An unexpected educational divide

Science seems to be getting really popular these days. And the weirder the better. Numerous books and TV programmes feed our fascination for the many bizarre and counter-intuitive theories concerning the laws that govern the universe, from multiple realities to particles that can be in two places at once.

Just a couple of days ago, I saw a truly breathtaking Horizon programme on the nature of reality, which ended on something called the holographic principle. And this is when it struck me that humans really don’t seem to be well equipped to deal with these questions. It appears that the closer we come to a genuine description of the way the universe really works, the further we find ourselves from something we can actually understand.

That’s not altogether surprising. There’s no evolutionary advantage in gaining such an understanding, and it’s perhaps more surprising that evolution has taken us to the point at which we can even scratch the surface of what makes the world tick. Most life on earth gets by perfectly well without that level of insight.

What may be distressing for some people – especially lay people – when it comes to these questions is that what appear to be the ‘best’ scientific theories simply can’t be expressed in natural language. The ideas are just beyond our comprehension – beyond our everyday experience and therefore impossible to describe in those terms.

Of course, the scientists themselves do – apparently – manage to get a glimpse of the ‘true’ nature of reality through mathematics. What cannot be expressed in normal language can be written down and in some way understood in the form of equations. And this makes me wonder whether this actually takes those scientists a step closer to a genuine concept of the ideas they’re describing.

If so, it risks leaving the rest of us out on a limb. In mathematics, there appears to be a language that describes the way the universe works. But most of us don’t understand that language in anything like enough depth. And that includes people who would traditionally regard themselves as well educated.

I can’t help wondering whether the new elite – those with the necessary mathematical skills – are set to take on a role that will appear almost religious to the rest of us.

Books that offer insights into the true nature of the universe, but written in a language that only a select few can truly understand… Where have I heard that before?

Il fait beau, innit?

There's a great programme on Radio 4 at the moment, hosted by Stephen Fry, called Fry's English Delight. Last week it was all about contradictions, and there was lots of really interesting stuff about the logic of double negatives, and so on.

But the bit that stuck in my mind was a piece by (the brilliant) David Crystal towards the end. He pointed out something which should be obvious, but which never occurred to me before. And that was that the much derided 'word', 'innit', derived from 'isn't it', has come to be used in just the same way as 'n'est-ce pas' in French (which also means 'isn't it').

I'm not sure this holds true in every case – I hear people say things like, 'He told me to get lost, innit', and I'm not sure you could use 'n'est-ce pas' in quite that way (I may, of course, be wrong – my French is rusty!).

Nevertheless, love it or hate it, 'innit' has genuinely added something to the language. What brought this home to me was the fact that when I first started learning French at school, I seem to remember that the teacher had some difficulty explaining the meaning of 'n'est-ce pas'. It was one of those things that didn't quite have an English equivalent. Now it does. So do teachers now say, 'It means 'innit''?

Getting the most out of training

How much do you learn subconsciously? Or rather, once you think you've learnt something, how long before you 'know' it?

I'm a bit of a serial learner – always taking some course or other. And last year was no exception. I was busily engaged in a programming course. Or at least, I should have been. Multiple house moves meant that the course took a bit of a back seat. And when the time for the final exam came around, I was far from ready.

So I did what students everywhere do – I crammed like mad for two weeks. And it worked. Well, it sort of worked. I ended up with a very respectable mark – not quite what I'd hoped for, but not bad at all. One question had stumped me, though. So much so that I was convinced there was some mistake in the paper. In the end, I gave up on it and tried a different one instead, wasting valuable time. I thought it through a couple of times after the exam, still convinced that there was something wrong with it. Then I forgot about it.

Nervous about the results, I couldn't bring myself to look at any of the course materials for at least a couple of months. When I finally got my mark, though, I decided to have one last look at that problem question.

It was easy. I could have done it in a matter of minutes. This was after not even thinking about the subject matter for weeks.

I think there are two lessons in this. For me, the most important one was not to leave it to the last minute! Cramming over a couple of weeks is no substitute for learning steadily. The second was more interesting, though. Maybe this works only for me (so don't rely on this!), but even though I had all the information in time for the exam, it really took more time for it to sink in. During that time, I didn't think about it (at least, not consciously), which made me wonder: how much does your subconscious work away at assimilating information once you've acquired it?

Can your native tongue affect your nation's success?

I'd love to know if any research has been done on this. It does seem to have been established that being bilingual, or being brought up in a bilingual environment, at the very least boosts your mental agility (see http://www.livescience.com/culture/090413-bilingual-smart.html, for example).

And this made me wonder whether the intellectual demands of a particular language can actually affect a country's performance on the world stage, in terms of economic output, the propensity to come up with new inventions, or the tendency to nurture or discourage entrepreneurship.

For example, might the stereotypical German efficiency be due in part to the relative complexity of German grammar? Does fluency in Chinese, with its extra layer of difficulty (at least for English-speakers!), based on a falling or rising intonation, help you to think in different ways? Does speaking Japanese, which seems, to me at least, to be a highly logical and efficient language, make you better at thinking logically and efficiently?

And what of English? Grammatically, it has become relatively simple, and yet it is still difficult to master, largely because of its idiosyncrasies. It is certainly not the most logical language, although it is arguably one of the most flexible and expressive. Quite what that might mean for native English speakers is difficult to imagine!

Of course, the effect, if there is one, will also be working in the other direction, and it's natural to suppose that culture affects the development of language just as much as, if not more than, language affects culture.

And even if language does affect whole nations in this way, it is just one of many factors, so testing the idea would be far from easy. Still, I wonder if anyone has tried...?

Did everyone in my generation miss out on grammar teaching at school?

I learnt what verbs, adjectives and nouns were, and that was about it. I even remember one teacher being suitably outraged when he discovered the level of ignorance in the class ... but not quite outraged enough to do anything about it. And I know I’m not alone. Many of my contemporaries seem to have had the same (lack of) experience.

For me (and, it turns out, for quite a few of the people I’ve talked to about this), the saving grace was learning foreign languages. When I realised that my knowledge of French, Spanish and Latin grammar dwarfed my knowledge of English, I realised something was very wrong and decided to do something about it.

Should I have bothered, though? Does it really matter? So what if we can’t all conjugate our verbs correctly? If someone says ‘He done well’ instead of ‘He did well’, I still understand what that person means.

Well, from a purely mercenary point of view, it matters to the people who do get it badly wrong, because it will cost them. You may have been able to get good academic grades with poor English, but you’re unlikely to get very far in a job application.

But I think there’s something more fundamental at stake. The English-speaking world is huge. Imagine what would happen if we abandoned all attempts to control the language through education.

Some might argue that it would free the language to evolve in its own way, unfettered, and not held back by the fossilising effect of the classroom. But I believe we would soon be in a world where we would be unable to agree on a common meaning for even the commonest forms of words.

Education in general would become more difficult and law – which relies on unambiguous and clear language – would become almost impossible. Ultimately, the language would dissolve into a myriad of dialects, making it impossible to communicate with even our closest neighbours, or with different generations. Books would become unreadable within a few years of being written. For society to function at all, we would be forced to develop a common language – one with a clear set of rules and a well understood vocabulary. So maybe it’s not quite time to abandon the one we already have.

The real tragedy for those of us in the ‘missing link’ generation, though, is that things seem to be so much better in schools nowadays. Children are once again learning the basics of English grammar. Those of us who missed out had better make sure our own skills are up to scratch before we are upstaged by the next well-educated generation...