Many home educating parents draw a sharp distinction, an opposition even, between what a child learns because she wishes to learn and what a parent teaches because she thinks it wise that the child learn this or that piece of knowledge. Today and tomorrow I want to explain why this seems to me to be a misleading and dangerous idea, liable to harm a child's natural development in the cause of an abstract and fundamentally irrational ideology. I want to begin with the teaching of reading.
At the age of twelve or fourteen months most ordinary children will be indicating to their parents that they wish to know what the name of some object. They usually signal this by the means of what we call 'Telegraphic Speech'. This is some sentence or phrase which is reduced to a syllable or two. In my daughter's case this entailed pointing at something and saying, 'Zat?'. This was, I suppose, a contraction of 'What's that?' All parents, unless they are too busy, will reply, 'That's a dog' or whatever the thing actually is. This is spontaneous learning on the part of the small child. She has asked for information and the adult has supplied it. Most of us go much further than this though; we teach our children about symbolic representation. If our child points at a pink stuffed toy and asks, 'Zat?', we tell her that this too is a dog. It is of course nothing of the sort. It is a piece of nylon fabric stretched around some kapok stuffing. Two round chunks of polymer have been sewn to the front of this object as crude representations of eyes. Nevertheless, it is supposed to be a dog and so we tell our child, 'It's a dog'. We are teaching her that one object can stand for or represent another. We extend this by showing her picture books which have splashes of coloured printers' ink on sheets of paper. When our child asks, 'Zat?', we say 'Its' a dog'. Again, just as in the case of the stuffed toy, this is not true. We are trying to accustom her to the idea of symbols, the notion that one thing can be used to represent another. Of course the splashes of ink are not really a dog, but nor are we deceiving the child. We are teaching her to think symbolically. This is very important, because of course language and thought consist of nothing more than the manipulation of symbols.
So far, I have described what happens in any normal family. Children are taught to associate real objects like dogs with symbolic representations. It is at this point that many parents stop, which is puzzling. If we are prepared to teach a child that one lot of ink splashes, a picture, can represent a dog, why would we not show her another set of ink splashes in this form, dog, and tell her that this too represents a dog? It is precisely the same as telling her that a picture of cuddly toy represents the animal and yet is a step too far for some parents. Above is the wall of my daughter's bedroom when she was fifteen months old. As can be seen, I was teaching her the visual representation of dog, but also the printed version. She learnt both simultaneously and with the same pleasure.
I think that the problem lies in us. We see one activity as being 'play' or normal childhood activity and the other as being 'book learning' or 'school'. Young children do not make this distinction unless they pick it up from us.
The world can be a puzzling and confusing place to a small child. Anything we can do to fill in bits of the puzzle and help them to make sense f their world cannot fail to be good for them. Apart from any educational benefit, they will be less fearful and nervous as they learn to make more sense of what is happening around them. They have seen print all round them, now they learn that it is not just a pattern, that it actually conveys meaning. What's more, they can share in this process by making sense of these little black squiggles themselves.
I cannot begin to tell readers of the pleasure that my daughter and I both gained from this activity. Neither of us regarded it as being different from our usual play and yet by the age of two she was reading fluently. I had set out to teach her to read and she had learnt easily as part of her ordinary life. Why I would have denied her this or deliberately delayed the process until she was six or seven, I really cannot say.
Tomorrow I shall look at how this same process can be used to teach any academic subject up to and including GCSE level in physics or biology. I have been racking my brains for any disadvantage to a child in being taught in this way and have been unable to come up with any at all. The only problem would come if I transmitted my own feelings to the child about what was happening and caused her to think that teaching and learning were somehow different from everyday life. Then, I can readily imagine that she might start cutting up rough about it and resisting what was happening. Since learning was never differentiated in this way, this problem did not arise.
At the age of twelve or fourteen months most ordinary children will be indicating to their parents that they wish to know what the name of some object. They usually signal this by the means of what we call 'Telegraphic Speech'. This is some sentence or phrase which is reduced to a syllable or two. In my daughter's case this entailed pointing at something and saying, 'Zat?'. This was, I suppose, a contraction of 'What's that?' All parents, unless they are too busy, will reply, 'That's a dog' or whatever the thing actually is. This is spontaneous learning on the part of the small child. She has asked for information and the adult has supplied it. Most of us go much further than this though; we teach our children about symbolic representation. If our child points at a pink stuffed toy and asks, 'Zat?', we tell her that this too is a dog. It is of course nothing of the sort. It is a piece of nylon fabric stretched around some kapok stuffing. Two round chunks of polymer have been sewn to the front of this object as crude representations of eyes. Nevertheless, it is supposed to be a dog and so we tell our child, 'It's a dog'. We are teaching her that one object can stand for or represent another. We extend this by showing her picture books which have splashes of coloured printers' ink on sheets of paper. When our child asks, 'Zat?', we say 'Its' a dog'. Again, just as in the case of the stuffed toy, this is not true. We are trying to accustom her to the idea of symbols, the notion that one thing can be used to represent another. Of course the splashes of ink are not really a dog, but nor are we deceiving the child. We are teaching her to think symbolically. This is very important, because of course language and thought consist of nothing more than the manipulation of symbols.
So far, I have described what happens in any normal family. Children are taught to associate real objects like dogs with symbolic representations. It is at this point that many parents stop, which is puzzling. If we are prepared to teach a child that one lot of ink splashes, a picture, can represent a dog, why would we not show her another set of ink splashes in this form, dog, and tell her that this too represents a dog? It is precisely the same as telling her that a picture of cuddly toy represents the animal and yet is a step too far for some parents. Above is the wall of my daughter's bedroom when she was fifteen months old. As can be seen, I was teaching her the visual representation of dog, but also the printed version. She learnt both simultaneously and with the same pleasure.
I think that the problem lies in us. We see one activity as being 'play' or normal childhood activity and the other as being 'book learning' or 'school'. Young children do not make this distinction unless they pick it up from us.
The world can be a puzzling and confusing place to a small child. Anything we can do to fill in bits of the puzzle and help them to make sense f their world cannot fail to be good for them. Apart from any educational benefit, they will be less fearful and nervous as they learn to make more sense of what is happening around them. They have seen print all round them, now they learn that it is not just a pattern, that it actually conveys meaning. What's more, they can share in this process by making sense of these little black squiggles themselves.
I cannot begin to tell readers of the pleasure that my daughter and I both gained from this activity. Neither of us regarded it as being different from our usual play and yet by the age of two she was reading fluently. I had set out to teach her to read and she had learnt easily as part of her ordinary life. Why I would have denied her this or deliberately delayed the process until she was six or seven, I really cannot say.
Tomorrow I shall look at how this same process can be used to teach any academic subject up to and including GCSE level in physics or biology. I have been racking my brains for any disadvantage to a child in being taught in this way and have been unable to come up with any at all. The only problem would come if I transmitted my own feelings to the child about what was happening and caused her to think that teaching and learning were somehow different from everyday life. Then, I can readily imagine that she might start cutting up rough about it and resisting what was happening. Since learning was never differentiated in this way, this problem did not arise.
