students arrived in September 1961 and seven or more joined the following year. Four years later, many of the dissertations of these first two classes became landmark studies in the fields of phonology (synchronic and diachronic), morphology, and syntax (theoretical and computational), with semantics and phonetics added later. So have many of the over 300 theses completed in the following 46 years of the program, and those of the students, and the students’ students, of that first generation and following ones.

To celebrate the first 50 years of MIT’s graduate program in Linguistics, we are writing to all alumni, former faculty and postdoctoral scholars. We invite all to mark this occasion by revisiting the department and participating in a discussion of some of the foundational questions investigated by its past and present members. We will do this in a book (printed or electronic, to be determined) to which all are invited to contribute; and in a scientific reunion, on the weekend of 12/9/2011. All past and present members of the program are invited to attend the event and to contribute to the discussions.
Lexicon-syntax interactions:
50 years of Linguistics at MIT
History:
50 years of Linguistics at MIT
Endangered languages:

John Holt coined the word unschooling in 1977 to mean learning that does not look like school learning, and learning that does not have to take place at home. Holt was a celebrated classroom teacher who became the founder of unschooling and one of the founders of the modern homeschooling movement. Learning is a result of the activity of learners; it is not necessarily a result of teaching.
This is a talk John Holt presented to Swedish Teachers in Gothenberg, Sweden on March 22, 1982. As John notes here, he was revising How Children Learn during the time he was doing his Scandinavian tour, so these are pretty fresh thoughts and ideas that John was working with in light of his connection to homeschoolers (I didn't hear him say unschooler at all in this talk, FYI). What else is noteworthy is how Sweden, in 2010, banned homeschooling on the grounds that a professional education was available from the state and families therefore had no need for homeschooling. As Holt notes forcefully on this tape, unasked for teaching actually impedes learning, particularly for young children, a lesson confirmed by research that Holt notes in 1982 and quite recently confirmed again by new research cited in the Boston Globe (Front page, 3/29/11). Like most of the audio tapes I have, this was recorded by John while he spoke, so the quality is a bit rough. I've removed as much hiss as I could, and the entire speech is here, though part 4 ends abruptly during the Q&A. However, you are able to grasp his final point, one he made often: schools should be more like public libraries, in spirit and in organization.John provides some expansive answers to questions about children, society, schools, and homeschooling in the debut of this raw footage.
John Holt interviewed on the television show New England Today. John is joined by Harvard undergraduate and homeschooler Joel Fields. Joel attended Harvard at the same time Grant Colfax did, but he didn't get as much press. This was filmed on May 2, 1985, just four months before John died from cancer, so this may be among the last interviews he did.
In America's socialized education system the key word is FORCE. Students are forced to study what the state mandates, teachers are forced to 'make them learn' and parents are forced to send their children to state sanctioned institutions, all while citizens with no children are forced to pay to educate the children of others against their will.
John Holt founded, edited, and published the first eight years of Growing Without Schooling magazine, but it is through the effort and commitment of its subsequent editors—Donna Richoux, Susannah Sheffer, and Meredith Collins—that GWS grew and thrived for sixteen years after Holt's death. Though I was president and publisher during that time, it was Donna, Susannah, and Meredith who shaped each issue, corresponded and worked with all the writers to GWS, and made sure the content not only stayed true to Holt's vision of what GWS should be, but also expanded this vision and complemented it with books, research, and interviews with many thinkers and doers both in and out of school. GWS couldn't exist without all the readers who shared their stories; but behind this, it couldn't exist without the work and dedication of its editors.

Maybe everybody thinks they think outside the box. Maybe it’s not just me. I get called gullible every day of my life. But that’s ok. I wouldn’t trade my mind for anything on earth. I would rather be dead than not be curious. It started with “The 7 Habbits of highly effective people”. It was a tape set that my mum bought me when I was 17.

(In case you are wondering why i posted this ... you need to follow the links below ... this is the background to a wonderful journey of self discovery)

He was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and "maverick social critic" of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development.

Illich was born in Vienna to a Croatian father—engineer Ivan Peter Illich and Sephardic Jewish mother—Ellen née Regenstreif-Ortlieb and had Italian, Spanish, French and German as native languages. He later learned Croatian, the language of his grandfathers, then Ancient Greek and Latin, in addition to Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, English, and other languages. He studied histology and crystallography at the University of Florence (Italy) as well as theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican (from 1942 to 1946), and medieval history in Salzburg.

He wrote a dissertation focusing on the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and would return to that subject in his later years. In 1951, he "signed up to become a parish priest in one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods—Washington Heights, on the northern tip of Manhattan, then a barrio of fresh-off-the-airplane Puerto Rican immigrants." In 1956, at the age of 30, he was appointed as the vice rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, "a position he managed to keep for several years before getting thrown out—Illich was just a little too loud in his criticism of the Vatican’s pronouncements on birth control and comparatively demure silence about the bomb." It was in Puerto Rico that Illich met Everett Reimer and the two began to analyze their own functions as "educational" leaders. In 1959, he traveled throughout South America on foot and by bus.

In 1961, Illich founded the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC, or Intercultural Documentation Center) at Cuernavaca in Mexico, ostensibly a research center offering language courses to missionaries from North America and volunteers of the Alliance for Progress program initiated by John F. Kennedy. His real intent was to document the participation of the Vatican in the "modern development" of the so-called Third World. Illich looked askance at the liberal pity or conservative imperiousness that motivated the rising tide of global industrial development. He viewed such emissaries as a form of industrial hegemony and, as such, an act of "war on subsistence." 

Last night my husband and I watched IndoctriNation, a Gunn Brothers production which argues for Christians to stop putting their kids in public schools. It was late at night, so we had intended to just watch one hour, but it was so engaging that we watched the entire 110 minutes.

For full disclosure, the film maker is the brother-in-law of my very close friend, Amanda. Colin Gunn is a wonderful, humorous troublemaker who hails from Scotland. We got to know him and his family at Amanda's daughter's wedding. He lives in a liberal democrat neighborhood with his eight sweet kids, the newest one was born just last month. While his neighbors post signs in favor of Planned Parenthood, he posts signs like, "Don't Be Planned Parenthood's Fool!"

I say "troublemaker" because God uses this man to go where most of us are too polite to tread.

The film making of IndoctriNation is excellent. The documentary has a nice flow, the editing is well-done, and the cinematography is definitely professional quality. Many documentaries don't bother with color correction and other niceties, but Colin has gone the extra mile.

After laying the basis, through statistics and news reports, for his exploration of the ethics of Christians going to public school, Colin delves into the history of public schools in America. Throughout the film are interviews with educators, pastors, theologians, politicians, and historians. R. C. Sproul, Jr., Douglas Phillips, Ken Ham, Erwin Lutzer and John Taylor Gatto are just some of the impressive names that sat and talked over this topic with Colin. They discuss the "Salt and Light" argument for sending kids to public school, the agenda of the founders of public schools, and the failure of public schools to properly educate.

Among the interesting facts presented is that most people would grade public schools with a C, but would grade their neighborhood schools with an A or B. Colin brings out that parents, in general, are in denial about what goes on in their neighborhood schools.

Read more:

Biometrics in schools have been used worldwide since the early first decade of the 21st century to address truancy, to replace library cards, or to charge for meals. School biometrics, typically electronicfingerprinting systems, have raised privacy concerns because of the creation of databases that would progressively include the entire population.

Many schools have implemented fingerprint locks or registered children's fingerprints. In the UK biometricsin schools have been largely used for library book issue, but are increasingly being used for cashless catering systems, enabling parents to deposit money into students catering accounts, to be debited by a child's biometric fingerscan at the point of sale. Biometric technology for registration is also used in the UK. In the USA biometrics systems are used primarily for catering, as mentioned above, with library and registration biometrics in use also. Fingerprint locking systems happened in the United Kingdom (fingerprint lock in the Holland Park School in London,) databases, etc., in Belgium (école Marie-José in Liège ), in France, in Italy, etc. There has been recent discussion surrounding the biometrics in the uk and the general public have been misinformed about what is actually stored after a print is registered. There is no print stored, merely a series of digits ( some 30 ) that the computer is able to store to a pupil/person. It is impossible to reconstruct a finger print from this useless series of numbers.
United Kingdom

In 2002 the NGO Privacy International has alerted that tens of thousands of UK school children were being fingerprinted by schools, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents . In 2002, the supplier Micro Librarian Systems, which use a technology similar to US prisons and German military, estimated that 350 schools through-out Britain were using such systems, to replace library cards . In 2007, it was estimated that 3,500 schools (ten times more) are using such systems . By 2009 the number of children fingerprinted was estimated to be two million .

Under the Data Protection Act (DPA), schools in the UK do not have to ask parental consent for such practices. Parents opposed to such practices may only bring individual complaints against schools . Concerns have been raised about the civil liberties implications of fingerprinting children in schools . In 2007 Early Day Motion 686, which called on the UK Government to conduct a full and open consultation with stakeholders about the use of biometrics in schools, secured the support of 85 Members of Parliament .

In response to a complaint which they are continuing to pursue, in 2010 the European Commissionexpressed 'significant concerns' over the proportionality and necessity of the practice and the lack of judicial redress, indicating that the practice may break the European Union data protection directive.

I meant to post this yesterday, on his birthday, but the best laid schemes of mice and men 'Gang aft agley'. Mr Burns (also known as Rabbie Burns, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard) was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a "light" Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt.

He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the 'Greatest Scot' by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today include A Red, Red Rose; A Man's A Man for A' That; To a Louse; To a Mouse; The Battle of Sherramuir; Tam o' Shanter, and Ae Fond Kiss.

He was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. InPsychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapyand not just a religion. Like Aldous Huxley before him, he explored human consciousness in the essay, "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book, The Joyous Cosmology(1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and by many of his recorded talks and lectures that have found new life on the Internet. Critic Erik Davis notes the freshness, longevity, and continuing relevance of Watts's work today, observing that his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."
Watts was born to middle class parents in the village of Chislehurst, Kent, in 1915, living at 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane. His father was a representative for the London office of the Michelin Tyre Company, his mother a housewife whose father had been a missionary. With modest financial means, they chose to live in pastoral surroundings and Alan, an only child, grew up playing at brookside, learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies. Probably because of the influence of his mother’s religious family the Buchans, an interest in "ultimate things" seeped in. But it mixed with Alan’s own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East.

Watts also later wrote of a mystical vision he experienced while ill with a fever as a child. During this time he was influenced by Far Eastern landscape paintings and embroideries that had been given to his mother by missionaries returning from China. The few Chinese paintings Watts was able to see in England riveted him, and he wrote "I was aesthetically fascinated with a certain clarity, transparency, and spaciousness in Chinese and Japanese art. It seemed to float...". These works of art emphasized the participative relationship of man in nature, a theme that stood fast throughout his life.

'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.'

Woodrow Wilson: “The Meaning of a Liberal Education”, Address to the New York City High School Teachers Association (9 January 1909).

Some time ago I came across the insightful work of John Taylor Gatto whose deep research has become the foundation for a mass intellectual revolt against Skinnerian and Pavlovian state sponsored dinosaur educational indoctrination systems. It is sure that his success was partly founded upon his ability to stand on the shoulders of alternative education giants such as John Holt, Charlotte Iserbyt, Ivan Illich and a thousand other unsung heroes including every homeschool mum and dad. However, the attempts of mainline education to attack and even discredit his work and shield teachers from the findings of his endless research makes it essential to spread the gospel of his unique understanding of children's learning, human development and social engineering.


In several presentations Mr Gatto tried to present his work on how the elite private schools are run to their advantage over a limping and permanently disenabled state system. Here follows a simplified* summary of his studies.



The 13 Study Principles of Advanced Private Education

1. The Law of Human Nature
- Students must have an in depth knowledge of : classical literature, history, physical and social geography, philosophy, theology, law, and language. In addition students must be able to create a self standing resource and locate and use a data base. Even, amend or extend it as required.

2. The Active Literacies and Persuasion
- Individuals must have a high level of transactional writing to convey an idea, direction or perspective. They must possess an advanced communicative discourse technique that allows them to articulate thought and opinion to individuals and groups. Especially to people whom they do not know or have not met.

3. Deep Insight into Institutions
- A practical knowledge of the essential structures of society is vital: the courts, the government, the departments of state and their roles and their leaders, the military, the corporations, foundations and charities, and of course the banks and other financial institutions.

4. Repeated Exercise in Civility and Politeness
- An understanding of how our actions, especially manners, in the present affect our future possibilities. A concept of time that extends beyond the here and now. Understanding that ‘The doors of tomorrow are opened by the actions of today founded upon the habits of yesterday’.

5. Resourcefulness
- The ability to perform independent work. Students choose their own topics, justify their own actions, develop their own rewards, and are creative when it is required. They must also learn to motivate themselves and be able to articulate the foundational reasoning of their actions.

6. Regular Physical Activity
- Sports, both individual and team events, train the mind and body to appreciate the concepts of pain, conflict, grace, power, loss, competition, intention and of course money. The also give us experience of command, teamwork and influence. Play, as with experimentation, brings its own rewards.

7. Access to People and Places
- It is important to be able to network, through contacts or even through contacts of contacts, in essence, to get to the ‘horses mouth’. Planning a route to key people in key positions and key organisations can be very important in problematic circumstances. Middlemen often slow things down, confuse issues or have other agendas.

8. Responsibility
- The student must be internally motivated to deliver more than has been asked for. They must stretch themselves and extend their abilities, even pick up new skills as and when required. Universal morality requires that all blame lies with the self.

9. Development of a Personal Code
- There must be an ability to produce formal behaviour when required, which may even mean on demand, and display an unflinching set of morals that allow the character of a person who can be depended upon by others. Be true to yourself.

10. Familiarity with Art’s Great Works
- The student must be at ease with their own ability to discuss artistic issues and even become involved in or lead creative activity, often being able to reproduce or even extend parts of it. This includes: music, painting, design, sculpture, architecture, and dance.

11. Observation and Recording
- A person must be able to accurately record in scientific detail and recall their environment and any changes within it. Drawing sharpens perceptions and is linked to the philosophy that if you can’t record it or reproduce it then it is not really there. Measures produce evidence.

12. An Ability to Deal with Challenges
- All students must overcome fears if they are to progress in physical, psychological or spiritual development and in the worse case scenario be able to disguise or mask emotions.

13. To Have Caution in Reasoning to Conclusions
- Each situation must be weighed and balanced on its own true merit. An ability to reach a decision without comparison is vital within the concept of a justice and fairness. Each person must be able, alone, to make judgements, develop their own values and opinions and to follow up all of their ideas. They must monitor and self-assess themselves so that they may make improvements when required.



These skills are enablers. They encourage the self yet still acknowledge the group. Such key points could perhaps be viewed as life skills rather than subjects to study. After all, our life skills are our survival skills and to know: what, when, where, why and how to study is far more useful than to just study. Let’s also add into the mix that state systems are full of myths we readily believe without much conscious thought. Ideas such as ‘academic success’ will equal ‘life success’ or that an education can be consciously given. All education is an extension of life experience and must seized or taken as its moment arrives. A real education prepares the student to embrace these moments.


There is no doubt in my mind that the command and control based pyramid structure of the state education system has an unspoken deep-rooted goal of psychological systematisation, incremental indoctrination and social conditioning. This manifests itself in the visible avoidance of most of the 13 principles in turn eliminating creative free thinking individuals from the middle and lower echelons of society.


In order for the state system to achieve its limited goals it is not entirely necessary for it to fail. It is only necessary that on certain issues it stumbles. It is only necessary that families become dissolved from the process of education. This can be countered through an application from home of activities that will inject the above principle skills into the lives of young people. This can be reversed through the preservation of alternative education possibilities, the most fundamental of which is homeschooling. It, however, remains to be seem whether or not parents will embrace and fully understand the importance of so simple concept as: 'It is the parents, not the state, who must retain complete responsibility for and become active, as best they can, within their true positions as guardians and guides, applying the 13 principles wherever necessary, at the nucleus of society'.



‘The learning of a thousand hours begins with a single second’s focus and thought … and it begins at home’



Graham William Hendrey
Founder & Director

Native Speakers Academy
www.nsa-slovakia.com
www.nsa-education.com


References:
www.johntaylorgatto.com


*Please refer to Gatto’s original works for a clearer analysis

(VERSION X)



Postscript 1: An Irrelevant After-Thought

The true test of a free and open society is the freedom to love without limit, any person or spirit or god whom we choose, and study and share our knowledge of this love without fear of hindrance or interference from society or government.



Postscript 2: For those who are prepared … there is always more:

The 14th Principle: The Unspoken Concepts


Students must fully understand the effect of recent human developments on society. They must be able to map both man made and natural environmental changes. They must understand mediums of change and control affecting: war, peace, religion and belief. They must be able to adapt to the establishment of new norms and have a broad spectrum of knowledge in the areas of motivation in the individual and the group, including skills in leadership, management and conflict resolution.


They must understand the links between: commerce, the media, money, control, debt, slavery and ideas.


They must be aware of the work, published and unpublished, of the larger universities and in turn the links between those institutions and the bodies of Government. This includes the affects of research on funding (and visa versa) and the application of research data as a force for change. Such change can be seen applied in the work of the visible and invisible institutions: The Rand Corporation, The Tavistock Institute, The Frankfurt Institute, The Royal Societies, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Bilderberg Group, The Council of Rome and The Committee of 300.

As I said … there is always more.