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I find a lot of private schools are trying to justify their fees by offering “virtual learning” which is just a teacher trying to apply in-person techniques in
by loloquwowndueo 6y ago
I find a lot of private schools are trying to justify their fees by offering “virtual learning” which is just a teacher trying to apply in-person techniques in front of a camera, and then a parent struggling to keep the child interested in the (non-interactive) screen. This is doomed to failure and entirely unnecessary and pointless at the kindergarten level.
Also if the parents really want to and help the child, it’s entirely possible for them to be reading, counting and doing basic math by age 4.
- querez 6y agoI'd love to see a source / more information about your claim regarding kids of age 4.
- asymptosis 6y agoI started teaching my daughter letters at the age of three (eg "that letter looks like a snake, what does a snake say?") She was able to read basic signage while going around town before she turned four. She could independently read non-trivial books by the age of five. She was learning the Linux command line by the age of six. Young children learning to read isn't usually about their own innate ability. It's about whether they have someone who reliably puts in the hours with them. It probably also helps to model the behaviour, so they see you reading books yourself in your spare time.
- mlyle 6y agoAnd as someone else who's kids did this: You end up with no books that are an appropriate reading challenge but also developmentally appropriate, and a kid who is really bored in school and not using the time to build good study and homework habits. I think it's a neat party trick to have a kid who is 4 and a fluent reader, and that it has some utility... but I might emphasize different things if I had it to do over again. At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all :D
- SamBam 6y ago> You end up with no books that are an appropriate reading challenge but also developmentally appropriate What? It's just the opposite. What about the books that a parent typically reads kids that age at bedtime? Those are generally above the reading level, but at the developmental level. Indeed, the whole annoying thing with kids learning to read is that -- at least for kids who have been read to frequently -- their taste in books is well above the "see spot run" level that their reading is at. At age 4 and 5, my kids were into Ramona, Roald Dahl, Charlotte's Web, Pipi Longstocking, etc. It took them til age 6 or 7 to be able to read those comfortably. Learning to read early is in no way a curse, or a "party trick." For my kids, and many others, it has instilled a love of reading. Also the notion of a "party trick" is gross, like it's something the parents do to show off. The kids who learn to read early do so because they are interested in it. > At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all Ah, so you're just biased against kids who read early.
- zdragnar 6y agoMy personal experience as an early reader lines up pretty well with the post you're replying to. School was interesting, but the lack of challenge meant that I didn't really develop a lot of habits that would have been really beneficial later on. Conversely, rather than be held back by not reading as early, I wish there were more opportunities for students who were well past their peers but not so much that they could skip a grade. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to not having much choice in schools is being stuck with the lowest common denominator of expectation for students.
- caddemon 6y agoI think the bad study habits thing isn't really specific to learning to read early though. Even if you were deprived of all outside of school reading you probably wouldn't have been particularly challenged by school. So it's not something that could be changed by "not encouraging early reading", it's something that can really only be changed by revamping our school system, or being lucky enough to have parents with the background/resources necessary to provide academic challenges outside of the school. I also think a lot more kids would be academically able to skip a grade than currently do. Skipping forward can be a nightmare socially, unless you do the skip really early and not more than a year or so ahead. When I was in 3rd grade the teacher actually told my parents to move me to a better school if they could - and they were willing/able to afford the tuition to send me to a good private school, but I liked my friends and refused to switch. I wish there were a good way to disentangle the social and babysitting elements of school from the academic ones somewhat. That could allow students to progress at a more personalized pace.
- WalterBright 6y agoIt's also completely unnecessary to teach a kid that before age 6.
- asymptosis 6y agoWhy is it about what's "necessary"? There is nothing wrong with wanting to pass on a love of learning, and recognising the ability of a child to participate in the culture of the mind.
- lupire 6y agoYou don't need to teach multiplication and reading at age four to teach a love of learning and participating in a culture of mind, and pushing it a year or too early is just a less efficient way to teach those skills.
- asymptosis 6y agoWhy are you focusing on multiplication? That was one aspect out of what was being replied to.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y agoI mean it's well known that you can teach young children complex cognitive skills. There are preschoolers with high competence at difficult musical instruments and sports skills for example. I don't see, and haven't found in relevant reading or experience, any way reading that early is more valuable to the child than anything else they could be taught. All it really announces is what skills the most influential adults in the kid's life value.
- eru 6y agoWho cares about a slight loss of efficiency? Just don't push them, if they don't want to. If they show an interest, feel free to teach them.
- retrac 6y ago
- mlyle 6y agoI think most kids can do this. All 3 of my kids have been able to read, write a sentence (with very bad handwriting), and understand the concept of repeated addition and multiply slowly before age 4. It's also only very poorly correlated with better academic outcomes overall.
- nitrogen 6y agoI'm absolutely amazed by how much detailed Minecraft knowledge a 3/4 year old can retain from YouTube videos. If parents find some way to redirect that capacity to academic knowledge, I'm sure it is also possible.
- eru 6y agoFor the older generation, the equivalents were Pokemon or dinosaur knowledge.
- nevinera 6y agoYou won't get any, instead you'll get a stream of anecdotes. Children's development schedule varies wildly, not on a fixed and consistent timetable that lines up with public school curricula.
- fwip 6y agoI don't know about sources, but I was reading new books by myself at age 3. My mom read bedtime stories to me quite a lot and I was (for whatever reason), very motivated to understand those words. I don't know if I knew any math at that point, but I feel like I could probably count up to 5.
- smeej 6y agoI was the same way, except apparently I just figured out how to read by watching my parents point at the words as they read and understanding the patterns. (Nobody realized until decades later that I was autistic and had a superpower with patterns.) But I was the oldest, so neither of them figured out that was unusual until my pre-k teachers pulled them aside after my first day and were like, "Did you know smeej can read? Not look at pictures and make up a story. Lots of kids do that. I mean books without pictures." My folks thought nothing of it. Even now, I'm told the way I read is weird. I don't read a word at a time. I read blocks of text several lines long all at once. I don't have to subvocalize each word. In the end, it all comes down to how this child is developing, not how some abstract theoretical child "ought" to develop. The trouble with schooling is that it's trying to make one size fit too many. Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way. There's no reason any child needs to learn at the same pace as any other, or even that children need to learn subjects in some sort of balance. It might simplify things for the instructors, and their instructors, but it happens at the expense of the children.
- maxwelljoslyn 6y ago> I read blocks of text several lines long all at once. Hello, spirit brother! > Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way. I agree this would be superior to what we have (here in the US.)
- 6y ago
- IncRnd 6y agoMy happy, well-adjusted child absolutely could read, count, and do basic forms of math at the age of 4 years old. We were simply there as parents for her to buttress her curiosity and expose her to new concepts. I recall how a friend of my wife once watched our daughter. We were both so incensed upon our return when we found our daughter glued to the television having watched cartoons like a zombie.
- Sunspark 6y agoAll work and no play makes daughter a dull girl. Don't be such tyrants, let her be a kid and do something different for a change.
- IncRnd 6y agoWhy would you believe that we raised our daughter as tyrants, never letting her play or do anything different, based upon your reading an Internet message and not asking a single question? > Yes, I am judging you, because you were incensed because she watched cartoons once. What a strange reading. We, plural, weren't incensed due to her watching a "cartoon once" but because she had been dumped in front of a television for hours without adult supervision, without interaction with her siblings or friends, without books or going outside, or anything else. Not everyone views dumping children alone in front of cartoons for hours on end to be a reward.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoIt's not a choice between learning and playing. Play is one of the primary ways young children learn things.
- eru 6y agoAnecdotally, quite a few Singaporeans I know learned to read before they turned three. Usually the parents taught them. (In contrast, some of my German friends boast proudly of riding a bike at that age.)
- zoomablemind 6y ago> ...quite a few Singaporeans I know learned to read before they turned three. In what language? English, Mandarin, Malay? I'd be amazed if it were Mandarin at that age.
- eru 6y agoThe people I know who read so early did so in English as far as I can tell.
- igetspam 6y agoPure anecdote but my kid started sight reading around 2.5 and was legitimately reading at about three. We thought she might be purely sight reading until we brought home new books and she'd read them. She's just over 3.5 and has moved on to "chapter books." (Nothing over 25 pages or so with 3_4 page chapters.) She learned to read by being read to and answering her questions and learning the sounds and then trying them. She's just starting to spell words over four characters and math is still tricky (only tried addition) but she's definitely literate. I won't say it's possible for every kid but it's definitely not impossible.
- AuryGlenz 6y agoI apparently did the same thing as your child. There was one book in particular I had read to me a lot to the point where I memorized it, and from there I largely learned what each letter does. I think intelligence is a factor, but the innate desire to read is critical.
- MattGaiser 6y agoAnecdotally, I was reading chapter books by age 4 (apparently). My Mom just read a lot to me, hours and hours a day and I listened to audio books with read-a-longs.