On the bookshelf in my living room is a copy of Franklin Folsom's The Language Book, a 1963 book for pre-teenagers. Richly illustrated, the book covers topics as varied as animal communication, language origins, language families, the development of writing, Indo-European, sign language, spoonerisms, and communication by machine. It serves as a reminder that linguistics has much to offer teachers and young students – perspectives on grammar and writing instruction, history, multiculturalism and diversity, critical thinking, and science instruction. Yet linguists have not had much success in institutionalizing our field in the K-12 curriculum. The chapters in this volume are a way to build our field into the curriculum from the top down and the bottom up, and my aim in this chapter is twofold. First, I explore one of the reasons linguists have not had much success in the past: our failure to manage the misperceptions about linguistics and how our field relates to culture and to the goals of education. Next, I compare public perceptions of linguistics with those of two other fields: biology and visual art. This entails looking at the social and cultural controversies about evolution on the one hand and about artists and art on the other. In looking outside our field, I hope to highlight some common issues and to suggest some approaches for enhancing public understanding of the value of linguistics.