Getting to know what words do …

… English teaching: Johnson: Talking past each other | The Economist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… English departments should require an interdisciplinary class with linguistics on the grammar of the English language. Literature departments should cultivate more scholars who focus on language itself rather than literature alone. (Their academic research could focus on historical changes in English; how literary writers employ grammar devices; data-driven analysis of great English writing; the use of dialect and non-standard English; and so on.) In exchange, linguistics departments should require their students to take an English department class, to let those scientifically minded students broaden their horizons with the close reading of literary texts. 

Not a bad idea, but teaching grammar in grade school the old-fashioned way would be better. There are some things you learn better when you are younger. The value of  something like The Elements of Style, which I read right after I graduated from high school, is not that it's the last word on the subject — it isn't — but that it puts the subject into focus, so you can find your way around. As Robertson Davies said, it teaches you how to make the verbal equivalent of a chicken coop. But if you aim to build a house some day, starting with a chicken coop isn't such a bad idea.