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Boys aged three 'must work more'

Ohanian Comment: As proof that there is an influential group in both the US and in England making sure no four-year-old is left to play--or learn how he best learns-- I offer this article. First, though, is one father's comment on it, though I hope Dad is pulling the reader's leg.

Comment by Toby Young, a journalist who makes a career of being obnoxious.



Why giving boys chocolate powder and coloured sand is no way to go

As the father of three boys under five, I share the Government's concerns. My oldest boy, four-year-old Ludo, started in reception last September and is finding it more difficult to master the basics of reading and writing than his sister did at the equivalent stage. Sasha is now six and has a reading age of nine. Ludo has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, past each developmental milestone – and his two younger brothers are the same. If the discrepancy between them remains, Sasha will start secondary school with a huge advantage over her male siblings.

Where I part company with the Government is in its proposed solution to this problem. Giving boys chocolate powder and coloured sand and encouraging them to make marks on the floor and walls sounds like a parody of the dumbed-down approach to teaching. Are we talking about human beings or chimpanzees? Dawn Primarolo seems to be confusing pedagogy with primatology.

In my experience, the most effective way of kick-starting boys' development is old-fashioned rote learning. At the beginning of 2009, I hired a tutor to teach Latin to Ludo and Sasha and the results have been remarkable. Ludo was three when he started these daily, half-hour sessions and couldn't even count to 10, let alone write his own name. Almost 12 months later, he can count to 20, write simple words like "mum" and "dad" and recite his times tables up to five. As for his six-year-old sister, I'm convinced she could achieve a passing grade in GCSE Latin.

The reason that boys fall behind girls during these early years is because of the new softly-softly approach to education. Girls are natural learners, eager to soak up new information, whereas boys are more easily distracted with shorter attention spans. That means that a modern classroom environment, in which children are left to learn at their own pace, will automatically favour girls over boys.

There's plenty of evidence that a more traditional approach will close the performance gap -- you only have to turn back the clock. My favourite example of just how much can be achieved by a young boy is the following passage from the biography of Francis Dalton, the famous Victorian polymath: "I am four years old and can read any English book. I can say all the Latin substantive and adjectives and active verbs besides 52 lines of Latin poetry. I can cast up any sum in addition and multiply by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10. I can also say the pence table. I read French a little and I know the Clock."

You can be sure that his father, Samuel Tertius Galton, didn't achieve these results with chocolate powder and coloured sand.




If you think the article itself is a joke, I invite you take a look at two items also posted today:
Studying Young Minds and How to Teach Them and I teach kindergarten and I hate what I am doing in my classroom.

Kudos to Sarah Cassidy, who unlike the New York Times journalist who penned "Studying Young Minds and How to Teach Them," quoted expert critics. Her article provoked a lot of angry comments, many of them intelligent. Here's one observation that we should heed: It's all about control over your lives, and it appears you are giving up that control, piece by piece.

Reading List:

• I teach kindergarten and I hate what I am doing in my classroom


• New Books for Kindergarten Students


• Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them


• Parent Permission Slip for the 21st Century


Of course there is tons more but these have been posted in the last few days.

If you are a full-fledged optimist, you can also make your voice heard on the NCTE Ning about the LEARN act, but be prepared for platitudes and Newspeak from NCTE leadership.

And remember: It's all about who's in charge? Who has control over your life?

By Sarah Cassidy

Boys aged three and four must be made to write more to stop them falling behind girls before they even reach school, the Government will order nurseries and childminders.

New boy-friendly guidance is to be sent to all nurseries and childminders advising them to get the youngest boys to take more interest in writing, scribbling and drawing – basically just putting pencil to paper.

After a year of school, more than one in six boys cannot write his own name or simple words such as "mum", "dad" or "cat" – double the number of girls – official figures show.

Early-years experts condemned the move, arguing that having more targets to get children writing by the age of five would be "developmentally inappropriate" and potentially damaging, particularly for boys. But Dawn Primarolo, the Children's minister, said in an interview with The Independent that after 12 years of Labour government, the gender gap remained a "stubborn" and "worrying" problem.

"It is about readiness to learn. It is part of the development process. There is a gap, and it is a worrying gap," Ms Primarolo said. "What we can see is that boys, particularly on emotional development, lag behind girls. That emotional development is very important in language development through play before they start school and reading and writing.

"Although that gap between boys and girls is closing, in writing it is still quite wide."

The guidance, which will be sent to nurseries from January, will include advice to set up role-play activities tailored to boys' interests, such as builders taking phone messages and writing up orders, post office employees writing on forms, and waiters taking orders from customers.

Boys will also be encouraged to write using unusual materials such as chocolate powder and coloured sand to make marks on the floor and walls outside.

Ms Primarolo said the new guidance aims to get all nurseries and childminders to learn from those who have successfully narrowed the gender gap.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Some boys don't enjoy writing or see it as relevant == but teachers and practitioners can make it fun and relevant. The guidance will offer practical examples about how to do this.

"Because boys don't seem to be as interested as girls in drawing and mark-making, it is important that practitioners ensure that this doesn't then result in limited access to resources such as paper, crayons, paint etc, and insufficient opportunities or encouragement for boys to write."

Official figures released earlier this year showed that boys were lagging further behind girls by the age of five since the introduction of Labour's "nappy curriculum".

Boys are also less likely to know the alphabet, or how to count to 10, sing simple nursery rhymes from memory, dress themselves and work well with classmates at the end of the reception year, before they start Year One.

The figures were the first results from the Early Years Foundation Stage – a compulsory programme introduced in September last year for all schools, nurseries and childminders.

Overall, just over half of children reached government targets for all areas of early development, including personal and social skills, literacy, problem-solving and numeracy, physical development, and creativity.

Some 52 per cent of five-year-olds were competent in all areas – a three-percentage-point rise from last year. However, boys were significantly less likely than girls to start the first full year of school properly prepared. The gender gap widened in three key areas: writing, problem-solving and elements of personal development.

The Government said that at least 23,000 more children had reached a good level of development this summer compared with 2008.

Child-development specialists have opposed the writing targets for five-year-olds since they were first proposed, arguing that many children, particularly boys, do not develop the fine motor skills needed for writing until they are six or seven.

Sue Palmer, a former headteacher and author of the book 21st Century Boys, described the decision as "state-sponsored child abuse", arguing that boys were developmentally behind at birth and needed time to "run, jump and play, in order to acquire the physical control and capacity to focus that they will need later on".

She said: "The Government's belief that they can accelerate human development is just nonsense. This is massive control freakery which will be disastrous for the children. These very young children have become hostages to political fortunes because ministers believe that their political futures depend on getting a certain number of children to reach these targets by the age of five. That is just wrong."

Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University and a founder of the Open Eye campaign against the early-years curriculum, warned that many of the targets for five-year-olds were inappropriate for the age group. He added: "Many of the much-criticised 'teaching to test', assessment-driven characteristics of the primary school are now invading our nursery settings."

— Sarah Cassidy and Toby Young
The Independent
2009-12-29
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/boys-aged-three-must-work-more-1852087.html

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