Here are my notes from a great article in Slate about educating kids.
I have a baby girl on the way & I am super interested in how her little brain works. After reading this article I’m pretty convinced that this is how adults learn as well.
The situation:
“Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they’re reading books to babies in the womb.”
The big question:
“Shouldn’t very young children be allowed to explore, inquire, play, and discover, they ask?”
Thesis:
“While learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution.”
The proof:
“Two forthcoming studies in the journal Cognition—one from a lab at MITand one from my lab at UC-Berkeley—suggest that…direct instruction made the children less curious and less likely to discover new information.”
The explanation:
“Why might children behave this way? Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.”
The conclusion:
“Knowing this, it’s more important than ever to give children’s remarkable, spontaneous learning abilities free rein. That means a rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play. Not school for babies.”
