The Richly or Poorly Show
Show Transcript
shdawson-20260922.mp3
Episode 09/22/2026
09/22/2026
Hello! Welcome to The Richly or Poorly Show!
My name is Dr. Stephen Dawson, and I am your show host.
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The show's motto is unmistakable: RICHLY IS GOODLY!
Please consider how you define the term good as we journey through life together in your pursuit of defining the term richly in your life.
Last week, I shared why waiting to learn The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success harms you. I then shared about a part of the price you will pay to gain The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success in your life, and about some of what happens to a person who does not gain The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success. I concluded by sharing that all learning involves being irritated. Irritation from being tired physically, mentally, and spiritually. Tired of having accomplished what one perceives as so little while also perceiving there is so much more to accomplish in a learning journey. I offered my help so you can defeat irritation as I have learned to defeat it by explaining there is no completion date to learning, and how to know when it is best to go either faster or slower in the learning journey.
Today, we start The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success by way of the first skill.
The five identified skills are presented in order of priority. They build on each other. They also help each skill operate more effectively in your life and the life of anyone else who chooses to learn them.
The five skills are presented in order of their usage. Here is what I mean by that statement. One must have skills one and two not necessarily mastered to do skill three, but one does need to have a good handle on skills one and two to be able to succeed with skill three.
Learning The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success has a structured approach to it, supported by decades of firsthand experiences and academic learning, combined with research covering thousands of years to support the construction of the learning methodology that results in possessing The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success.
I structure the presentation of The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success by three separate presentations for each of the five skills. The first presentation is Discovery. I frame the events and circumstances that lead to identifying each of the skills as necessary for success. The second presentation is Relevance. I frame how all of the events and circumstances that lead to identifying each of the skills as necessary for success matter to you. The final presentation is Acquisition. I spell out in detail how you, as a person seeking to live your life more richly, can acquire each of the five skills with less pain that it took for me to acquire each of them, based on decades of research on my part to both design and build a learning path for you as a member of my intended show audience.
The results of going backward in intelligence are well-proven in both academia and public knowledge. Going backward in intelligence includes the assured outcomes of failed families, failed governments, and failed countries, all preceded by much heartache from the combination of petty actions and senseless arguments. It is impossible for me to believe anyone in their right mind would want these outcomes in their life.
I see that The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success are becoming rare in the lives of many folks over the past two decades. Rare, as in not practiced without noticeable errors. Rare, as in answers erroneous enough to matter. Matter, as in hurting other people. Causing harm to another person by way of laziness is a heinous action.
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Now, prepare to exert yourself to be changed for the better. Here we go.
The first skill of The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success is Grammar. Grammar is the easiest of the five to master. It is also the fastest of the five to master.
Grammar is a set of rules for a specific language to handle assembling the parts of speech into sentences. The grammar comprising the US English System is based on the UK English System. The English language was defined around 800 AD, around 1,200 years ago. AU English is also based on UK English.
I spent eleven school years hearing about the parts of speech. A noun, a verb, and so on. I figured the parts of speech were about speaking and not writing. I asked my teacher in one of my grades about speaking versus writing. Essentially, they looked at me as though I was bothering them and told me to go away. I thought this was an odd behavior from someone who was paid to teach students. It turns out I was correct.
I rambled aimlessly for eleven years of schooling trying to understand how to use the parts of speech in writing. I would take some words now and then and put them here and there, both hoping and praying they were sentences that met some form of rules that I had never seen. It was a dismal learning environment.
Informing a person about anything without also providing relevance violates the purpose of communication. I shared the following statements during the September 8th, 2026, episode.
I begin this series by answering the only two questions that matter in communication: SO WHAT? -and- WHAT NOW?
A good presenter can answer these two questions about the material they present to their intended audience by way of a single sentence for each question. Here are my answers for you, as a member of my intended show audience.
You, as a listener of my intended audience, were then prepared to listen with a purpose. A teacher, instructor, or professor bears the same responsibility to their students. Learning is not a master-slave relationship. It is a willful act of a leader leading a follower. The follower is the student. The leader is the teacher, instructor, or professor.
I learned how to diagram a sentence in twelfth grade, the final grade to graduate from high school in the United States of America. I was taught the Reed-Kellogg System. I had never heard of diagramming a sentence until then. I have looked at sentence diagramming for years since then. The Reed-Kellogg System is the most effective sentence diagramming system I have found. Effective, in every sense of the word when considering sentence diagramming.
Why did the school system where I attended first through twelfth grade not have the good sense to see fit to teach us how to diagram a sentence by mandating in either the eleventh, tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, or first grade the construction of a class curriculum during any of the eleven preceding grades to teach us sentence diagramming? I was taught advanced mathematics in ninth grade. Sentence diagramming is as simple as a walk in the park compared to advanced mathematics. Why did the school system where I attended first through twelfth grade mandate of us during both the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades to write sentences in the US English System without equipping us with the skills to diagram the sentences we wrote? The answer to both of these questions is pure laziness on the part of the school system where I attended first through twelfth grade to not audit school curricula at all grade levels. This laziness is a heinous action.
I address my twelfth-grade English teacher in this writing as Mrs. English Twelfth. Mrs. English Twelfth treated us as college students in how she addressed us, how she taught us, how she assigned her homework to us, and how she graded us. Mrs. English Twelfth helped me see life beyond high school. Mrs. English Twelfth was stern, but not to the extreme. It was a sternness based on reasons that she presented to us at the beginning of our school year that were reasonable both then and now. She became assistant principal of the school the year after I graduated. Her promotion seemed to have gone to her head, with how I read the school history in the public domain of how she enforced student discipline. Mrs. English Twelfth then became the school principal a few years later. I cannot say she was one of my best teachers, but Mrs. English Twelfth sure helped me by teaching me sentence diagramming and how she treated us as college students in high school.
The thing for me about sentence diagramming is this: It has not changed in 1,200 years. A noun is a noun. A verb is a verb. Knowing how to connect them and the other parts of speech into a sentence with precision by diagramming the sentence is as important as breathing air is to humans. Assuring a sentence is constructed to meet the rules of the language is a great way to use the language, humor intended. How can we write a computer program when we do not know the requirements of the computer hardware? How can we solve a mathematical question when we do not know how to do arithmetic, when arithmetic is the basis for mathematics? The answer is we cannot do any of these if we do not know the requirements we must meet to do whatever it is we are trying to do. We then have the freedom to do what we want to do, once we have met the requirements of doing what we need to do.
I knew I needed to learn grammar. I knew I wanted to learn grammar. I had to accept the fact that the public school system did not succeed in teaching me grammar. I figured I could either cry and complain about not knowing grammar or go and learn grammar. I chose to find a way to learn grammar.
The twelfth-grade sentence diagramming benefit decreased for me in 2015. I learned the hard way the differences between US English, UK English, and AU English. The way was mixing the spelling of a term used in UK English into US English is not allowed in the grammar rules. A sentence diagramming system works on the premise of using only one language system to write each sentence to build an entire writing effort. I did not realize this aspect between when I learned it in 1983 and 2015. I doubt I will ever forget that lesson. The value of sentence diagramming returned to its high status in my life after I was able to regain my humility by accepting the shame of my error and moving on by not living in condemnation during my pursuit of learning. The point is ... learning will have bumps that result from committing errors. Learn from the errors by smoothing them out in your life. Then, move on and live life.
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The good news is the grammar rules of US English are used in over half of the societies of the world today. Learning the Reed-Kellogg System to diagram a sentence should only take a person two to three days to grasp the concepts and two to three weeks of focused effort to master the skill. I cannot overstate the value of learning the Reed-Kellogg System to the point of your being able to teach it to another person. Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, then you don't understand it yourself."
Please do not misunderstand my view of Albert Einstein. I do not worship him. I am simply using him as a noted historical figure of intelligence to illustrate to you some of the height, breadth, and depth of the five identified skills I present to you. My intent in citing Einstein to you is to help you understand that the effort to learn these five identified skills is possible without experiencing horrendous pain from the learning.
Next week, I will present on why learning the Reed-Kellogg System alone is not the answer to your understanding of how Grammar empowers you to use The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success.
Well, that's it for today.
RICHLY IS GOODLY!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Richly or Poorly Show!
I have enjoyed presenting to you today.
Until the next episode, I hope you will be safe and join me next week.
Until then.
© 2026 SH Dawson. All rights reserved.