To Anyone Who Teaches Young Children - Or Who Writes For Them
On arming young children's perceptions and growth, with certain perception-enhancing words and concepts..... - - I want your help and participation in creating a special unit.... - - On something that didn't occur to me until 4:00 a.m. this Saturday morning (April 20).....
By the time as a kid I hit elementary school, I had already read, in my hunger for any kind of reading material, a lot of history, very unlike my agemates around me. Most of what I'd read to that point and for several years after was popular-level history which was always proposing or arguing cause-&-effect relationships. Thus, the concept of causality was pretty familiar to me by the time I hit elementary school.
It didn't occur to me until early this morning that because of this I was perceiving many relationships, and nearly all of even the most obvious of these relationships were quite invisible to my classmates. (And I think some of them were invisible even to most of my teachers.) To them, things "just happen." Therefore, nothing has much meaning or significance, and there's nothing anyone can do and nothing that can be done. I lived in a world of OhMyGoshWhatIf, and they lived in a world of duh.
Lev Vygotsky did this beautiful experiment some years ago with young children trying to draw butterfly wings. He demonstrated that having words for what we perceive enables us to effectively "perceive our perceptions." I briefly describe his experiment in the parent's appendix to my story for children, The Philosopher's Stone. Having used the "advanced" word "iridescent" in the story, I argue in that appendix that that word, which ordinarily young children wouldn't encounter for some years yet, if familiarized with that word and description would be discovering and delighting in iridescence everywhere.
I propose here something a bit more ambitious.
Influence. Being influenced by. Influencing other people, other things, events. Multiple influences. Interaction......
Objective: to equip the kid to see, normally, multiple causality and interaction dynamics where otherwise he'd be stuck for years and years in a world where things just happen and so have no meaning or significance and there's not much anyone can do.
Several possible preliminary elements in the unit of proposed instruction:
* Almost any game situation when one kid is trying to advance the ball and the other to prevent him. Questioning immediately after a play: Why did you go that way? Why then did you go this way? (And similarly question his opponent.) - - And, by extension, to situations where a kid is trying to "work" his parent for something, or "work" his teacher.... - - To some situation in a story or even to a real person outside of the classroom, such as the school principal, where such dynamics can be identified....
* Make a list of identifiable attributes of that person. What are some of the things you are less likely to do when you are short than when you are tall? What are some of the things you are more likely to do? Why? Why do you think (that person) does such-&-such? Could there also be other reasons why he does that? What else does he do that maybe something else could be causing?
* Deferred gratification: Stay put for now, but - when you are hungry, what do you want to do? Who here's hungry right now? Stay put - but why AREN'T you running off right now to get some food? (On into an analysis of other considerations, even their interactions, and rudiments of strategy...
Those of you with much experience with young children: Does something like this seem do-able to you? Would it have the significant effects I've pointed to? Is my observation correct, that to the vast majority of young children today, cause-&-effect relationships are mostly invisible, even the obvious ones, much less multiple causality and interaction? That there are consequences to their living in a world where things "just happen," without meaning or significance and there's nothing can be done about it anyway so why pay attention?
Please advise. Thank you. ...win
