Symbol-Brained

[Bekah]

At 8:46 AM -0700 8/10/05, Dave Monroe wrote:
>I love this article.  Our line on it was, scientists
>prove children are stupid ...
>

Interesting article, Ghetta.  Pretty fun mostly,  and hugely 
informative as to why it is truly very rare for  kids to  learn to 
read prior to age 2 1/2.  Piaget went into some of this pretty well 
but not such detailed experiments or with kids so young.   I actually 
had some problems with this example (and then much of the point of 
the research came into focus):


>Meredith Amaya of Northwestern University, Uttal and I are now 
>testing the effect of experience with symbolic objects on young 
>children's learning about letters and numbers. Using blocks designed 
>to help teach math to young children, we taught six- and 
>seven-year-olds to do subtraction problems that require borrowing (a 
>form of problem that often gives young children difficulty). We 
>taught a comparison group to do the same but using pencil and paper. 
>Both groups learned to solve the problems equally well--but the 
>group using the blocks took three times as long to do so. A girl who 
>used the blocks offered us some advice after the study: "Have you 
>ever thought of teaching kids to do these with paper and pencil? 
>It's a lot easier."


What are they doing with the pencil and paper?  What are they doing 
with the blocks?  The base of the old style (pre-No Child's Left 
Behind ) teaching and the new style ("Just the facts, Ma'am,  what's 
on the test?") .   To teach borrowing in subtraction without teaching 
the  concept involved  is not a good idea in the long run, but it 
might get them through the high-stakes testing at the end of grade 
one.    No thinking involved in just showing them how to work the 
formula without that irritating "why?"    Teaching thinking has 
always been difficult.  And  it includes providing blocks  or 
something to count with because as the article showed quite nicely in 
other places,  kids are not that skilled in symbolic logic under the 
age of 7.    (Piaget)

By the time I finished the article I recognized the theme for what it 
essentially is;  The "research" they say is behind the  "research 
based" learning systems these days assumes that the goal is passing 
the  tests  not comprehending the material and internalizing the 
concepts.   It is the contention of some teachers who have been 
around longer than the last two or three educational fads that real 
learning always takes a bit more time.

I'm not defending all the manipulative based activities (those 
complex things do really divert attention!) ,  however,  it really 
helps to teach concepts  for number theory and measurement and 
algebra and other aspects of math.  (And I'm not even going to go 
into learning styles, kinesthetically oriented kids and alphabet 
manipulatives.)

Bekah
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20050812/88f06a25/attachment.html>