Welcome to Prof. DadDude’s Philosophy of Early Childhood Education seminar!
As a basically skeptical person, I have to see proof of something before I get very excited about it. And as a philosopher and recovering academic, I am acquainted with stringent standards of proof, even if I don’t always succeed in applying them myself (I’m sure I try most of the time). This is why, while I’m 100% convinced that it is possible to teach little ones to read at surprisingly young ages, I am still not quite convinced about the benefits of Doman-style “EK” (encyclopedic knowledge) and even less of Doman math.
Anyway, let me get into the meat of my comment here.
It seems to me that there is a certain theory operational in Doman’s approach to EK (or just “EK” for short from now on). The theory is that, if one exposes a child to many facts at an early age, even facts that a child has no way of knowing the significance of, one makes it much easier for the child to learn those facts properly, in context, later on.
I’ll explain what I mean a little more later, but first let me explain what I don’t mean. I don’t mean that spitting the facts back at an early age is somehow valuable or supposed to be impressive in its own right. When, for example, a child correctly learns to identify the shapes of the U.S. states (as my own child did, mostly by doing puzzles), that is not the goal. Similarly, when little “Lily” in the much-watched video is able to identify all sorts of countries as a toddler, that doesn’t mean that she actually knows much about geography. She doesn’t even know what a country IS, of course.
So, unless EK is supposed to be a cute parlor trick, it is supposed to make it earlier for children to learn the actual content of geography (for instance). For instance, having learned the shapes, capitals, and flags of the states as a baby–without knowing what states, capitals, or flags ARE beyond the pretty pictures and words, and without knowing other salient facts such as population, regions, and so forth–will make it possible, sometime in the future, to learn all the rest of the content of geography.
Another example: learning some or all of the chemical elements, as many of us have taught to our children while they were under the age of three (!), will somehow make it easier to learn the basics of chemistry when children get to elementary school.
Here is a real-life example. If you’ve seen that Ellen segment (find it on YouTube) where the very precocious Graham is interviewed, you saw how he recited a bunch of facts that I’m sure I myself will never memorize, about which president had which number, what parties they belonged to, and even some seemingly random associated with them. Now, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Graham, at age five, really knew what he was talking about. His performance was awfully impressive, and his parents must be justifiably proud, but I don’t think he knew much about history. I could be wrong, but he probably had no clue what a political party was, not much of an idea what sort of things a President does (although, at age five, he was probably starting to learn), and he almost certainly had no idea what scandals really are, much less what the Teapot Dome scandal was.
Each of these examples is supposed to illustrate the point that while EK gets children to memorize things impressively, the value is supposed to lie in the fact that this is a foundation for LATER learning, because the memory performance itself does not constitute substantial knowledge of the sort children gain later on.
I hope I have made it tolerably clear what EK is supposed to assume. Now, my question is: is this assumption correct? ARE children able to learn geography, chemistry, and history after learning these sorts of facts? And if so, why are they?
Mind you, I am not meaning to deny this. I am trying to understand it better myself. I could even supply a theory, the grammar stage of the Trivium, to explain it. But I am interested in more hard-nosed explanations grounded in details and scientific knowledge of cognitive science and developmental theory. In particular, I would be interested if someone can explain this with an EXAMPLE. Bonus points for an example you are personally familiar with, i.e., a child you have seen benefit from learning EK. The challenge here is to explain exactly HOW your child benefitted from the early training when it finally came time to learn the subject FOR REAL.
I can give you an example of what I mean learning “for real.” Right now, I am reading H., age 4.5, a book for elementary students (I’d estimate it’s appropriate for 10-year-olds) about the state we live in (Ohio). This is pretty advanced for him. We can’t go fast; I have to stop and explain quite a few terms as we go through, and he barely has patience for this (but, to his credit, he does!). I think he is really learning what is in the text. He has a good idea of what industries are in Ohio now–we spent a good ten minutes looking at the sort of map of Ohio that has the various crop/industry symbols on it, you know the kind. I know he knows something about what the industries are, because he knows what corn is, he knows what pigs are, he knows what steel is, etc. Granted, he doesn’t know a LOT about these (except about pigs–he knows a lot about pigs), but he knows enough to give good sense to the text. I think he’s doing well for his age, and he didn’t learn TOO many facts out of context, EK-style.
As you might or might not recall, when I started making my presentations for H., 2.5 years ago or so, and published them here on BrillKids.com, I couldn’t put much stock in simply showing my boy pairs of words and pictures, without saying SOMETHING about the things. That’s how I ended up with my style of presentations, which have been, I gather, pretty popular with the kiddies! (That makes me very happy!) The reason for that is that I couldn’t quite convince myself that there was enough point in trying to get my son to memorize facts he knew NOTHING about. For example, if I were to show E. the names and shapes of the states, well–no offense, but personally, I would feel a little ridiculous. Maybe I shouldn’t, maybe he would be learning something really valuable, but that’s how I’d feel.
So anyway, there’s my question: can you adequately defend the EK theory/assumption that by learning a boatload of contextless facts, a child thereby will be given tools that make it much easier to learn the facts properly, in context, later on?
(A conciliatory thought: I’m pretty sure that if I had made a series of presentations, all about Ohio’s regions, cities, historical events, industries, and so forth; shown those presentations to him at age two, then again last week; he would probably be better able to understand this book I’m reading to him.)
