4 ms·

I have a toddler of similar age and, despite reading to him every day, I'm not sure I care how early he learns to parse the symbols himself. He gets the alphabe

I have a toddler of similar age and, despite reading to him every day, I'm not sure I care how early he learns to parse the symbols himself. He gets the alphabet, and can sound out very few words, but I don't actively teach it unless he shows interest. I get especially frustrated with English because of all its exceptions and inconsistencies. (E.g., his name starts with 'C' but is pronounced the same as if it were 'K'. He knows that his breakfast 'Cereal' begins with the same letter as his name, but why does it sound like 'S'?) It feels like a poor system to encourage a child to learn when they could learn other things. My delight in my child's learning comes from his ability to use and process interesting communication. I loved seeing him develop an understanding of what it is to "trick" somebody, learning how to synthesise an original story, to attempt sarcasm, how to mash two words together to form a made-up word, or to convey implicit information through pitch and speed of speech. These are the little milestones that I actively try to teach, because each one raises the quality of our communication together.

Herodotus38 11y ago
I totally agree with you about English being a horrible language to try and teach. Not to mention things like 'th' or 'sh' or heaven help us, "ph" sounds. My hope is that if he can read independently, he can sooner start self-directed learning. I agree with you that there is much more to enjoy and teach than reading as an ends to itself, but the other things you mentioned, which involve creativity and synthesis, are arguably more important. I feel like nothing about education or learning is really well known, and we get one shot in life. I'm going to try and do what I think best to try and make my toddler a better person than me (whatever that means). I think the important point in all of these kinds of essays is that they draw parents who are invested in their children, which is probably what really matters more than "I did Doman's method" or "I spent an hour with flashcards". What I liked about this essay was the little glimpses into things that he tried that I haven't thought of yet (like alphabet magnets to play with). Some of the links he had to other people's blogs (especially one of the homeschooled kids) made me cringe as it was such unabashed promotion of how great their child was, and here is a picture of his graduation at their house: the kid is by himself with his parents, no other children around. What kind of life is that? What good is it to "create a genius", if that is even possible, if they don't enjoy life?
someone7x 11y ago
As a parent I too have experienced the frustration with English. I want to teach my daughter some foundational principles from which to build a predictive model, but with English the insanity seems to begin immediately. Some letters have multiple sounds, like C and G. Some sounds have multiple representations, like DG/J and KS/X. Some letters don't have their sound in their name, like W and Y. Reading phonetically is a technique that only works until it doesn't; silent characters, partially anglicized loan words, etc. So while I'm trying to teach all this, I'm also doing my own discovery of what a qwerty-cubed language I'm dealing with. I never realized how broken the written language is until I tried to show it to someone.

Herodotus38 11y ago

I totally agree with you about English being a horrible language to try and teach. Not to mention things like 'th' or 'sh' or heaven help us, "ph" sounds. My hope is that if he can read independently, he can sooner start self-directed learning. I agree with you that there is much more to enjoy and teach than reading as an ends to itself, but the other things you mentioned, which involve creativity and synthesis, are arguably more important. I feel like nothing about education or learning is really well known, and we get one shot in life. I'm going to try and do what I think best to try and make my toddler a better person than me (whatever that means). I think the important point in all of these kinds of essays is that they draw parents who are invested in their children, which is probably what really matters more than "I did Doman's method" or "I spent an hour with flashcards". What I liked about this essay was the little glimpses into things that he tried that I haven't thought of yet (like alphabet magnets to play with). Some of the links he had to other people's blogs (especially one of the homeschooled kids) made me cringe as it was such unabashed promotion of how great their child was, and here is a picture of his graduation at their house: the kid is by himself with his parents, no other children around. What kind of life is that? What good is it to "create a genius", if that is even possible, if they don't enjoy life?

someone7x 11y ago

As a parent I too have experienced the frustration with English. I want to teach my daughter some foundational principles from which to build a predictive model, but with English the insanity seems to begin immediately. Some letters have multiple sounds, like C and G. Some sounds have multiple representations, like DG/J and KS/X. Some letters don't have their sound in their name, like W and Y. Reading phonetically is a technique that only works until it doesn't; silent characters, partially anglicized loan words, etc. So while I'm trying to teach all this, I'm also doing my own discovery of what a qwerty-cubed language I'm dealing with. I never realized how broken the written language is until I tried to show it to someone.