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The New York Times reports:
As school reformers nationwide push to expand publicly funded prekindergarten and enact more stringent standards, more students are being exposed at ever younger ages to formal math and phonics lessons [...]. That has worried some education experts and frightened those parents who believe that children of that age should be playing with blocks, not sitting still as a teacher explains a shape's geometric characteristics.
But now a new national study suggests that preschools that do not mix enough fiber into their curriculum may be doing their young charges a disservice.
The study found that by the end of kindergarten, children who had attended one year of "academic-oriented preschool" outperformed peers who had attended less academic-focused preschools by, on average, the equivalent of two and a half months of learning in literacy and math.
"Simply dressing up like a firefighter or building an exquisite Lego edifice may not be enough," said Bruce Fuller, the lead author of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you can combine creative play with rich language, formal conversations and math concepts, that's more likely to yield the cognitive gains we observed."
U.S. News published a related piece recently arguing for more attention to preschool curricula and specific content, in addition to other measures of preschool programs. In contrast, a story in the Atlantic last year pointed out new "academic" approaches to preschool may actually be doing more harm than good. And any immediate gains (as cited in the new study) frequently turn out to be temporary. One oft-cited alternative is Finland's approach, which delays formal schooling until age 7, after a year of relatively unstructured government-mandated kindergarten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:11PM (8 children)
People that have had more training do better at subjects that need training than those without training, good jorb there accademidian
It's no wonder that education policy is screwed most academics need a bit or in most cases a lot more training themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:27PM
I think it is contrary to previous studies that showed informal "training" works better for younger kids. Not my field though.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:41PM (6 children)
As usual, we see a clueless Internet commentator unable to see through their own hindsight bias, tell everyone how obvious are the results of science.
No, it isn't totally obvious that 'structured' nursery time is beneficial to children's cognitive development, hence the mention of those who believe that children of that age should be playing with blocks, not sitting still as a teacher explains a shape's geometric characteristics.
If the results had been the opposite, we'd have some other idiot telling us how obvious it is that it makes no difference whether gurgling toddlers play with bricks or watch a teacher talk about them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:49PM (5 children)
The children should be playing with blocks, but that play should be structured in a way that naturally gets the child to focus on some aspect of critical or geometric thinking.
Emphatically, children should not be forced to sit and listen to a teacher explain a shape's geometric characteristics.
You see? The real idiot here is you; you've implied the stupidest interpretation of these results. That's the real reason this isn't "common sense", because people like you still cannot understand what is being said.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:11PM (4 children)
They called them manipulatives and charged a lot of money for the fancy name although presumably 1st graders cutting out circles and squares from construction paper would have worked just as well or maybe paper cuts would have turned that educational lesson into a tragic slaughter.
The real puzzle is more or less relative to what exactly?
So a decade ago my kids suffered thru early childhood education and the instructors or baby sitters or whatever you call them were pretty hot for manipulatives at that time. Now is the point of the news story that they're hotter or colder for manipulatives than ... last years conference presentation .... when my kids were preschool ... when I was preschool ... when grannie was in preschool ... I donno and it seems a kinda important aspect of the debate.
Thats before we get into bigger issue problems. What does outperforming mean in a school system that is propagandized as a failure yet is actually pretty top tier?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:32PM
Willing to accept highly technical work for peanuts once we turn them loose in the work-"force."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:38AM (2 children)
What? Either you don't know what a good education looks like or you're deluding yourself. Most of our K-12 school system is based on rote memorization and it's essentially one-size-fits-all. The standardized tests mostly just test for rote memorization because that's the easiest thing to test for and it can be automated quite simply. I'm not sure how such a school system qualifies as "top tier", unless you're using the 'X is better than Y and Z, so X must be good!' fallacy. Sure, maybe you can point to plenty of countries that have even worse school systems, but that still doesn't mean ours is good. Or maybe your standards are simply pathetically low, and you think that being able to churn out literate people who can do basic math and several other simple things qualifies as a raging success. Care to explain?
(Score: 2) by rondon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:54PM (1 child)
Tiering, by its very nature, is a method whereby one compares one thing to other things of the same nature for classification as "more" or "less" of something. Which is exactly what GP did.
Just because you have an ax to grind that is on topic, doesn't mean you should go about building straw men on other folks posts. It is a bit rude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @10:46PM
I don't think it's a straw man. In fact, I directly addressed the issue of 'X is better than Y' in my post. At best, what he said was useless since one thing merely being better than something else is not by itself meaningful, and at worst it was fallacious. I take issue with calling our school system "top tier" because it gives people the idea that it is overall good, even if that was not your intent.
Tiers are often useless and misleading, especially in this case.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:23PM (1 child)
things:
Of course, we all know the real purpose of pre-school (and schooling at large): To provide a (usually government-funded) daycare, so that parents are free to earn tax monies for the State. That's why they are so bad at schooling; preparing the youth for productive participation in society is not the primary purpose.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:43PM
Daycare is the essential function with concrete pass/fail criteria, if they screw that up, they're busted - out of work.
Education is a much softer goal, especially in early years - you can't take a single year's sample and determine whether or not the school is doing a good job, or they just got good/bad students that go around.
What the study _should_ be pointing out is that a variety of approaches is better than any single one. All flashcards, or all freeplay is never going to perform as well as a varied approach.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:33PM (18 children)
There is a selection bias (i.e. only rich kids with smart parents go to kindergarten). They may attempt to subtract it, I only skimmed the paper. Nonetheless I see no estimate in the paper of systematic uncertainty/bias. They report statistical uncertainties only. I don't believe the systematic uncertainty is negligible.
Also, again lightly skimming the paper, I only saw comparison with "whole population" and "no preschool"; not a comparison with "not rigorous preschool".
It seems hellish to try to estimate the systematic bias or uncertainty due to these sorts of effects, which to me casts the whole social sciences field into doubt. E.g. there are many highly correlated factors which affect the outcome of preschool education.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:47PM (15 children)
I read just the other day that if you take poor black kids and poor white kids with the same IQ score, then they have the same longitudinal probability of climbing out of poverty; the only thing that seems to matter is a person's intelligence.
The following is becoming hard to deny: It's not the case that rich people are more likely to end up as higher-quality people, but rather that higher-quality people are more likely to end up rich; high-quality people produce biologically high-quality children, who are then put into high-quality learning environments (because that's what high-quality people would think is a good idea)—however, it's not the learning environment that makes the difference with respect to the general population, but rather the innate qualities of the child himself, and that is not something that you can replicate for every child.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:57PM (6 children)
I don't think this is related to GP - a bit trollish.
It might be true; however, IQ is correlated to how good the education i.e. the argument is circular. Also, citation needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:30PM (5 children)
"[Citation]" is a lazy man's retort; here [blogspot.com], specifically here [pewtrusts.org]:
It's completely related to the OP's point!
Being rich doesn't make a difference; being white doesn't make a difference. The data indicates fairly strongly 2 things: What matters is IQ, and it's becoming clear that IQ is largely heritable.
It's not the case that your IQ becomes decent because you've completed a good education; rather, you can complete a good education because you've got a decent IQ.
This is borne out by the data; educating people provides only a small and temporary improvement in tested IQ, which fades with time and becomes negligible in adulthood.
Need a citation? Look it up yourself this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:36PM (1 child)
In fact, let's just stop educating people all together and implement a hereditary caste system. I'm sure that's never been tried before and will work out well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:44PM
Successful people mate with successful people and produce fairly successful people; people fall from the heights, others rise up, but one basic overriding aspect remains the same: Successful people mingle with each other, and there are various strata of successful people.
What you and many people seem to be suggesting is that people in higher strata be forced to mingle with people of the lower strata. Not only is this coercion abusive, but it's not even going to improve the situation; hanging around higher-quality people doesn't really seem to improve lower-quality people. IT JUST DOES NOT WORK.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:37PM (2 children)
> It's completely related to the OP's point!
I would have chosen a less controversial example than race. Black vs white tends to get peoples' heckles up. Hence comment that the post is a bit trollish.
Resisting the urge to look up what a heckle actually is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:48PM
A troll is someone who says silly things, especially things the troll knows are wrong, in order to provoke outrage rather than to foster discussion.
Just because a statement raises the heckles of someone somewhere in the world does not make that statement "trollish"; it's impossible to make progress if people must always censor even legitimate discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:49PM
First, get the term right. It's hackles, not heckles.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hackles [dictionary.com]
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
Wasn't the comment saying that the problem is a lack of discussion in the original document about some of the potential bias? The mention of rich kids or whatever was to illustrate the value what wasn't being commented on. It's possible I am missing something here, I don't see how your point relates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:32PM
See here. Right here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:03PM (4 children)
You have a good point, but just as every time it has been made before you attach it to a false premise: that intelligence is an "innate qualit[y] of the child". It's not. IQ is not assigned at birth by genetics, unless you want to claim that the typical 18th century peasant would have the same IQ as a contemporary public-schooled pov. IQ, and therefore chance of being successful, depends also on the child's environment.
That environment starts at conception. Prenatal (and postnatal) health care impacts the child's starting health, which in turn impacts how much attention the child can pay towards learning instead of surviving. The first year of life exposes the child to the ways of the world, which could be anything from a a stable, loving family to a chaotic mess. From then on, each moment in life builds upon the last. And you only get one chance at a lot of these things, because nobody is going to go back and relearn baby skills with baby toys and baby language. Neither are they going to go back to preschool and relearn skills relevant to relating to others, regulating emotions, recognizing and working within boundaries, or exploring self-expression.
Yes, there is probably some objective intelligence which determines a child's ability to succeed. But never make the mistake of believing that more successful demographics are therefore worth more or deserve their success. There is no biological imperative behind class segregation. There is a reinforcing social structure which can and should be changed to provide everyone with the tools needed to be successful.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:13PM (3 children)
Please. PLEASE. Read modern research on the matter; there is very clear evidence that genetics plays a humongous role in determining IQ.
Obviously, you can hurt a person's IQ in the same way that you can stunt a person's height. However, you cannot make any random person taller by feeding that person more food; that person's maximum height is largely determined by genes (and the genes for very tall modern humans seem to be a relatively recent genetic development, as a point of interest).
The cited study [soylentnews.org] clearly indicates that there is, in fact, no appreciable "reinforcing social structure" that determines "segregation"—the sole determining factor in the ability to escape poverty seems to be IQ—and as already pointed out, IQ is quite basically heritable (poor people in the U.S. are not starving to the point that height is being stunted, for example; neither are they starving to the point that IQ would drop dramatically).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:06PM (2 children)
I find it quite curious that the argument linking intelligence to social success seems always to be made next to the argument that intelligence is genetically predetermined. This treads very dangerous ground, because "genetically predetermined" is just one mental leap away from "racially predetermined". It's troubling that the people making these arguments are never very careful to clear up this easy misunderstanding.
Your citations speak of "kids escaping bottom quintile childhoods". It doesn't try very hard to make a point about kids that started in advantageous backgrounds versus those that did not. And that's the thing: it's not that surprising that similarly impoverished groups of white kids and black kids are similar in terms of what gives them more opportunities. We're not comparing rich kids to poor kids here; we're comparing poor kids to poor kids and finding that they quite similar regardless of race.
And furthermore, that economic success is determined mainly by measurements of intelligence does nothing to prove that the less successful are less intelligent. What it does prove is that they are measured as less intelligent. Of course a D student is not going to be as successful as an A student. The A student has more opportunities, but even more importantly the A student has a positive reinforcement loop around getting smarter.
What if our measurements are just wrong? What if black kids look less intelligent for societal reasons, and because they are predetermined to be less intelligent they experience negative rather than reinforcement - leading more frequently to dropping out of the system which undervalues them rather than taking part in it? Maybe the "non-shared" components of success are really the cause of it, and a child's measured intelligence is simply correlated to society's ability to provide the environment that child needs to thrive.
We need to be careful attributing success to racially-determined factors for the same reason we need to be careful attributing stellar phenomena to aliens: it shuts down further avenues of research. Sure, it could be that white people are more successful because they are just superior, just like pulsars could have seemingly unnatural regularity because they were built by intelligent extra terrestrial life. But if we accept that answer (and many people will prematurely accept the former answer because it confirms their existing biases), we miss the chance to discover deeper truths.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:52PM (1 child)
Not everything is "cultural construct". Sorry.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:53PM
Whatever happened to the relatively insightful AC I was responding to? Your comment is profoundly anti-knowledge and anti-science, as well as destructive to an ongoing conversation.
The word "fact" is used a bit too judiciously, I think, when non-scientists talk science. The only "facts" are simple, objective observations, such as that apples fall toward the ground when they become detached from trees. Even well-accepted ideas, such as that something called "gravity" is pulling the apple toward the Earth because of its huge mass, are still not "facts" even when we use our thorough understanding of them to launch satellites into orbit.
When talking sociology, the "facts" are buried deep in the statistics. We have survey results that represent mostly factual responses to specific questions (though always prone to some transcription error), but that does not translate into facts about whom we are (it says at least as much about whom we would like to be seen to be). We have factual test results, but that does not translate into facts about the test subjects (beyond that subject X answered Y to question Z) because the test may be invalid or fail to reflect what we think it reflects.
So what "argument" do you think is actually a "fact"? Do you think you live in a world in which complicated biological processes are routinely proven as robustly as that 0.999... = 1 [wikipedia.org]? Not everything is an objective truth. Sorry.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:25PM
It doesn't actually follow. The fact is neither white or black kids are likely to climb very far out of poverty. Likewise, no matter how low their IQ, rich kids are not all that likely to find themselves poor later in life. Having parents able to give them a "small million dollar loan" has a lot to do with that.
All of that suggests that the real problem for society is a lack of class mobility in general. We should be as concerned for the poor white kid as the poor black kid (that should be obvious).
The racial component is simply that for historical reasons, a black kid is more likely to be born poor than a white kid.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:54PM
Social science is an oxymoron.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:46PM
Day care in Australia is usually longer, even up to 6am to 6pm.
Pre-school is meant (in the year before school) to be 600 hours in the year, roughly 9 to 3 for three day a week, or 8:30 to 4 for two days per week.
Pre-schools expect children to be toilet trained, and usually 4 or 5 years old (funding for 3 year olds was cut a few years ago)
Day care centres accept children as young as 8 weeks.
Day care centres have staff with two or four years training. (Guess which are cheaper)
Pre-schools have teachers with four years training.
Not surprisingly, even day care centres with "preschool programs" aren't going to have quite the same educational outcomes.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/preschools-better-for-children-than-day-care-20130810-2roqx.html [smh.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:53PM
Education research is the cesspool that spawned NHST in the 1940s (ie EF Lindquist). Sure enough this paper is filled with the usual misconceptions and even has a bunch of editorial comments still attached to the pdf.
(Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:59PM
Before we carve out yet another big chunk of childhood and put the kids to work, other studies like that have also found that the head start disappears by 1st grade.
At the rate we're going, we'll have parents sweating bullets flashing cards at 1 month olds telling them they'll never get into the right pre-pre school if they don't quit sucking on their toes and get to work.
Those kids will later be called the burnt out generation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:16PM (6 children)
How else is the average 10 year old [youtube.com] going to have a basic understanding of calculus by stardate 41509.1?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:35PM (4 children)
If you can imagine making tinier and tinier slivers, or getting closer and closer to some number, etc., then you can master calculus.
Calculus is one of the most important branches of mathematics as far as modern civilization goes, and yet it sits very firmly within the realm of humanity's innate intuitions.
Seriously, a 10-year-old could master calculus just fine. The trick is getting a 10-year-old interested.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:59PM (3 children)
All depends on how it is taught, I aced one semester of Calculus based on concepts, mechanics, doing the work, getting results.
I took another semester of Calculus that was tested closed book, based entirely on memorization of large numbers of pre-computed integrals formulas, no instruction in the methods to arrive at those results yourself, just know that the integral of sin(e^cos(x)) is blah, and hundreds of others before the semester is done - final exam: tour de force, all formulas from the entire semester fair game on the test. It might as well have been med school with anatomy and physiology vocabulary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:30PM (2 children)
I too had a similar experience in uni. Had a really great calc I professor who taught the mechanics, let you bring a page of notes to a test, and got myself an A plus a great insight into the mathematics (Meaning I actually understood and learned the math).
Contrast that to the idiot who taught calc II. No test material, and would stand at the board and hammer out equations and formulas with no explanation of their application. Just yammered away running out his retirement clock. I complained after the first few days and he pretty much didn't give two fucks. I told him to he couldn't teach someone to shovel shit, left the class, and withdrew getting half of my money back.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:40PM
That was my Calc II experience exactly, except that I just stuck it out, got the D on my transcript, and forever had to convince placement counselors that, no, I am actually very good at math as you can see from my SATs, GREs and dozen As and A+s in other math courses, so could you please get over that one outlier? (no, they really couldn't get it out of their head: D in math, he must have problems with it.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:44PM
My uni experience was the reverse. The teacher for Calc I was an idiot that just droned on like he had been for the last 30 years or so, the persons that thought Calc II and III had to correct all his fuckups and put the students straight.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:16PM
Actually, there are alternative methods of teaching basic calculus principles that can easily be understood by 10-year-olds today. The algebraic formulations may be too complex for the average 10-year-old, but geometric approaches can actually teach kids a lot, and with a surprising amount of rigor. For just one example, see Tom Apostol's introduction [mamikon.com] to an alternative visual (geometric) way of doing integration problems to find areas of many complex shapes. (Many people may remember Apostol from those dark blue rigorous "intro" to calculus tomes he pioneered at CalTech.)
Anyhow, the basic concepts of calculus are simple. With a little creativity, the concepts can be taught to young kids and they can develop intuitions about it, long before they have to manipulate abstract symbolic formulas for integrals and derivatives.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:27PM (4 children)
Finland's approach is as far as I know more or less the Scandinavian approach. You can put your offspring into daycare from around the age of 1, they stay there to about 6-7 when they are transferred to basic elementary school (which lasts for 9 years), followed by another 3 years (upper secondary school, in theory this isn't mandatory but in reality it is -- if you don't go you are screwed and can never attend a higher form of education) which is followed by college or university (3+ years).
Mostly daycare or pre-school is just to teach kids to socialize and play -- also to make their parents have to go to actual taxpaying jobs instead of staying at home with their offspring. They learn basic things but there are no classes or anything, things that normally then get repeated again in a more formal setting once they start elementary school such as the alphabet and numbers.
* * * * * *
Someone here mentioned the importance of calculus and how we should teach that to 10 year old. Fuck that. Calculus is a relic from a pre-computing age. Just put all the effort into algebra, as noted you can solve calculus problems by just adding little slivers or boxes -- which in turn is where algebra is superior. Having taken enough math at university to last a life time I can tell that most students are okay with Algebra -- but the failure rate in classical calculus is disturbingly high.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:45PM
Sometimes (many times?) failure rates in courses like Calc II are intentional to "thin the herd" heading into majors that require higher maths. Unfortunately, the way these weed-out courses are executed often has little correlation to actual ability in the topic. Sure, people who are less mathematically inclined will drop at higher rates, but my Calc II experience was a giant pile of memorization work - very similar to some pre-med courses.
I don't think it "hurts" anyone to learn that integrals can be performed analytically instead of always doing them via summation methods. I've actually used analytic methods at least three, maybe four times since I graduated (in 1989).
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:09PM (2 children)
Doesn't seem to working with Fourier analysis (frequency components in input), control theory (la place), optimization problems, dynamic processes etc. So while there might be too much math. It's still needed to get a grip on some foundation. Implementing say a ADSL modem is hard without some of the math mentioned.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:51PM (1 child)
It's not a matter of there being no use for calculus, there is. But as the starter thread said -- we are not going to teach calculus to 10 year old kids. If they are to be taught math lets at least spend the time and effort on something that will or might be useful for the most of them -- and if we have to pick that would be algebra. There is just very little use for them to know about Fourier analysis/series/transform, Taylor-Maclaurin series etc. That said if you do manage to master all aspects and knowledge of Fourier transform then you'll probably be employed forever.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:12AM
10 year old kids are taught plain four +, -, *, / math operators etc and no algebra nor calculus? But there has to be an option to get the foundation on the path to calculus.
Regarding Fourier transform, I think it takes more for eternal employment.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:13PM
I guess they do that now. How else would they know that some kindergartners outperformed others? Which means that kindergarten is now more structured and formal than when I was that age. Back then, preschool (any preschool) was still something of a novelty. I guess it stands to reason that if kindergarten is much more structured than children who are exposed to that sort of structure earlier have an advantage over those who go in cold. Kindergarten used to be a gentle introduction to structured schooling. In the new age I guess kindergarten is now 1st grade and pre-school is what kindergarten used to be.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:13PM
That pupils outperformed peers in academic subjects may be an incomplete picture. Do they outperform others in creativity? awareness? wisdom? Not everything is measured using academic performance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:07AM
wow, different results in different studies. It's almost like children are not all identical little bricks in the wall. Just as a far out theory, maybe some do better with structure and guidance, while others do better without. /end sarcasm.
I would think that the type of intellect and self-confidence level of the child would have the largest effects here. Insecure (probably introvert) kids want rules, logical structures and guidance. Confident, boisterous, extroverts want to run free. Both types of intellect have their advantages and disadvantages, which is why neither has died out. Society does best with a mix.
Perhaps they should cater to all types, rather than one style fits all.
ps. Anyone who thinks kids that young don't already have individual intellectual styles has not paid attention when dealing with kids.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:03PM
But let's suppose we do that. Then we have moderately more educated people by the time they hit 7 years. And then what? People live a lot longer than 7 years. I don't buy that a little improvement in the beginning will still matter when they're 40 years old, much less 80 years old. At some point, we need to realize that education is not just some rat race that we rush kids through, but a life-long process that isn't necessarily helped by faster progress as kids. I think this will be particularly obvious when humanity longevity starts to increase substantially. For example, when people live 200 years or 1,000 years old, it won't make sense to spend so much time and resources optimizing their first seven years of existence.