The Joy of Learning, Technically Speaking

Brian Weatherson is right to point out that Bush was not 'technically correct', because the verb in question was the factive 'learned', not the the agnostic 'said'. (But Ogged is tragically right that he who says 'factive' first loses, outside the philosophy of language seminar room.)

It reminds me of that classic (aren't they all?) Simpsons episode from season four, "Brother From the Same Planet". Bart pretends he's an orphan so that ... well you can read a summary here if you've forgotten how it went. I'm thinking about how Homer initiates young Pepsi (Pepe) into the mysteries of astronomy and English pronunciation:

Pepe: Tell me more! I want to know all the constellations!

Homer: Well, there's... Jerry, the cowboy. And that big dipper-looking thing is Alan... the cowboy.

Pepi: Oh, Papa Homer, you are so learned [learn\éd].

Homer: Heh heh heh. learned [learn'd'], son. It's pronounced learned [learn'd].

Feel free to write your own version, with British Intelligence as wise Homer, Bush as eager Pepsi, and Nigerian yellowcake as the stellar formations known as Jerry the Cowboy and Alan the Cowboy.

Back to Weatherson. He writes: "In any version of English I’m familiar with, ‘learned’ is factive. You can’t learn something that’s false." It's worth emphasizing - within the four walls of the seminar room - that the barriers are twofold in Bush's case: not just learning something false, but something you think you know to be false. Yet, pace Weatherson, I think it is a peculiarity of the English verb 'to learn' that it is, after all, possible to learn false things in school.

1) A lot of stuff I learned in school turned out not to be true.

2) I learned in high school English that you shouldn't split infinitives. Later I found out there is no reason to take this arcane rule seriously.

I take it 1 and 2 are semantically unobjectionable; one can easily concoct more examples on the same model. In fact, yet more narrowly, it seems to me you have to be a student in school to learn something false. Contrast the following two cases:

3) In school we learned that Columbus discovered America in 1292. Later we found out our teacher was completely nuts and had been teaching American history that way for years.

4) While researching a scholarly article on Christopher Columbus, I learned he discovered America in 1292. Later I found out my main source contained a typo.

I think 3 is fine - funny, but semantically on the up-and-up. 4 is funny and contains a clear misuse of the verb 'to learn'. The difference in the first case is that the learners are students in school. Scholars can't do it, teachers can't do it. Students can't learn falsehoods from friends, or TV, or parents (unless they are home-schooled, which probably makes for vague cases around the house.)

The whole business suggests a technically correct line educationalists might try out against carping critics who say folks do their best learning in the real world, not locked up in classrooms or ivory towers: there are an infinite number of extremely interesting things that you can only learn in school, while you are a student. After you graduate, the cognitive window slams shut forever and you have to make do only with the truth.