Young children learn in a different manner from that of older children and adults, yet we can teach them many things if we adapt o...ur materials and mode of instruction to their level of ability. But we miseducate young children when we assume that their learning abilities are comparable to those of older children and that they can be taught with materials and with the same instructional procedures appropriate to school-age children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much of the pressure contemporary parents feel with respect to dressing children in designer clothes, teaching young children acad...emics, and giving them instruction in sports derives directly from our need to use our children to impress others with our economic surplus. We find "good" rather than real reasons for letting our children go along with the crowd.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do mat...h. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly, young children can begin to practice making letters and numbers and solving problems, but this should be done without w...orkbooks. Young children need to learn initiative, autonomy, industry, and competence before they learn that answers can be right or wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class ...parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement--a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No authority in the field of child psychology, pediatrics, or child psychiatry advocates the formal instruction, in any domain, of... infants and young children. In fact, the weight of solid professional opinion opposes it and advocates providing young children with a rich and stimulating environment that is, at the same time, warm, loving, and supportive of the child's own learning priorities and pacing. It is within this supportive, nonpressured environment that infants and young children acquire a solid sense of security, positive self-esteem, and a long- term enthusiasm for learning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So while it is true that children are exposed to more information and a greater variety of experiences than were children of the p...ast, it does not follow that they automatically become more sophisticated. We always know much more than we understand, and with the torrent of information to which young people are exposed, the gap between knowing and understanding, between experience and learning, has become even greater than it was in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The idea of childhood as a social invention, in retrospect, is hardly credible. In the Bible, in writings of the Greeks and Romans..., and in the works of the first great educator of the modern era, Comenius, children were recognized as being both different from adults and different from one another with respect to their stages of development. To be sure, the scientific study of children and the increased length of life in modern times have enhanced our understanding of age differences, but they have always been acknowledged.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this r...ole is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Preschoolers sound much brighter and more knowledgeable than they really are, which is why so many parents and grandparents are so... sure their progeny are gifted and super-bright. Because children's questions sound so mature and sophisticated, we are tempted to answer them at a level of abstraction far beyond the child's level of comprehension. That is a temptation we should resist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »