Smrt

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.

Comments

[Linda]

I'm very impressed my your and Amy's preferred mode of teaching. I am not against the utilization of learning "toys" to the extent you express unless they are used as substitutes for hands-on parenting. Nothing creates a better atmosphere for learning than love and encouragement. The problem I do have with the toys is that they tend to squelch creativity. A child who knows physics and can quote Shakespeare is disadvantaged if he/she isn't taught to use their imagination. For the record, if I had known long ago what I know now, I would have home-schooled my kids.

[Mark]

Tell them grannies to kiss your hiney (or however you spell it).

I arrived home from work yesterday to find Ben's oversized, padded alphabet tiles (very hard to describe) scattered about the living room floor. He was telling us the color and the letter on each, and then we went over some words that start with each.

We pride ourselves on the relatively tiny amount of TV our boy watches, so I was a bit aghast when Ben looked at a lion on the back of a Little Golden Book called "Saggy Baggy Elephant," and said, "That's Madagascar." He knows the name of the animal, but thanks to Dreamworks, now it has a different name. Oh well, at least calls a sea turtle a sea turtle, instead of a "whoa dude" (yes, somebody's kid does that).

[Mark]

Just got word from the wife. Ben's seen Madagascar twice -- in the theater when he was one, and at home after we got it on DVD.

Plus, when the heck do they use that word in the movie?

The only logical conclusion is that our 3-year-old boy can read.

[Alec]

If two years of teaching hadn't destroyed my ability to shed tears or feel emotion, this post would definately have brought a tear to my eye.

The Force bless you Simon!

[Paula]

To be fair to the grannies, there was never the same emphasis on preschool learning when we were young, nor the sheer amount of media and educational programming there is now. We were not expected to know how to read when entering kindergarten. I remember being anomalous for having that skill - as was my mother for using 'flash cards' with me!

[Suebob]

Kids are such wonderful little learning sponges. Provide a friendly, rich environment for them to learn and they will do it. I worry because so much of what kids do now is mediated by adults - TV and video games instead of games they make up; sports teams instead of real, creative play; art classes instead of fooling around with paper, crayons and glue.

My issue with school is that children have such diverse talents, but if their innate talents don't fit the school mold (say they are not good at reading or math, but they can balance on one hand, knit, lead groups of people) they will feel stupid because their grades will be bad. I know so many people who have spent lifetimes trying to get over the damage that school did to their self-esteem.

[Simon]

Mark, unlike your boy, Declan watches far too much television. Mostly his Pixar movies. Many of the scenes of which he is able to emote several seconds before the action starts. Scary, almost. Though not, thankfully, to the "whoa,dude" degree.

Alec, only two years and you're already shriven of most emotion? I can't wait to see what you're like when you've been teaching for a decade. Assuming you're still alive.

Paula, it's almost like you're calling yourself a granny in your comment! And I know how Not-Old you are. I should hope that Dex will have at least rudimentary reading skills by the time he starts kindergarten. Shakespeare by grade 2.

Suebob, that's exactly what's at the heart of my fear for pushing my boys through the public school system. Cookie cutters are only good for making cookies.

[rick]

It's Marian here but I'm on Rick's computer today. I feel that most kids have a natural burning desire to learn and great curiosity. It's not as though anyone has to incite that in them. What we do need to be careful of is our well-known adult ability to destroy said enthusiasm through over-structuring and the other ways Suebob mentioned up there.

Max has been extremely fortunate in that he's had fantastic teachers all through his 13 years of school. Unbelievable luck for the most part, and a few duds. I can count the bad teachers on one hand. Many of the really excellent ones were men, which I also count as great luck for a boy — having so many good, male role models.

I'll be forever grateful to those people.

[Paula]

I vigourously deny ever calling myself a granny! There is, however, an undeniable focus on earlier achievement where our children are concerned that we didn't experience growing up. I saw this firsthand when my daughter in Grade 6 last year was studying math concepts I remember first learning in high school.