Declan and I sat yesterday in the waiting room of the local medical clinic and hammed it up with a couple of grannies who were there ahead of us. Dex is normally quite reticent around strangers, but grandmothers seem to get a bye past the first two rounds of glowering and proceed directly to staid silence, working their way up to monosyllabic mutterings much faster than most other people.
Once he started to talk a little, both grannies (as all grannies do with all kids) commented on how well-behaved he was and how smart he seemed and, oh my, he knows his alphabet and can count to 10 already? Delightful! This line of conversation incited one of them to mention that there are all sorts of instructional toys and videos out there these days that are educating our kids -- it's no wonder that my Declan seems so smart!
I had to bite my tongue.
Dex knows his whole alphabet (upper case) and is working on the song now -- frequently after we put him to bed, much our amusement. The order of that instruction was intentional. He can count to 10 and knows all his digits, though that zero is a bit tricky, disguised like the letter "O" as it is. And the colours of the rainbow are at his beck and call to identify wheresoever he sees them and deems them worthy of vocalisation.
This was accomplished without any fancy instructional videos or toys. His alphabet was scribed letter by letter on an erasable scratch pad with him in my lap. The numbers became familiar by using our fingers and the magnetic board in the kitchen. Frequent use of Play-Doh is to blame for familiarisation with colours. (It comes out of carpet easier if you wait for it to dry, then tackle it vigorously with the tip of a butter knife.)
When Dex was the age Tavish is now - about five months - we invested in an educational cornucopia of 'stuff' touted as being specially designed to promote early learning and build the sort of foundation that is vital for a child's future education. It covers phonics, math, progressive reading levels, spatial relationships and the like. We've yet to use anything but some of the starter books with Declan, though that's mostly because the material is geared for slightly older children. Still, given a choice, I'd take my money back.
The comment from one of the grannies yesterday is what brought this to mind. Our kids aren't going to be smart because they had some of the more advanced tools when they were young; they're going to be smart because my wife and I take great interest in their education and want to instill in them a desire to learn. Our boys' parents are going to be primarily responsible for teaching them, not frikkin' Elmo videos or the latest toy.
The problem I have with the casual comment by the granny was all that stood behind it. We expect and demand that somebody or something else - as early as possible - take on the onus of educating our kids. Buy this video, or Leap Pad, or interactive book, or attend this class... and thank god when I can finally ship them off to school and have somebody else do it full time. Free at last from the inconvenience of ensmartening my own. (Painted with a broad brush there.)
In my mind, the first thing that's going to educate my sons is the influence my wife and I have on them in this early stage of their lives. The first five years, say. If we give them the best tools to use to train their brains but don't also inculcate the desire to explore the unknown and question the known, then we've failed. As well lob a scimitar at a young man and tell him to go rule a nation. If he doesn't already have the passion and the drive to be Arthur, he'll end up Dudley Moore.
I already feel some angst about what to do about formal education. Is public school going to be good enough for the boys? Have them spoon-fed a curriculum and me left wondering if the teachers ignited a passion to learn? Or rather, fanned the flame I sincerely hope was started at home? Or was a perfervid hunger quelled by adherence to rote and standardisation? I came out of the Catholic school system and then university all right; but I can count on one hand the number of really positively influential teachers I had in 20 years, and one of them was my grade 11 gym teacher - whose influence had nothing to do with scholastics.
Whatever we want and/or can afford to do about our sons' education, I am totally stoked, already, about getting to help with homework. I'm going to be one of those dads who sees his kid come home from school and say, "You get to solve quadratic equations and then write an essay on MacBeth's motivations?! Lucky! Can I help?"
'Tis the mode of response, fully as much as the aid, that matters.