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This may sound contrarian - I think memorisation work with young children is great but reading is more than memorising it involves decoding and mapping sounds a

This may sound contrarian - I think memorisation work with young children is great but reading is more than memorising it involves decoding and mapping sounds and meanings in a very complex process that restructures the brain. There seem to be a few children who just make the leap to reading very young but most western education pushes very early reading when I believe many children are not developmentally ready and it is a type of mental torture that leads them to hate reading. Parents who read to children often transfer a great deal of knowledge of language, culture and whatever areas you read about. It also typically transfers an interest in reading. I’m not in any way advocating for withholding reading instruction from children who are interested but to not be caught in the drive for early “literacy” that seems to lead to so much pain and so little good in those very early years. I am not a professional educator - I had a very different path to literacy and have walked through that with my children and seen this in others.

vlovich123 3y ago
I think people fetishize learning and discount the role of memorization. The two go hand in hand - memorization means you can quickly recall something. Quickly recalling relevant things / making it more autonomic means it's easier to learn things built on that. That being said, the problem is actually usually the parents and not the kids. The reason is that you need to be an excellent child educator: * Super patient. Kids have naturally short attention spans, can get overwhelmed & frustrated. Detecting that & knowing how to navigate that (i.e. do they need a rest & try again later or do they need to practice working through it). * Meeting kids where they are. Kids normally are super curious naturally, but they have to be put in a position to succeed. You have to distinguish "this is hard" from "I don't really have any interest in this". The former requires carefully helping them through the problem. The latter is can be "ok - then you don't have to do it", but that's only once they have enough independence. When they're super young, there's a certain amount of external "no you have to do this" you have to teach them. When they're stubborn, you still have to be patient & find ways of working through it. * Kids that young have to be engaged with daily for many hours. That can be challenging when you have two parents working full time. Basically, the kids in the article have a huge advantage not only because the technique outlined is super effective, but also because the parents are super effective child educators: https://youtu.be/8U-Lza__Kko https://youtu.be/8U-Lza__Kko. Things to note in that video: the child goes off on tangents regularly & the mom lets it go because the kid is excited / happy & gently redirects attention back once some time has passed.
iopq 3y ago
You can't map sounds when you can't remember the difference between b, d, p, q

vlovich123 3y ago

I think people fetishize learning and discount the role of memorization. The two go hand in hand - memorization means you can quickly recall something. Quickly recalling relevant things / making it more autonomic means it's easier to learn things built on that. That being said, the problem is actually usually the parents and not the kids. The reason is that you need to be an excellent child educator: * Super patient. Kids have naturally short attention spans, can get overwhelmed & frustrated. Detecting that & knowing how to navigate that (i.e. do they need a rest & try again later or do they need to practice working through it). * Meeting kids where they are. Kids normally are super curious naturally, but they have to be put in a position to succeed. You have to distinguish "this is hard" from "I don't really have any interest in this". The former requires carefully helping them through the problem. The latter is can be "ok - then you don't have to do it", but that's only once they have enough independence. When they're super young, there's a certain amount of external "no you have to do this" you have to teach them. When they're stubborn, you still have to be patient & find ways of working through it. * Kids that young have to be engaged with daily for many hours. That can be challenging when you have two parents working full time. Basically, the kids in the article have a huge advantage not only because the technique outlined is super effective, but also because the parents are super effective child educators: https://youtu.be/8U-Lza__Kko https://youtu.be/8U-Lza__Kko. Things to note in that video: the child goes off on tangents regularly & the mom lets it go because the kid is excited / happy & gently redirects attention back once some time has passed.

iopq 3y ago

You can't map sounds when you can't remember the difference between b, d, p, q