In recent years, there are many controversies about children's literacy in early childhood education, mainly focusing on one point, that is, how old is a child suitable for literacy? One view is that the earlier the better, the earlier children can read and develop their intelligence; Another view is that Chinese characters are abstract symbols and children are in the period of intellectual development. Letting children memorize these abstract symbols too early will hurt their imagination and creativity.
Because I have children, I am writing a children's literacy book (titled "5 hours to teach children 150 common words"), and I joined this discussion, only to find that this is a very complicated and important issue, far more than this or that.
In ancient times (very old, about 3000 years ago), aristocratic children entered primary school and learned to read first. "History of Guan Bao in Li Zhoudi" records: "Bao Shi admonished the king's evil and raised the son of the country with Tao. It is the six arts of teaching: one is five rites, the other is six music, the third is five shooting, the fourth is five control, the fifth is six books, and the sixth is nine teaching. " That is to say, in the Zhou Dynasty, Bao's official name was mainly responsible for reminding the king not to do bad things, and the other was to educate aristocratic children. Besides teaching them manners, music, riding and shooting, morality, etc. And teach them "six books", that is, literacy.
What is "Six Books" or Xu Shen's view is the most representative. He said: "(Six Books) refers to things, and those who refer to things can see them. Up and down is also. Second, pictographs, pictographs, are drawn as things, not as bodies. So are the sun and the moon. Third, the sound of sound, the sound of sound, in the name of things, for example, complement each other, rivers also. Fourth, knowing, knowing, friendship is better than class, seeing false, Wu Xin is also. Fifth, turn notes, turn notes, build classes, agree to accept each other and take exams from time to time. Sixth, borrow, borrow, there is no word in it, relying on sound to seek things, and the commander is also. " This passage is a bit long and needs translation. Mainly speaking, "Liu Shu" refers to six word-formation methods, such as object, pictograph, pictograph, knowing, annotation and borrowing. What is the specific content? We'll talk later.
As early as the Western Han Dynasty, scholar Liu Xin also had a saying. He said that the six books are pictographs, images, images, sounds, notes and loans. This sentence is recorded in Ban Gu's Literary Annals.
Pay attention to the order. Xu Shen said that "Six Books" refers to things, images, sounds, cognition, annotation and debate, while Ban Gu said that six books are images, images, images, sounds, annotation and debate. Later scholars generally adopted Xu Shen's definition and the order of ban gu.
To sum up, it is to teach by pictographic characters, cognitive characters, pointing characters, pictophonetic characters, phonetic symbols, annotation characters and word-making methods.
For example, learn pictographs first. The sun, the moon, the mountains and Sichuan are all pictographs. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, these words are written (painted) like this: the sun, the moon, the mountains and the rivers are all figures, and the image points are stick figures, so just write them in square characters, and children can remember them easily.
Then there is literacy. Let's look at a painting first: this is a rock painting of "people herding sheep" found in Rem County, Xinjiang. In the picture, there is a sheep on the left and a man on the right is archery with a bow. Needless to say, this is hunting. It can also be said that this is the earliest word "hunting". This method of fusing two pictures together can be called composite image, thinking mode is called cognition, and the term used in word-making is called "combined pictograph". Of course, this is a picture rather than a word, but cognitive words are created in this way of thinking.
There are many such characters in Chinese characters. For example, in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the wood is written like this: One side is horizontal, and the lower two halves are roots.
So, one wood is called Screaming Trees, the other wood is called forest, and the third wood is called forest;
Hugh, leaning against the tree alone, is called Hugh, taking a rest;
Dan, the sun is the sun, which means the horizon. Together, the sun rises on the horizon, called "Dan". This is knowledge. The third method is called pointing, which is to add a logo to the graphic to reflect it. For example, on the top, draw a horizontal line first, and then point a little on the top to indicate the top;
Next, draw a horizontal line at the bottom and show it bit by bit; Ben, a little under the tree (meaning tree), means root, and later extended to the fundamental meaning; Fierce, draw a pit with an "X" on it, which means danger. Remember, these words and methods are easy for children to understand. Take a few minutes to draw them, and the children will remember them all. Try it if you don't believe me. Ideographic characters, cognition and reference are relatively simple, and there is not much controversy, so I won't say much. But I want to tell you that this teaching method is very effective, conforms to children's thinking habits, and is easy for children to accept and understand. I also try to teach children to draw and explain a little. It is no problem to learn dozens of words in an hour. Why is this happening? I found a profound and scientific truth from it. Let's analyze it.
Let's talk about hieroglyphics first. A little observation will reveal that children's thinking begins with images. When the child is over one year old, you can take him outdoors to see mountains, rivers and trees, and then draw them with stick figures. Children can tell (this ability may be available in a few months, but we don't know because children can't talk).
This is an image memory or image thinking, and any child has this ability, which is the most basic way of thinking of human beings. I once marveled at the performance of some gifted children: write down a string of irrelevant numbers and let the children read them again and repeat them, which is basically accurate. But then I learned about the way these children think about counting, and I didn't think anything unusual. They also remember abstract numbers in images, such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. After reading the numbers, they recorded them as images and said them. Anyone can do it with a little training.
Therefore, it is not accidental for the ancients to adopt this method, but there are profound reasons. This method is much more scientific than our modern method of memorizing words horizontally and vertically. It is much more advanced than the above method of memorizing abstract numbers with irrelevant images. Just now we said that hieroglyphics are graphic memories, and then we went on to say what we know and point to.
As we said above, literacy means that two or more images combine the symbols of the image scene to express the meaning, so it is also called combined pictographs. To understand this meaning, we need to use two ways of thinking: imagination and association.
Pointing to things means adding indicative marks on graphs and schematic diagrams to remind people to pay attention to key points and guide the direction of thinking, so at least two ways of thinking are used: association and reasoning. After a little observation, we will find that the methods and ways of thinking of the ancients are surprisingly synchronous and similar to the development of children's thinking.
For example, the way we tell children about "pony crossing the river" is this: first draw a pony, and the child will remember the image first, then add a river to let the child know that it is a pony crossing the river (association), and then draw an arrow on the river, and the child can infer that the pony crossed the river from here. If these modes of thinking are linked and compared with the order of word creation, we will find that the method of word creation is pictographic → knowing → referring to things →
Images: single image → combined image → image+indicator →
Thinking mode: image memory → imagination association → associative reasoning → there is a route that gradually evolves from image thinking to abstract thinking. Hieroglyphs begin with graphics and gradually advance to simplicity, symbolization and abstraction, and the way of thinking gradually advances to a higher level with the help of memory, imagination, association and reasoning. (By the way, we arrange things like this: pictographic-knowing-referring things instead of the traditional pictographic-referring-knowing things. I think this order is more reasonable. As can be seen from the above mural in Rem, Xinjiang, as early as before the characters came into being, there was a method of understanding synthetic images in painting, so understanding things should be produced at the same time as hieroglyphics or later, and referring things should be introduced with symbols later. Therefore, another scholar in the Eastern Han Dynasty solemnly listed the order of the six books as pictographic and knowing, and it was also reasonable to put knowing before referring. (1) This is the mystery of ancient Chinese characters, and it is also the mystery that children can quickly master Chinese characters. This is a progressive process from simple to complex, from image to abstraction, and it is a very scientific and systematic process. Let's make a summary first.
Summary 1: Now answer the question raised at the beginning of this article: How old is a child suitable for teaching literacy? My answer is: the question is not how much to teach, but how to teach. If, like the ancients, teaching literacy is regarded as a way to train children's thinking, then let children know things, draw pictures, take them to travel and know the outside world, and let them have the ability of memory, imagination, association and reasoning. In this case, the sooner the better; If you regard Chinese characters as an abstract symbol with illogical thinking and let children remember it, then teach it later (in fact, it is not appropriate to teach it later).
You're right, the front is just an introduction, and the following is the core content of this article. Let's continue our analysis, and you will find a more and more magical world. Of course, in order to be accurate, there will be some complicated textual research, but I will try my best to express it in more popular words.