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Far too early learning.
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I was just listening to a Radio Four program on the fantastic listen again function and I heard something that really got to me.
It was about parents who really push things on their kids with flash cards and music and all that. What’s the point? Everything I’ve heard suggests that it’s a waste of time, I mean playing classical music while your pregnant, who knows a baby likes that kind of music, why not rock or jazz or even hardcore.
More than anything, if this is so successful where are all the geniuses that they should be producing? Flash cards have been around for 10 years plus now so there should be a small army of genius kids, but there’s not.
Personally I think you should just let kids play most of the time, read to them yes, and encourage them to read when they get old enough but trying to teach them Japanese when they’re three weeks old?!!
Any opinions? I’d love to hear from someone who has done this, or had it done to them.
It was about parents who really push things on their kids with flash cards and music and all that. What’s the point? Everything I’ve heard suggests that it’s a waste of time, I mean playing classical music while your pregnant, who knows a baby likes that kind of music, why not rock or jazz or even hardcore.
More than anything, if this is so successful where are all the geniuses that they should be producing? Flash cards have been around for 10 years plus now so there should be a small army of genius kids, but there’s not.
Personally I think you should just let kids play most of the time, read to them yes, and encourage them to read when they get old enough but trying to teach them Japanese when they’re three weeks old?!!
Any opinions? I’d love to hear from someone who has done this, or had it done to them.
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Comments
Only this week she wrote a play. It was called Cinderella and she wrote all the words herself, she wrote it as a play should be I.E what the narrator said, Cinderella said, ugly sisters said etc. She is just in her 1st year of junior school. The last exam she had at school she was above average nationwide in the 3 tests.
So my view is teaching kids early does work, if they are brought up with teaching at an early age they can enjoy it. If a child does not want to learn then I dont think you can make them, if they are not good in one topic they will be good at something else. But in my case my Daughter was very demanding, she wanted me to write all the time with her, read all the time with her etc.
She did not start school till she was almost 6 as her birthday falls in September, if she had been born in August she would have started school the year before.
If she had not sat down with me and read books, did educational things then I do not think she would be as bright as she is. I didnt just do reading and writing with her but we did creative things like painting, making models and we also used to have cooking days. Now she can make herself a sandwich, she can make a salad (although I cut cucumber etc) and she makes the greatest looking salad you could wish for, everything is displayed nicely and the presentation is just out of this world for a kid her age.
So as far as im concerned the sooner you teach them things the better, children love to learn even at a young age, as long as you make it interesting for them they will show you some pretty amazing stuff.
It's what the child wants to learn that should be focussed on before school, and not what the parent wants them to learn. if i had a child who wanted to paint i wouldn't make them learn their times tables, what would be the point? the painting would almost certainly help them develop to a much greater extent.
Although I have heard that sign langauge for young children can be good, I know a mum who's done that with her kid and she was very impressed.
I just see no point in trying to teach a kid who's six weeks old the names of famous dead americans.
Oh if your intested and you have the time the Radio four show was very good.
I agree, thats a bit silly. However i used to always play certain types of music when i was pregnant and crazy as it seems she actually did settle down when these songs came on.
I know at my Daughters school they are really doing things differently in the way they teach them. they make sentences to spell words IE : BECAUSE would come out like :
Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants, so they teach them a full sentence so they remember how the word is spelt.
Screwtape how can a child tell you what they want to learn ? Its the adults job to try and stimulate the child. A 4 year old cant come out and say "I want to learn my times tables" because they have never heard of them, its the parent who decides what they teach them. If you have a child who is just not interested then chances are they will not perform very well anyway.
My point was meant to be that the parent should observe what it is that the child is interested in and encourage that interest without enforcing what might seem a necessary curriculum such as maths, history, creation, and what-have-you.
Yeah I agree sending a kid to school when they are barely out of nappies is a totally different thing. I honestly do not think our Becks could have managed school at 4 1/2, she would have been shattered. I think the whole school intake needs to go back to how it was by having 2 intakes.
She did go to nursery school so that did help, but at the end of the day she couldnt go to school because of when her birthday was, if she had been born 11 days earlier she would have started school the year before. Thinking about it now she probably did better because whilst she was at home with me on a morning she got one to one attention then on the afternoons she went to nursery so had the interaction with other kids and also had the school enviroment.
But I still think teaching them stuff at an early age does make them more advantaged, they want to learn and even when our Becks couldnt really write very well i used to sit and really praise her, so she beleived in herself, she was proud of what she had done and most of all she wanted to please Mammy......which she did
I also think if a child is not interested then you cant force them to be, they will be interested in something and i think teachers/parents should channel them into things that they can do better.
Just for the record our Becks was a late walker, her speech was not very good (due to her hearing problem) at 3 years old I still could not understand things she was saying. So kids do things at different times and they are all not going to be brilliant in everything they do, but there will be something that they are very good at
Personally Im of the opinion that they stifle development- imagination is not encouraged, as the toys only allow play within set parameters.
I dont actually think children start school too early in this country, because a childs life prospects are often finalised by age six. And given how so many parents nowadays dont read to their children, or teach them the alphabet, or basic numeracy, it is left to the formal school system to try and help these kids as best as it can.
The trouble in this country is that education is too formal- no child should be sitting ANY exam until at least age eleven. And children learned well before SATs, it just wasnt in a way the Government could measure and draw up into a league table.
Ive never heard of the research which says a childs life prospects are often finalised at age 6. Can you point me in the direction of that please.
I certainly agree that early education is too formal and agree with you about the exams. I think its far too much pressure at a young age.
I think I saw it in a Government White paper, tbh, so i cant put a handy link up, but it was the basis of Blairs First Steps initiative.