“As one learns the language of a subject, one is also learning what the subject is.”

— Neil Postman

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: As one learns the language of a subject, one is also learning what the subject is.... what we call a subject consists mostly, if not entirely, of its language. If you eliminate all the words of a subject, you have eliminated the subject.

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Neil Postman 106

American writer and academic 1931–2003

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: The meaning I have given here to "language education" represents it as a form of metaeducation. That is, one learns a subject and, at the same time, learns what the subject is made of.... If it be said that such learning will prevent students from assimilating the facts of a subject, my reply is that this is the only way by which the facts can truly be assimilated. For it is not education to teach students to repeat sentences they do not understand so that they may pass examinations. That is the way of the computer. I prefer the student to be a programmer.

“It is precisely through one's learning about the total context in which the language of a subject is expressed that personality may be altered.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: It is precisely through one's learning about the total context in which the language of a subject is expressed that personality may be altered. If one learns how to speak history or mathematics or literary criticism, one becomes, by definition, a different person. The point to be stressed is that a subject is a situation in which and through which people conduct themselves, largely in language. You cannot learn a new form of conduct without changing yourself.

“No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

“Since most subjects studied in school consist largely of theories… language education must include not only the serious study of what truth and falsehood mean in the context of a subject, but also what is meant by a fact, an inference, an assumption, a judgment, a generalization… In this way students will be learning both the language of a subject and the methods of inquiry in that subject, since inquiry consists of nothing else but the generation of questions, the invention of definitions and metaphors, the separation of facts from inferences, the forming of generalizations…”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

“The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"Reasons to De-Test the Schools," New York Times (1988-10-11), later published in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)