Pragmatics and Education

F. Lowenthal Universite de lEtat a Mons 24 rue des Dominicains 7000 Mons Belgium series of "Language and Language Acquisition" conferences The was born in Mons in 1977. One day the Dean said to me: "You are doing research in that field, why dont you try to organize a small conference?". I thought about it, tried to contact people, received several answers and finally told the Dean: "There will be so many participants and I need so much money to organize the conference". His answer was a short one: "I told you to organize a SMALL conference". I do not know what he did, but he succeeded in working a miracle: the funds were found and the conference took place. This miracle has been repeated twice: once in Mons (1980) and once in Ghent (1983). The group of people interested in these conferences has become bigger, but the aim of the organizers is still the same: to bring together people working in different fields such as mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, logic, computer, science, education, psychology, medicine, --- and to give them the possibility to have long discussions even if the time devoted to the presentation of papers has to be reduced.