As early as a few years ago, a friend came to visit with his children. This little guy about the age of the author's son can actually recognize hundreds of words. According to friends, he taught literacy from an early age, bought children's books to explain to children before going to bed, posted literacy cards on things at home to review at any time, and seized every opportunity to teach his baby to recognize the words on advertisements and signboards when watching TV and shopping.
But in fact, educator Russo poured cold water on this effort very early. He pointed out that it is meaningless for young children to read and write prematurely. He vividly said: "People have taken great pains to find the best way to teach reading and writing. Some people invented spelling cards and word cards, and some people turned children's rooms into printing houses. What a pity! "
Facts have also proved that late literacy does not necessarily affect intellectual development. According to records, Dai Zhen of the Qing Dynasty didn't speak until he was nine years old, and went to a private school at the age of ten. Later, he became a great scholar. He was a philosopher, mathematician, exegetist, geographer and educator. Professor Chen, vice president of Peking University, was illiterate before the age of seven and became a doctoral supervisor before the age of thirty. This shows that literacy is not necessarily related to future intellectual level and achievement.
First of all, it is clear and direct to learn literacy too early, which will affect his ability to find and solve problems independently and creatively and limit his ability to explore various solutions.
Alison, a psychology professor at the University of California, said. AlisonGopnik once published an article in Slate, a well-known American online magazine, and explained this point with experimental results.
The title of the article is "Why kindergartens shouldn't be like schools: new research shows that the more you teach children, the more counterproductive it is." The article points out that too many direct instructions may help children learn specific skills and knowledge at an early age, but they ignore their curiosity and creativity, but in the long run, the latter is more important for learning.
Recently, I heard a jingle that ridiculed that education is too utilitarian: "Kindergarten goes to primary school, primary school goes to middle school, and middle school goes to college." After graduating from college, I will go back to cram for kindergarten courses. " Come to think of it, why bother? !
Secondly, most of the literacy methods before children can read articles are inefficient learning.
The most important contribution of D.P. Ausubel, a famous American psychologist, in educational psychology is that he put forward "meaningful learning", which is an opposite concept to "mechanical learning". His important conclusion is that meaningful learning is valuable.
According to his theory, meaningless syllables and words can only be learned mechanically, because it is impossible for such materials to establish substantive connections with any existing concepts in children's cognitive structure. This kind of learning is completely mechanical, so it is inefficient.
Today, the simplest and most commonly used method to teach children to read is a literacy card. Many parents think that using literacy cards can really improve and master a lot of numbers and words. Why not? There is a news in the newspaper that a four-year-old child can read two thousand Chinese characters. It turned out that his grandfather posted literacy cards everywhere at home and let the children recognize them every day.
But people who learn foreign languages know that if you recite words in isolation, you will soon forget them, but if you learn words in context, the effect will be good. Therefore, even if children recognize a lot of words through literacy cards, if they can't concentrate on reading a book, it will cut off literacy and reading, which may destroy children's interest in learning and self-confidence early.
Parents who are obsessed with literacy cards suggest reading a book called Einstein doesn't play literacy cards, because it will tell you the danger of confusing intelligence with grades.
The key to children's cleverness is how to learn, how to learn from experience and how to solve problems. Four-year-old children can recognize Chinese characters and numbers, and can make correct responses at any time when asked by adults, which is considered smart. In fact, this is just a performance ability, which has nothing to do with intelligence.
The thinking of infants is mainly based on concrete images and intuitive action thinking. When they understand things, they rely on concrete things and intuitive actions. A more effective way for them to distinguish salt from sugar is to let them taste it with their own mouths, instead of taking them for three days of testing, five days of observation, seven days of analysis and nine days of research.
Researcher Cao Xiaohua, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology of Zhejiang Normal University, revealed that when we read Chinese characters, there will be a special area in the brain to process the visual shape information of these Chinese characters. This special area is in the left brain, and this ability is called "expert skill" in psychology. The Chinese character recognition mechanism in children's brains did not mature until the age of 7. Let them recite Tang poems too early and learn addition and subtraction, so they can only learn by rote or eat them alive.
What you have learned says that they will, but they won't; Saying that they understand, in fact, they seem to understand, just like cooking a pot of "raw rice", there is a saying that "the steamed bread returned from the pot is not ripe". In elementary school, the teacher can't handle this pot of "raw rice" well.
Therefore, educators believe that there is absolutely no need for parents to give their children too much "knowledge infusion" before school. It doesn't matter how many arithmetic problems they can do, how many words they can know and how many Tang poems they can recite.
On the contrary, what parents should do is to inspire their children's imagination and spirit of exploration, as well as their ability to communicate with others, and form a good habit of doing things today. These abilities are the foundation of the foundation, far more important than simply learning "knowledge".
In a word, reflection can focus on this question: We should train talents like Jobs, not typists in Apple stores?
The sentence "Don't let children lose at the starting line" is obviously misleading, which leads parents to seriously violate the educational laws when educating their children, killing their aura and curiosity about sustainable learning. Therefore, when considering this issue, please remember one sentence: children who rush to run may not have stamina.