Teaching your child before school has no impact

[mrz]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7994612/Early-learning-at-home-has-no-impact.html
As a teacher I disagree what do you think?

Yes, but often they won't. Not having found your way to the resources is no indication that you wouldn't have had potential had you had access to things other than cereal packets and TV.

I'm not really sure what your argument is. Yes, some children who are disadvantaged will find their way to the resources. But other bright children won't, for a variety of reasons.

If you think that somehow bright children will reach their potential regardless of their circumstances, then I think you're being both idealistic and complacent.

iloverainbows children left my reception class with reading and spelling ages far in excess of their chronological age

I just made a comment, I don't have an argument. I made a comment about pre school learning, I am not making any comments about potential being reached once at school. I would never be that foolish.

< wanders off >

mrz

Ha, ha this kind of thing happens to me with DD all the time :o

She's very verbal so sometimes I forget that she's only 2 and that half the things she says she doesn't really understand.

She just hears words and then tries them out, or phrases. Sometimes whole sections out of books we read to her, she remembers them and trots them out. It's certainly not something we have ever taught her to do.

Do you really think they might as well be in Swahili? Isn't it just part of language acquisition.

(maybe they should be in Swahili, then she'll be WAY ahead when she goes to school )

Conversation is the best way to encourage language development

I don't think it matters what you do with your child before school, as long as you do something!

Talking, reading, singing learning to chant the alpahbet or any other song is all relevant. No it won't help them to read directly as they need phonics to do that, but anything which stimultes their brain is laying the foundations for future learning.

I really don't see how wealth impacts on academic achievement at age 5- access to gadgets at this age is not really going to impact on learning. I feel it is more likely that wealthier parents are probably more likely to be higher achievers themselves and have higher academic capabilities which is passed on to their children. (although of course their will be many exceptions to this).

I do believe that capacity for learning is partly innate meaning some children are advantaged at birth. But by good preschool experiences and parental support most children can achieve well.

I think the thing about wealth being an advantage is not so much about gadgets but things like better diet, less cramped living conditions, warmer houses, access to museums and other day trips, access to transport in general, access to books and stationary, higher academic expectations....

All stuff which we don't even notice we're giving our kids because we live above the poverty line.

I can't remember. But I'm fairly sure there is no diff between middle class and upper class in terms of academic diff (besides stuff which can be easily accounted for like private schools). The problem is the kids who come from very poor or disadvantaged homes.

following the wealth issue
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/7995767/Frank-Fields-plan-to-axe-the-summer-holiday.html

sorry- 'there' not their

I think wealth has very little to do with. You can buy stationary for pennies in most supermarkets,libraries are free,most museums are free, enjoying the outdoors is free etc.

I've taught kids from poor backgrounds who used to spend more on computer games than I ever do on educational activities with my children. I've just spent the 6 weeks with my 3,6,6 and 5 and spent practically nothing but they've done some lovely stuff and learnt a lot.

It's to do with maternal education pure and simple.I've never hothoused but I've read stories from birth,sang nursery rhymes, talked a lot and answered a lot of questions. I've just done what my mother did and what I enjoy, we all read-a lot.

I never taught them to write or anything else really before school as didn't want to put them off. All 3 of my dc have done amazingly well so far.

As an ex-teacher I'm staggered at how little effort I've had to put in.

The better diet thing isn't down to wealth either- highly processed crap costs far more than food you cook from scratch.

When as a school we brought in a fruit only policy parents(who were sending their dc in daily with 2X Walkers crisps) complained about cost. We politely pointed out that 2 packets of said crisps cost more than a whole bag of basic mini apples.

I agree with what everyone else saying about talking, baking, games, trips etc. helping far more with children's learning than any formal learning especially in the pre-school years.
I don't agree with the article saying that access to expensive equipment being important. Paint and paper are fairly cheap, as is playdough or it can be made, but both do wonders in boosting childs creativity and motor skills. Construction toys are also fantastic and not particularly expensive (depending on the brand!) Cars, dolls, figures can all boost story telling skills. Often it's the most ordinary toys which encourage development and are the most loved by the kids. While the expensive toy with all the buttons and flashy lights gets abandoned on the shelf once the childs pressed all the buttons a few times!
I've always believed that children learn best when they don't realise they are learning.

It's very depressing to think that disadvantaged children are unlikely to achieve success at school. Even if parents do talk to their children, bake with them, play games and answer questions. What sort of message does this give to poorer famillies.

I spent hours playing with DS1, I was a fully committed task mummy. I taught him to write, read and I taught him maths. My health visitor thought I was barking! I started singing and counting with him from the day he came home from the hospital. At 2.5yrs he was adding in double digits on paper. He was a happy child, a bright child and now at 9 G&T.

Enter DS2, I spent no time with him, his father looked after him and I worked and we were living in a perpentual state of muddle(builders everywhere!) He is nearly 6, can barely write, can't tell the time, add two and two and can just read.

My personal experience tells me, maternal interest and warmth, teaching and nurture plays a fundamental role in how a child developes intellectually.

The article strikes me as being of the sort that is likely to be an exceptionally poor summary of the real research.

What on earth do they mean by teaching? Everything you do with your child is teaching it something. If they mean by teaching, parents' attempts to spoil a bit of fun by, eg, making a song serious, stopping their child to correct them and making them repeat it, then of course it's not going to benefit them. But enjoying singing a song with your child is not active teaching, it's interacting. Children who are not interacted with or who are only interacted with to suit their parents' higher agenda are obviously not going to do as well as children who are played with and talked to because it is simply fun to do that. And as for counting and reading - are they suggesting you actively avoid mentioning numbers to your child, sharing a book with him, putting together an alphabet puzzle with him, or pointing out the numbers on doors as you walk past????? Maybe better educated and therefore probably wealthier parents, just enjoy the process of passing on information a bit more than less well educated parents, so can do it in a more inspiring and confident way. I certainly know that I don't enjoy being read stories by people who can't read very well themselves and who don't honestly enjoy reading out loud (nor do I enjoy being sung to quite so much if the singer is tuneless and keeps forgetting the words...). Stories have to be made exciting and brought to life to inspire interest and therefore enhance learning.

Another thing that intensely irritates me about articles like this is the way all children are lumped together into a set of boring and utterly unhelpful statistics. Some children have no interest in counting, reading, writing, etc, etc, until quite late on, whereas others do. You can't force them to change their general pattern of development, so won't hugely benefit an uninterested child if you sit him down to teach him the alphabet when he wants to empty out the drawers in your bedroom, draw on the carpet with your lipstick and put your knickers on his head in order to make you laugh rather than tell him off (ie learn good social skills and develop a good sense of perception). But if you have a child who gets more excitement out of being read to, joining in and trying to read the words himself, than banging saucepans in the kitchen, then you shouldn't force him to bang saucepans all morning instead, because some twit in a very poor newspaper article said that research shows that "teaching" your child at a young age is not going to do him any good, without going on to analyse in any way what "teaching" means. If you are responsive to your child's genuine interests and share your own passions with your child, then you are never going to be doing anything wrong and are unbelievably unlikely not to be benefiting them. You can't force all children into the same box, though, which is what generalised statistics (and government policies) try to do.

Mini - Wow, that's a really interesting annecdote. Do you really think they both have a similair 'IQ' and one just has been nurtured better? Or do you think your DS1 is actually brighter than DS2?

Mini- I think you are right- parents do play a significant role in educating their children and giving them the foundations on which to build their future learning. I worked in a school where many of the children were from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds. Many were typical and found school difficult, but some were very able and did well. It wasn't the level of poverty which affected the children directly, it was the attitude of the parents towards their children and eduction. I taught quite a few children who were very poor in terms of wealth but because they cared about them and spent time with them they were fine. It was the kids whose parents were too busy drinking, arguing, taking drugs and chasing after the latest bloke/bird round town that struggled. I feel that if a child hasn't been stimulated as a young baby and toddler, by the time they reach 4 or 5 it is really too late to made up for the lack of connections made in the brain and they will always find learning more difficult. By stimulation I mean talking, playing and socializing with a child, not necessarily learning in an 'educationa'l sense.

I disagree with the article. Parents are teaching their DC from a baby just by daily life! It doesn't cost anything, talking is the main thing-just chat or nursery rhymes-reading to them-cooking-gardening-feeding the ducks etc.
I agree that if you decide that you will teach them to read, add up etc it would be a waste of time if they weren't ready, but if they want to do it then you can't stop them, they are like sponges at theat age.

The bit in the posts above that interested me was that the "better" outcomes are strongly associated with maternal education level.

My sister told me years ago that good health was also very strongly associated with maternal education level (don't have reference, but she was working in that area at the time, so I've always assumed there's evidence for that). And I'm pretty damned sure I've heard refs to it in another context too.

And it makes sense on so many levels: better education fostering broader aspirations, better/more interesting work (more opportunity to be able to do the work you want, plus likelihood of better remuneration), likelihood of meeting a well-educated man who is also likely to be an above-average earner, being able to afford good housing etc; being receptive to good health messages, feeding self and children well, likely to seek advice on how to do things well, supportive of education etc

Sorry - rambling - but it does seem plausible that the education of females is the key to so much.

I'm also a teacher here in Italy, I teach children right across the spectrum from nursery to secondary/ university level, poor rich.

Having read through this and thought about it a bit my observations is that its not so much what specifically the parents teach their children but how. Further, it seems to me the parents attitude to what education is for is key. Families that see education as the key to the door and offers opportunity otherwise not obtainable tend to offer good examples of the role of learning. The families tend to be lifelong learners and therefore lifelong teachers of their children. For me it doesn't necessarily follow they are highly educated, in the sense they tend to be people who are curious about the world and are excited about it and pass that love of learning for the sake of learning without even the knowledge of doing that. For example the grandfather who has his grandson or daughter at the vegetable garden. The child is naturally curious and the grandfather offers the answers to the questions and pushes for the child to investigate and discover further. Here, because education for all has not been a right for a relatively short period, intelligent people are often poorly educated.
Other bad examples I have seen and see regularly is the attitude their daughters role is to find a husband and look pretty and that's it, therefore the child's education has little or no importance in their future lives. This example I see right across the board irrespective or wealth or status.

My feeling is that as parents our role is to be examples of why we learn and try to install a love of learning (for the sake of curiosity) into our children.

However with my daughter I have managed that but my son is totally different and at 8 has still never voluntarily opened a book without huge amounts of encouragement. He'd much rather build a death slide in the garden or go fishing. Perhaps there are some of us who formal education is just not cool?

The Warwick University study seems to draw exactly the same conclusions as Steven 'Freakonomics' Levitt does in his analysis of data from the Chicago School Choice Program.

From Wikisummaries:

Factors that are important in determining high standardized test scores in children include: highly educated parents, high socioeconomic status, maternal age of greater than thirty when the child was born, low birth weight, English as the primary language spoken in the home, parental involvement in the PTA, and many books in the home environment. Also, adopted children tended to have lower standardized test scores than their non-adopted peers.

Factors that are not important in determining high standardized test scores in children include: the family is intact, the parents recently moved to a better neighborhood, the mother didn't work between birth and kindergarten, the child attended Head Start (US government program providing education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families), the parents regularly take the child to museums, the child is regularly spanked, the child frequently watches television, the parents read to the child nearly every day.

Noting the overgeneralization, Levitt explains that what is important in parenting is who you are, not what you do.

I think that being able to read well before starting primary is a definite advantage.

Also being born early in the academic year is a big advantage.

I think it would be better to delay formal school until age 7 and then these differences would be far less.

You know what - I think having good teachers makes a bloody huge difference.

Indigo, Yes I do think there is a difference in IQ, which may in part be in born but I believe nurture must play some part. Both children have the same parents but totally different early life experiences. Although DS2 has always had excellent social skills, understanding of justice/fair play, advanced speech and is very creative.

Onimolap, I think you are spot on, the mothers education is a huge factor. However I think a mother's influence over their child's attitudes to learning play the most important role, irrespective of wealth.
My mother openly stated that had I been a boy, I would have been educated privately I was IQ tested as a child, who the school considered a bright under achiever.
So my good sense tells me that although womens level of education play a role, what is more significant might be attitude.

I feel that children already hugely disadvantaged will remain so, this research gives chaotic famillies just the excuse they need! to continue to put their dubious lifestyle choices above the nurturing of their children.

Clearly a question of what and how you teach them. As others have said, it's about teaching attitudes to learning, encouraging thinking, showing an interest in things around you. If you do that, then I don't suppose there is any difference between two families, with similarly gifted children, one of which drills the child incessantly in the alphabet and obsesses about development targets, and another where the members are just interested in life in general.

I don't think it's access to all the latest equipment per se. (we didn't even have a telly when I grew up, and lived hundreds of miles from theatres, museums etc). I think it's access to people with a constant attitude of excitement about all there is in the world. There was no pressure on me to learn to read before the age of 7: but I taught myself aged 5, because I could see that reading was something that gave pleasure to the people around me.