The primary school of thought in public education doesn’t neccesarily deal with logic, reasoning, analysis and facts dealing with reality. Most educational professors at universities take a Sigmund Freud approach to children, which argues that children are not capable of abstract thought until their early teens (which is absurd, if you can speak and identify objects you a thinking abstractly, just not super-complexly).
I do see what you mean here, but I would like to point out that that particular mentality goes beyond Freund. Piaget is also a cognitive constructivist. Now, I do disagree with some of the elements of it as well as social constructivism, but they do have some points that are good and relevant, being applied successfully. As a teacher you have to work with the theory and combine them in practical application. For example, I believe that the regions or classifications used as levels are a bit too rigid. This has been confirmed by other psychologists, but the entire conception is not without merit. Children do develop socioemtionally and cognitiviely in general developmental patterns as well as uniquely, but I think the primary problem is the endeavour to attach a one-size-fits-all mentality to reality.
When you are speaking of the abstract quantification ability, I take it you are refering to concrete vs formal operations or preoperational? I don’t believe, like I said above, that these characteristis come in neat, uniform packages all the time and that those characteristics are present to equal extents in all children. I agree with you that they are not totally absent untill late teens. I know of other theories that don’t claim that. I don’t really think Freud is all that credible. For example, the modern concept of early/mid childhood takes some elements from Piaget’s concrete/formal levels of operational thought. A lot of things are actually useful in this general theory as well as the theory of Vygotsky (I employ the latter more, since I think it’s a bit more useful). This can stretch anywhere from 6-13 years old. The cognitive development of the child is extensive in these periods, however, very young children in the stage of infancy do have a problem with operations. Other children in early childhoold and middlechildhood can have some problem, but training can alleviate some of those woes. Language develops early on, and you are right in that it is a form of abstract though, so I don’t really know why anyone would say one isn’t capable of such thought untill late teen years. From the Piagetian and modern view, that comes as early as the preoperational general stage.
I do believe in taking somewhat of a constructivist approach in teaching, but not entirely. I also believe in pragmatism. Most modern theories of educational psychology do not hold that children in the early years cannot reason or use logic to think abstractly, but not all children can at all times and, like I said above, they gain these abilities at various intervals. Some people never really actualize the potential of the Formal Operational stage. There are also different levels of abstract thought. Early children from 2-5 have a hard time with formal operations and concrete operations, but this steadily improves with training and biological development. Many very young children in the preoperational level 3-4 tend to exhibit problems with transitivity, seriation, and conservation, but again, this can be somewhat alleviated as a problem by extra training, but I don’t believe in shoving something down someone’s throat. I think education should be developmental. I have a hard time getting kids to learn highly absract concepts in elementary school, so I start off with more concrete things and move into gradually difficult abstracts.
Personally, I find the conceopts of scaffolding and the ZPD useful as teaching tools. I am quite disappointed with the methods of rote memorizationused in both elementary and highschool. Memorization can have a place, since you do need facts, but I think far too much emphasis is placed upon it and standardizied testing. It does not work very well and is also very poor for little children (even adults, when one thinks about it). Children and adolescents are generally active learners, and they need to get involved and teaching ought to be developmental.
Furthermore, particularly in the universities that train teachers, such logical methods of learning to read such as phonics are derided as “simplistic” and “subversive to the feelings of students”. Granted, most elementary teachers that I’ve met don’t turn their back on the logical teaching methods, but often they will create compromise methods between what worked for them as children and what the universities slammed down their throats, and the result is mixed levels of accomplishment.
I do agree with you here. They have abandoned very successful methods that I personally think are better. Phonics can be quite useful, but not for all kids. I don’t think it should be abandoned, however. The educational theory I have learned so far seems to provide a basic framework for teaching. Some works better than others on certain children. There really is no universal method that works well. But as I said, my gereral education philsophy is a mix of progressivism and social pragmatism. My teaching philosophy is fairly utilitarian. I do what is useful.
I wish there were more of an emphasis on classes like logic, science. I find it horrid that children must take 4 years of English, 2 of which are literature, but they only need 3 of math and science. The latter are far more important.
, Andrew Bernstein, and Edwin Locke in particular) and I support pretty much all of their political stances. I have also found the Objectivist approach to Epistemology to be superior when used as a method of teaching in public school than any other method out there.