• Introduction - The Need for a Grammar of Thought
• Cogetics Overview
• Cogetics Concepts
• Principles and Patterns of Cogetics
• How Cogetics Enables Critical Teaching and Learning
• Cogetics, Learning-to-Learn, and Raised Standards
• Cogetics In Action

Assume you are a newspaper reporter in a special world. In this world, you have words but no grammar for their use. The best you can do is randomly string words together in the hope that somehow others will make sense of them. Of course, they have no grammar of words either, so the chance of exchanging or developing meaning is almost nil.

Teachers and students at all levels are in much the same situation. While they do have a grammar for words, they have no grammar for thought. A grammar of words allows a single complete thought to be stated. A grammar of thought would provide the ability to put multiple thoughts together in logical, analytical, and critical patterns.

Since both teachers and students would be versed in a grammar of thought, the patterns could be used when discussing new subject matter for the first time. Since a grammar of thought provides a foundation for all communication, it could be used as the foundation to develop learn-to-learn abilities in reasoning, writing/speaking, and reading/listening in all learners - teachers and students. A grammar of thought would allow all learners to make use of their innate language and analytic abilities. This is what should drive teaching and learning at all levels.

However, conventional K through College classroom practice relies on Cognitive Sequentialism. CS is the serial discussion of core, content, and career subject matter without making analytic and critical connections within and among topics. CS is the undeclared cognitive and universal basis for teacher preparation and professional development programs. It is the basis for student learn and study programs at the high school and college level. It is standard in textbooks, computer courseware, and in other instructional materials at all levels of education.

Because it inherently defeats analytic /critical thought, CS induces rote learning and actively works against the development reasoning, writing, and reading abilities. There has been no evolution away from CS since its 17th century introduction to organized education.

In essence, the profession responsible for transmitting the world's subject matter now operates without a theory of subject matter; one that would inform its practice and make measurable its contribution. Current CS practice is the intellectual equivalent of randomly stringing words together.

To improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement and to make lifelong learning a reality, all learners (teachers and students), must develop learn-to-learn abilities. For that, you need a grammar of analytic / critical thought.

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An approach that has proved extremely effective involves rethinking the teaching / learning process. Instead of the subject matter taking control of the learner, the learner takes control of the subject matter. The learner does this by first internalizing useful patterns for critical thinking, reading, and writing. These patterns are independent of the subject being engaged and therefore apply to all subject matter. This is the world of Cogetics (pronounced khog-etics).

• Cogetics allows Elementary through College teachers and students to construct critical understanding of any subject matter topic the first time a topic is engaged
• Cogetics is intellectual brainware for the school and college classroom. It provides teaching and learning strategies and techniques to:
  • develop learn-to-learn abilities in all learners, teachers and students
  • think, read, write, listen, and speak critically
  • directly address the critical nature of the raised learning standards in all subject matter areas
  • greatly strengthen the foundations of teacher preparation and professional development programs.
• With Cogetics, students move from passive "receivers" of knowledge to active learners. Together, teachers and students construct subject matter understanding through critical reasoning, writing, and reading. By merging subject matter content with the structure of language and innate analytic abilities, students learn to identify and act on the intellectual meaning in the world and its subject matter. They learn to "see intelligently."
• With Cogetics, teachers in all disciplines show students how to learn in natural and seamless ways within the context of the subject matter at hand. Teachers show students how to become standards-achieving and independent life-long learners by building on innate reasoning and innate language abilities.

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Conventional grammar puts words together to form single complete thoughts. Cognitive grammar puts thoughts together to form analytic and critical understanding of subject matter.

Cognitive Grammar (Cogetics™) transcends national languages. Just as all humans are thought to have an inborn "hard-wired" capacity to learn the grammar of any language, all humans are born with a 'hard-wired" ability to use cognitive grammar. Although hard-wired, cognitive grammar --through disuse, poor habit, undervaluing, and misguided educational practice - can be short-circuited. The "wiring" however, can be repaired.

In linguistics, morphology is the study of how words are formed to express new ideas and meaning. Cognitive grammar is the study and practice of how thoughts are formed and developed to express and achieve critical understanding. [For additional discussion, see "Maiorana, Victor P. Cognitive Grammar - An International Language for Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing" in Language and Communication in the New Century. Proceedings of The American Society of Geolinguistics, 1998.]

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1. Humans are critically disposed naturally by virtue of their innate analytic and language intelligence.
2. Humans naturally and continually have, seek, express, reflect, and inquire on the purpose, ends-in-view, effects, importance, functions, and meaning in their endeavors, in the natural world, and in the human-made world.
3. The existence of a grammar of words means that there must be a grammar thought.
4. The structure of language can be framed critically not merely conventionally (sequentially).
5. All the world's subject matter is inherently critical.

Indeed, one can say that a single sentence or thought cannot be understood unless it follows a specific pattern. Accordingly, one can also say that a topic cannot be truly understood (meaning that nothing can be understood critically), unless one comprehends the associated physical, social, emotional, or intellectual patterns that obtain. Therefore, no subject matter topic can be understood critically unless we understand its deep critical pattern.

Conventional, transformational, and generative grammars operate at the individual thought (sentence) level. Cognitive grammar operates at the multiple- thought (critical construct) level. Cognitive grammar (Cogetics) provides the basis for achieving such critical understanding by providing the theoretical and operational foundations for constructing subject matter understanding critically. Like any language, cognitive grammar is flexible in that it adapts itself to any subject matter topic. It applies to subjects that are nature-based, information-based, or reflection-based (or combinations of these).

Cognitive Grammar shows that all topics in all languages have the same critical structure even though those topics address different purposes, end-in-views, or meanings. Cognitive grammar compliments Chomsky's notion that a child's inborn knowledge of the principles of grammatical structure of all languages is the basis for the deep structure of the sentence and is the basis for the regulation of human thought. However, cognitive grammar takes the analysis in the other direction. It goes the other way, away from words and sentence and towards groups of sentences and phrases arranged in critical thought patterns. In other words, cognitive grammar transforms not words into a sentences, but sentences into connected, integrated, and critical thought.

Surface structure is what one sees as obvious differences between say a discussion on computer keyboarding versus a discussion on philosophy. Deep structure is the analytic thought construct that allows these topics to be transformed into a common critical representation of its elemental parts. Cognitive grammar provides the basis for revealing the deep structure that is common to keyboarding, philosophy, or any other topic.

In sum, cognitive grammar provides a universal grammar of and for critical thought. That critical thought provides a basis for critical writing, reading, listening, speaking, and problem solving. Accordingly, it provides the basis for critical teaching and learning in schools and colleges.

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• When presented with a situation that we do not understand, our intellectual instinct is to try to construct some intellectual basis for understanding; to try to make some sense of it. This attempt to sensibly construct understanding starts with the child's asking "Why?" It continues throughout life.
• What presented with a viewpoint or position with which we do not agree, or that we have some cause to doubt, we (ideally) seek to discover the basis for the suspect viewpoint. If we satisfactorily explore the viewpoint, we can either accept or reject it based on our discoveries.
• When presented with a problem, we will (usually) take the steps necessary to effect a solution.

Showing students how to engage subject matter critically the first time it is encountered can be looked at as an issue of translation. Teaching can be looked at as translating for students' information in a new language (a new subject matter topic) in a way that can be understood and applied critically. Competence in teaching rests to a large degree on the ability to cognitively distinguish and translate the rote-inducing sequential presentation of subject matter as found in textbooks, curriculum guides, and other instructional materials to analytic/critical constructs that reveal the deep critical meaning inherent within the content.

Promoting critical understanding of subject matter through use of cognitive grammar -- in the classroom, in textbooks, in computer courseware, and through other delivery systems -- minimizes the things that we believe separate students. Cognitive grammar emphasizes instead the human thought and learning gifts and abilities that all students possess regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, or social background. Cognitive grammar provides a way to integrate the teaching profession intellectually and operationally; it provides a way for students at all levels to fulfill their human potential.

By providing cognitive learning objectives ands analytic patterns that are purposeful - meaningful and consequential, cognitive grammar reveals the whole, dynamic meaning within all content. Such meaning promotes understanding and application of subject matter by making knowing a matter of active construction of content within the context of developing essential and critical abilities in all learners - teachers and students. Teachers show students how to become standards-achieving and independent life-long learners by building on innate reasoning abilities that are applied in the classroom and in the workplace.

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The great majority of the raised learning standards call for analytic/critical engagement of new subject matter. This can only be accomplished through use of a grammar of thought.

Cogetics provides analytic / critical strategies and techniques that develop learn-to-learn abilities, that directly address the critical nature of the raised standards, and that engage new (and revisited) content -- all simultaneously and for all subject matter areas.

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