A friend of mine decided to transfer her child to kindergarten because her child was only in middle school, but the teacher had begun to teach her children to split numbers, such as splitting 5 into 2 and 3, having to recite an ancient poem every day, and homework when they came home, so that the child could write 3 lines of numbers.
Most of the parents in the group agree with this kind of behavior, believing that this can make the child learn more useful knowledge, become smart, and improve intelligence.
It sounds quite scary, how can learning to split numbers early, memorizing ancient poems, practicing writing numbers, and writing improve children's intelligence? It's unbelievable.
However, it is reasonable to think about it, because most people's understanding of intelligence is shallowly stuck at the level of "intelligence = intelligence = skills or knowledge mastered".
Children's intelligence can indeed be improved, but children before the age of 6 must not improve their intelligence through this method.
Intelligence is not exactly knowledge and skill mastery
So far, there is still no unified statement on what intelligence is, and the researchers asked 24 experts to describe the intelligence they understand in one sentence, and the definitions obtained are different, but the essence is focused on abstract thinking ability or effective problem-solving ability--- Developmental Psychology
For the definition of intelligence, there are many analytical models, such as the Gilford intelligence structure model, Gardner's multiple intelligence theory, the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale, the Webster scale, etc., each model has a different dimension of consideration for intelligence, but in the end, it reflects our ability to recognize, understand things and solve problems, including memory, observation, imagination, judgment, reasoning and other aspects.
From this point of view, the more knowledge a child remembers and the more skills he masters, it does not mean that his intelligence is necessarily higher and smarter, for example, a three-year-old child can recite 200 ancient poems, can count from 1 to 100, which can only show that his mechanical memory ability is very strong, can not mean that he has a high intelligence, because he can not understand these ancient poems and numbers.
Heredity does have an impact on intelligence, but the acquired environment, education on the intervention of intelligence is not to be underestimated, the brain is plastic, we also know that "the brain is used to advance, not to use it is to retreat" such a truth, so learn more, let the child use more brains, in theory it seems to be able to improve intelligence.
There is no problem with theoretical goals, but in practice, the method is wrong.
Children's feelings and experiences before the age of 6 are the only way to form intelligence
Regarding the formation process of intelligence, the famous educationalist Montessori defined it as follows:
Words capture feelings, stabilize feelings, clarify feelings, deepen sensations, make vague, fleeting sensations clear objects of his own, and this thing is called intelligence, and intelligence is the development from feeling to concept---- "Love and Freedom"
She believes that children's cognition of things initially comes from feelings, including sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, and only when children use these senses to feel it firsthand can this concept be formed in the brain.
For example, the two concepts of cold and heat, the newborn baby can also feel hot and cold, but he does not know whether the current feeling should be expressed in cold or hot, and cold and heat itself are contrasting, how should he distinguish?
If we are in a normal temperature environment and tell the child that it is snowing outside and it is cold, his physical feeling at this moment does not match the cold outside, and he naturally cannot understand what cold is.
Similarly, we tell our children in the winter that the summer is hot, hot, hot, so hot that people can't breathe, and the child can't understand it, because he hasn't experienced heat, he can't imagine what heat feels like.
Therefore, a three-year-old child can recite "look up at the bright moon, look down at the hometown", "hoe the day of the hoe, sweat drops down the soil", but he can not understand what is the hometown feeling, what is the pain of hoeing.
The famous psychologist Piaget believes that continuous action makes children have a feeling, and this feeling can produce an experience repeatedly, and this experience produces intelligence, which is the germ of intelligence----- "Complete Growth"
Piaget believes that intelligence comes from children's movements and experiences, so he defines the cognitive development of 0-2-year-old children as the "perceptual motor stage" and the cognitive development of 2-7-year-old children as the "pre-computing stage", both of which are characterized by one point: thinking is accompanied by specific actions.
For example, the child needs to develop the concept of object permanence around the age of 1, during which time he will deliberately throw things on the ground, hide things, play peek-a-boo games over and over again, and then establish that things will fall on the ground, roll under the sofa can also be found, things are hidden is not disappeared, the mother will come back after going out, and the concept of object permanence can be developed.
In summary, the intellectual development of children before the age of 6 relies on specific feelings, actions and experiences, and it is meaningless to instill abstract knowledge and skills in a cramming way without these real channels.
Although the phenomenon we see is that a 3- or 4-year-old child memorizes a hundred ancient poems, knows hundreds of words, and can even say that 2 + 3 equals 5, while other children of the same age are still playing with mud, but the child's intellectual development may not be much different from that of a child playing with mud (regardless of genetic factors).
See here you will find that if you do not understand the laws of children's psychological development, as well as the laws of brain development, our efforts on children are likely to be ineffective, spending so much energy and financial resources, and the result is that the direction is wrong.
How to use feelings, movements, and experiences to help your child improve their intelligence
Intelligence is this process, and every sensation rise in this process is associated with the experience and experience in it, and children are born with this ability, and this ability is different for everyone, and the process is different for everyone----- "Love and Freedom"
1. Provide children with a real and rich environment
The most real environment is nature, children can capture all kinds of information in nature, all kinds of people, different shapes of buildings, all kinds of different sounds, these sensory information is very three-dimensional.
Now every child has many, many toys, but toys can not be used as a source of all the children's cognition, such as a child who likes cars, there are many cars, how the car drives on the road, how the red street lights direct traffic, what the parts under the hood of the car look like, what is fast, what is slow, these experiences are not provided by toys.
The ideal way is that the child stands on the side of the road to observe the coming and going of the car, holds the adult's hand according to the traffic light signal instructions to cross the road once, opens the hood of the father's car to take a look, forms a real experience, and then uses the car toy to play a pretend game, and these experiences are performed.
When separated from the real scene, the child can also restore the real scene into a game, and the cognition of the car still exists in the consciousness, which is the process of transformation into intelligence.
Stories, mathematics, and words are not impossible to learn, but they need to be expressed at the right age and using real scenes, such as when we stand by the lake and see a dragonfly parked on a lotus leaf pole, at this time we can tell children that "the little lotus only shows sharp horns, and there are dragonflies standing on the head", corresponding the real scene and abstract ancient poetry.
2, when the child feels, do not destroy him
When we see that the child is touching, biting, and smelling, the first reaction may be to stop the child immediately, take out the things in his hands and mouth, and then sternly tell the child: This thing is dirty, it is full of bacteria, can not eat, eat it will hurt the stomach.
In fact, doing so is to destroy the child's sensory experience, we know that the sensitive period has a characteristic, if it is artificially prevented and suppressed, this sensitive period will be postponed or extended, but will not completely disappear, the correct way is to meet the child's sensitive period needs within a reasonable range.
So, when we see that the child is using his senses to capture information, if it does not involve safety issues, there is no need to be alarmed, if the parents have cleanliness habits and really can't convince themselves, then provide relatively clean toys and places for the child (in fact, there is no absolutely clean, there is no bacteria at all, don't we live in an environment full of microorganisms?). ）
Don't disrupt the process by which children connect feelings and concepts, we can imagine sparks of thought bursting out of their heads.
3. Provide paired words while the child is feeling
What should be done without destroying the child's feelings? The most important step at this time is to provide words that match this feeling and let the child form the correct concept.
For example, the child is playing with the faucet, and when it is screwed to the left, the water becomes hot, and we say: This is hot water.
When screwed to the right, the water gets cold, and we say: It's cool water
Adjusting the height of the switch can control the size of the water flow, we say: the water flow becomes larger, the water flow becomes smaller.
The child was playing with the brush of the washer, and we said: It's rough, a bit of a prickly feel
When the child is in a certain feeling, we all take this state as an opportunity for cognitive improvement, and we will not feel that the child is very naïve.
Japanese psychologists and educators have said in their book "Early Education and Genius" that genius is a strong interest and tenacious obsession.
Children are naturally interested in everything around them, a small piece of paper can become the object of their repeated exploration, they have opened up countless channels for themselves to develop intelligence, we should maximize these channels, so that they are unimpeded.