Cognitive science is accelerating math concept teaching to earlier ages

[steven johnson]

For children from educationally disadvantaged families, a lack of preschool preparation in basic math can put them behind for the resst of their educational career. Newer approaches are being used to cement basic quantitative concepts that form the foundation of elementary school education.

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts.

In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed.

Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them

[thunder rising]

1. I learned the the count to 3 by the time I was 1. oonnne ... twwwooo, threee ... whap!

[tonysam]

2. That's the last damned thing we need

is to push kids at even younger and younger ages and not allow them to be KIDS.

[HeresyLives]

3. The entirety of being kids is learning.

Teach your kids or China will. Your choice.

[tonysam]

10. No. You let them be kids and not robots

This shit is detrimental, and what happens is kids very early on end up being labeled special ed because of screw ups regarding inappropriate curriculum such as "whole language" (high school-style language arts) in the elementary grades and shoving full blown algebra in middle school. They become sped, and then they are basically tracked into second-class status.

[AdHocSolver]

4. The so-called science behind the theory of age-appropriate education is the biggest pile of manure.

It is the reason that many American children have trouble reading and spelling into adulthood.

This phony "science" was exposed in the book "Why Johnny Can't Read: and What You Can Do About It" by Rudolf Flesch, among others.

Having taken the required courses to teach and taught for two years, I was able to learn first hand that "educators", who are professors of education, and "scientists" who study the education of children are some of the biggest idiots and frauds on the planet.

Their voodoo science has done more to dumb down the American population than any other reason.

[elleng]

6. Tho you may have 'taught' for two years,

sounds to me as if you have no children of your own, or didn't teach them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/health/research/21brain.html?th&emc=th

[AdHocSolver]

12. I could write a book or two about education in America, including education at the college level.

The philosophical and pedagogical basis of the U.S. educational system was developed in the early twentieth century by the powers-that-be in response to the large numbers of immigrants and the rapid expansion of industrialization of that era.

In short, the ruling class needed to quickly train immigrants in at least minimal proficiencies in English and reading, writing, and arithmetic so that they could man the factories and offices of the corporations. Just enough history and "civics" was to be taught to indoctrinate the students in "patriotism".

I went to middle class public schools in a large city many years ago. They taught reading using the "look-and-say" method. We used the "Dick and Jane" readers.

"See Spot. See spot run. See Dick. See Dick run. See Jane. See Jane run..." Over and over again until your mind turns to mush.

I was fortunate to have, for my second grade teacher, a wonderful women who was planning on retiring at the end of the school year. She taught us phonics, which provided me with the opportunity to be able to read books, newspapers, and magazines beyond "grade level", as well as enable me to spell many words correctly without having to look in a dictionary.

Unlike many American children today, I enjoy reading, and developed skills in many areas of life through reading books and other types of reading matter, and applying what I read to problem solving.

In addition to the book "Why Johnny Can't Read: and What You Can Do About It" by Rudolf Flesch, there are the books of teacher John Taylor Gatto including the titles "Dumbing us down : the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling" and "The underground history of American education : a schoolteacher's intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling", among others.

Another set of books I read a few years ago are "How Children Fail" and "How Children Learn" by John Holt.

There are some book reviews of these books at a web site called LibraryThing.com, which I accessed through a local library web site.

A few short excerpts from reviews of Holt's books can explain better where I am coming from.

(snip)
***************
{A} quote attributed to William Hull (Educator). "If we taught children to talk they would never learn."...The author and Mr. Hull shared a 5th grade classroom. The book is a series of observational memos from Mr. Holt to Mr. Hull. The author intricately describes the communication gap between the school system and the child. Children want and need to learn. School systems want to teach. But the lessons often never meet in the middle."
***************

(snip)
***************
John Holt summarizes perfectly the problem with contemporary education: it emphasizes right answers rather than learning, production rather than thinking. Read this book to understand this problem and its results, as seen through his experience as a collaborative teacher and thoughtful observer. The rewards for "right answers" over thinking even persists at higher education levels. "What would happen at Harvard or Yale if a prof gave a surprise test in March on work covered in October? Everyone knows what would happen; that's why they don't do it." (p. 232)
***************

(snip)
***************
Holt blames the current system, pointing out that if a system consistently fails, the problem is with it, not its inputs or participants. In the summary section, he forcefully points out the negative effects of the current system - low self-esteem, ignorance about how to learn, and a mind trained not to want to do so.
***************

(snip)
***************
So far, one of the great quotations I've found is:"It used to puzzle me that the students who made the most mistakes and got the worst marks were so often the first ones to hand in their papers. I used to say, 'If you finish early, take time to check your work, do some problems again.' Typical teacher's advice; I might as well have told them to flap their arms and fly. When the paper was in, the tension was ended. Their fate was in the lap of the gods. They might still worry about flunking the paper, but it was a fatalistic kind of worry.... Worrying about whether you did the right thing, while painful enough, is less painful than worrying about the right thing to do." (74-75)
***************

(snip)
***************
The main message of the book is 'trust your children' - they are natural learners, and you are not going to have to force education down their throats. In fact, the less you do the better.
***************

(snip)
***************
In a similar vein, Holt also suggests that children be left alone to examine things, and given as much time as possible to get to grips with a task or challenge before receiving any instruction on it. He writes this with regard to maths and science experiments, but I think the principle could be widely applied.
***************

I do NOT blame teachers for this system. They are just as much victims of the system as are the students. The corporations, the politicians, the idiot academics, and nowadays the right-wing religious fanatics have so politicized education that it is difficult to imagine how meaningful education can be salvaged from the morass that we have today.

I have two children and they, for the most part, taught themselves. My daughter is working on her second degree after her first job was "outsourced", and my son is a computer guru who's knowledge about computer systems and the internet goes way beyond my expertise learned from twenty years of professional programming mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers in several computer languages and applications.

[elleng]

15. My daughters' first school's philosophy was based on

John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Haim Ginott, and current educational research.

The states that its curriculum 'evolves from an understanding of the stages of cognitive, social/emotional, artistic, and physical development. It promotes active, collaborative learning with an emphasis on building conceptual understanding, promoting creative, critical and analytical thinking, and encouraging problem solving.'

We found it necessary that they attend this private school due to what we thought to be inadequate opportunities for sound education in DC public schools at the time (about 20 years ago.) I believe that as a consequence of this early education, they have both chosen education-related careers. (I attended public schools in NY, and a public University in Ohio, fyi!)

None of this is easy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. And once again we target the disadvantaged

I'd like to see one new concept tried out on upper class kids. Let them be the guinea pigs for a change.

[elleng]

8. Unfortunately it appears that this post targets the disadvantaged,

but in fact such 'new' concepts have been and are being 'tried out' on upper class kids, and are working. (Mine, for example, not meaning to brag.) I think the title is incorrect.

The article in fact is correctly titled 'Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them.'

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Very first sentence:

"For children from educationally disadvantaged families,"

[elleng]

11. 2 paragraphs down, in the NYT article, its clear its about ALL children.

See what a headline can do!

'For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/health/research/21brain.html?hp

[AdHocSolver]

13. Eighty years ago, education researchers "learned" that reducing the vocabulary in early grades...

...would make it easier for children to learn to read.

So they got rid of phonics, i.e., learning to read by learning the alphabet and the sounds that the letters represented, and substituted the "look-and-say" method in its place.

"See Spot. See Spot Run. See Dick. See Dick Run. See Jane. See Jane Run. See Spot, Dick, and Jane run.", ad nauseum until the mind turns to mush.

The result is three generations of Americans who are functionally illiterate, and can't discern the value of what they read. This is great for advertisers and right-wing demagogues who spout propaganda. Several generations of readers who passively and unquestioningly absorb whatever they read, without the ability to discern propaganda, is the result of all these academic studies of "how children learn".

While in college, I worked for the Mass Communications Department and was assigned the task of videotaping a study about teaching by a professor in the College of Education. I was very impressed with the study as I taped it.

Turns out that my first teaching assignment after getting my certificate was at the very middle school attended by the students in the study. Several of the kids in the study were in my class so I asked them about their experiences. I was surprised to find that the whole "experiment" was staged. The students, who were supposed to be randomly selected, were actually carefully interviewed and assigned roles to play. Each day, they were given an informal "script" to follow.

What was in it for the kids? They were mostly minority students from poor inner city neighborhoods. The "study" took place in the summer. The kids got free breakfast and lunch, got to spend the day in an air-conditioned building, and swam in the university's swimming pool after "class". They were taken once a week to an amusement park or the zoo or some similar outing.

The professors' study, of course, gave them fodder to publish, and kept the grant money flowing. Years later, I worked for a different university and saw the same kind of academic fraud done there as well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Those videos are always staged. I love the ones where the teacher has a class of 5 kids.

This year my district is making us watch online videos of teachers in professional development. It's a joke. We are watching other schools' staff meetings. LOL

I want to ask if the bad teachers were told not to come to the meeting so they won't be on the tape. That's how they do it when they film kids. :rofl:

[elleng]

7. Was going to post the article, and I've sent it to my 'kids,'

ages 21 and 25, who DO teach, one 'learning' what she already knows, in university, and one who just DOES it, automatically (and having learned to do so when she was taught, grades k-3.) I wouldn't concentrate on the disadvantaged.

[mzteris]

16. great article!!!

Learning as play - play as learning. Incorporating concepts into their "real world" - making it concrete and not abstract.

My older son taught himself multiplication at 4 - and no - he's not a "genius". Once I explained the concept (he'd heard the 'times tables' on Arthur and wanted to know what that was) - he played with his manipulatives and figured out what 2 sets of 3 were, and that that answer was the same as 3 sets of two!! WOW! and so on.

My younger son could play a probability game (also at 4) called "less or more" by rolling two dice. The first player would roll the dice, the second one would "predict" whether his roll would be less than or more than the first roller. If you got it right, you "won"; if you didn't, you "lost". He figured out pretty quickly that if the numbers were more than 6 then the best answer was less than, if the roll was less than six, then the answer was more than.

I used an abacus and manipulatives (small objects) to "count" with and to add and subtract with them even when they were very young. I counted buttons and cans of water for juice and stairs and chairs and silverware. From their earliest age I tied the "number" with the "amount" so it was a concrete thing.

My older son - somewhere around 1 year old - would, when I would put one can of water in the pitcher and say ONE and then ask, "Is that enough"? he'd shake his head. I'd add another can, head shake, the third can would get a nod. It wasn't long before he could tell me how many MORE cans of water I needed to add to the pitcher.

When my younger son started Montessori in K - what a wonderful way they teach mathematics there - if you haven't heard of the "bead" system, check it out.

My younger is now in 5th grade and one of the best math students in the grade.

(and my older - now 16, is doing an independent study for Alg II and Trig.)



Edited 'cause I left some words and punctuation out and some of those sentences didn't make a darn bit of sense!

[girl gone mad]

17. I was a ngelected toddler..

My parents had issues related to the war and PTSD, drug abuse and just being young and stupid. I was essentially left on my own or with neighbors for long periods of time. I definitely wasn't getting good supervision or interaction. I even got into the liquor cabinet and ended up hospitalized.

Yet, I ended up about 6 years ahead of my peers in math by HS. Go figure.

I've also read of other mathematically gifted people who were very isolated or even abused as children.

Being good at math isn't everything.