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COMMUNICATIONS 9

It’s not often one stares in the mirror and sees a perfect reflection, especially one that
goes backward in time. But these things happen and they are not to be missed.
Take five minutes ago, for instance. I sat down in a quiet moment to reflect on how
to teach the vast field of communications in one chapter. This is what I saw.
I spent eight years in English classes and not one of my teachers managed to convey
to me the central purpose of their course. They were there to teach me how to commu-
nicate, from person to person.Such communication might happen through interactive
conversation, through my writings, or through books. But not one of those eight teach-
ers saw to it that I understood the basic purpose of the course. They failed to commu-
nicate, to me, the single most important piece of information they had to offer! Being
a responsible adult, I do take responsibility for this. But what does this also say about
our education system? I won awards for my achievements in English classes. And all
the while even I knew that my English was crumby (sic)!
So I sat down and searched the entire Internet for the definition of communication.
These were the URLs that turned up, in the very order that I searched them. This is what
I found:

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