An unusual Op-Ed in the NY Times by Alison Gopnik on recent research involving infant perception and cognition; see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16gopnik.html?em=&pagewanted=all Perhaps the main point of Gopnik's article is the following; |Sadly, some parents are likely to take the wrong lessons from |these experiments and conclude that they need programs and |products that will make their babies even smarter. Many think |that babies, like adults, should learn in a focused, planned way. |So parents put their young children in academic-enrichment |classes or use flashcards to get them to recognize the alphabet. |Government programs like No Child Left Behind urge preschools |to be more like schools, with instruction in specific skills. | |But babies' intelligence, the research shows, is very different |from that of adults and from the kind of intelligence we usually |cultivate in school. Schoolwork revolves around focus and planning. |We set objectives and goals for children, with an emphasis on skills |they should acquire or information they should know. Children |take tests to prove that they have absorbed a specific set of skills |and facts and have not been distracted by other possibilities. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
