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THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS IN MODERN EDUCATION

The Christian deadly sins, we are told, will bring us into hell, after we are dead. The deadly sins in education can make your and your children's lives, hell ---right here

If you are reading this, chances are you have read about the deadly sins of modern education in one of the fliers.

Probably you thought someone was exaggerating but you wanted to check just in case, or you wanted to find out what reasons someone could have to make such sweeping statements.

Yet these claims are real. Brain research1 has found some amazing data on how children structure their brain within their first years of life and how this determines all later learning. The problem is that not enough educators have drawn the logical conclusions yet. Read the following explanations and judge for yourself.

1. Reasons why prams facing away from the person pushing are disturbing to little children:

Children in these prams can not see the mother's (father's, grandparent ...) face, but see only utter confusion around them, it is also impossible to have a dialog, verbal or otherwise.

The face of the mother is one of the most important learning experiences in every child's life. By 'reading' the mothers face a baby feels not only at one with her and safe, but learns for all later life to distinguish between humans and things. Babies are born not only able to distinguish a face from all other sights which might occur but also preferring to look at a face rather than any other sight.2 When using an 'old fashioned pram' where the child looks towards the person who is pushing, the pusher is the buffer between the child and an often frightening surroundings. She is an anchor of familiarity in the constantly changing sea of overwhelming sense impressions. The person who is pushing can also talk with the child about everything that can be seen.

Prams facing outward are:

  • Stressful, because children are disconnected from their source of security and pleasure.
  • Frightening, because their lack of life experience does not allow them to decode most of their visual impressions.
  • Posing a disadvantage in the process of language acquisition, because no one talks about the things which can be seen.
  • Interrupting the crucial learning process of 'face experience' crucial to the understanding of the difference between people and things and the first learning step to gain social understanding. (Children diagnosed with ADHD, Asperger's disorder or Autism struggle all their life with the task of decoding other people feelings. If there exists a genetic deposition within a child towards one of these disorders points No. 1, 3 and 4 are triggers directing the neurones of the brain to form erroneous connections).

2. Reasons why 'Walkers' should not be used:

Walkers put children in an upright position at an age when they are physically not ready to hold themselves upright. Nature's design for children at this age is to explore the world creeping and crawling on hands and knees. By moving their limbs in coordination, important sensual information is delivered to the brain.3

Sight and hearing needs the additional information of touch and movement to develop fully.4 Only fully developed senses pass exact information on to the brain. Faulty information will show in learning difficulties later on. Once children are ready to pull themselves into an upright position and learn to walk they sense immense pride. The first and most important feeling of ' I can...', is experienced, which transforms into self confidence later in life. When a 'walker' is used this crucial experience looses importance.

'Walkers' are:

  • Conflicting with creeping time.
  • Restricting healthy movement.

Therefore undermining the development of full sight and full hearing and interfering with brain development.

3. A few reasons why TV and computers are a dangerous pastime for children:

If walkers are an unhealthy influence on brain development, then TV and computers are highly dangerous for similar reasons. They interfere with sense and brain development on a huge scale! They keep not only the body immobilised, but damage and desensitise the senses of sight and hearing. Only 4% of vision actually comes through the eyes as primary vision, the other 96% is manufactured in our brains using integrative information from our memories and all our senses.5 That means that children see everything as flat coloured shapes until they have internalised a multitude of information about texture, three dimensionality and distance, through touch and movement. Screen experiences at an age before the senses have completed their primal collection of information, leads to distorted vision and hearing (leading to faulty brain cell connections). The eye can not travel into the picture - which is not even a real picture but a collection of constantly changing dots - but is paralysed into a staring motion.

The content of most children programs is equally destructive for little children. Of similar importance as the collection of data about the physicality of the world is the collection of data about the meaning of things and their working order, like 'an apple is for eating and a ball for playing' and 'first cooking, then eating, then cleaning the dishes'..... Children up to the age of three are realists and constantly occupied with getting a hold on the meaning of the world. At four years of age children are magicians and their world is still fluid. They can call a stick a fishing rod and a chestnut an apple, but they are still easily overwhelmed by adult fantasy and feel confused in their urge to define reality by most fairy tale characters. Not until age five, when children show their fluency of reality understanding by playing 'upside down world' are distortions of pictures and fairy tales fully understood. Until the invention of photography the concept of something being 'not real' did not exist. In the early years every experience is stored as reality, as 'this is how life on earth works'. Untrue pictures cause utter confusion. They are like speed bumps on a child's road to knowledge and slow down her intellectual progress. Instead of continuous intellectual growth children have to spend a huge amount of time sorting out previously gained incorrect information.

Watching children's programs, no matter on which channel, one will find that developmental stages are not considered. Dancing mice and singing cats, childlike creatures with televisions in their bodies and talking tank engines are all unsuitable before the age of five. So are the horror facts broadcast on the 'News'. Little children do not have a concept of space and time. In their imagination murderer and tidal waves can enter their bedroom at any time (even if they live hundred of miles from any sea).

In this context it is impossible to go into more detail and explain the facts of all damage TV and computers doe to little children. The following list is just touching on the theme:

  • TV blunts the senses.
  • TV interferes with brain development.
  • TV interferes with language development.
  • TV destroys originality and creativity.
  • TV creates the bored child.
  • TV is highly addictive.
  • TV destroys children's sense of reality and undermines their sensibility and compassion.
  • TV can evoke fear.
  • TV has a negative effect on children's physical fitness.
  • TV treats children as consumers.
  • TV shortens children attention span.

As television influences brain development, blunts children's senses and interferes with prolonged play, as constantly changing pictures require neither long attention nor listening skills, television plays a huge part in the increase of children diagnosed ADHD.

4. Reasons why too early separation from the mother and frequent change of carer should be avoided.

From all human needs, the need for safety has first priority.6 Humans feel safe in a familiar, predictable environment. Babies feel safest with their mothers, because this is what they know best. As babies and little children lack life experience and have no understanding of time, every separation from the familiar is experienced as life threatening. Separation from the mother and inconsistency in carers is a stress causing shock experience with unpredictable long term consequences. Dorothey Rowe writes: Our first attachment is the prototype for all the attachments that follow. The child who fails to form an attachment fails to learn a vital skill, and grows up unable to form relationships.2

5. Reasons why a noisy and/or language poor environment can have terrible consequences.

Not so long ago one could have the impression that children learn how to talk seemingly automatically. Just as kittens would know how to mew and dogs how to bark, so children would learn to talk. But there is a difference. Dogs bark all over the world the same, but there are hundreds of different languages. This shows that language is learned. To learn language two prerequisites are necessary: Children must not only be exposed to live language, the environment must be quiet enough for them to hear the words and to distinguish the fine differences. Children also need a time of silence to practice language and hear themselves speak. This seems self-evident, but the rising number of children with speech disorders or delays ( a rise of 20% in ten years)7 shows that the environment has changed in such a way that special attention has to be given to the matter.

We live under conditions, especially in the city, where the noise level has risen to such an extent that it is damaging to the ear. Many households love to enjoy loud music or have radio and television turned on all day long. As long as no little children live in the household this is everyone's personal choice. However, babies and little children at the age of language acquisition need speaking people around them without background noises which interfere with hearing the spoken language properly. Modern life has created many situations where children are cut off from communication, like the pram facing away from the person pushing, in the back of the car, in child-care centres where children of the same age can not give enough stimulation for language learning, in front of the TV or playing with a computer.

Reasons why a noisy and language poor environment does harm:

  • Language can not be heard and therefore not be learned.
  • Without language skills thinking skills are at stake.
  • Language is needed for communication and is the base for social interactions. Children with language problems are socially disadvantaged.
  • Language problems will lead to problems with reading and writing. If sounds can not be understood properly and words have little meaning reading and writing becomes an impossible task.

6. Reasons why children should not be taught reading and writing before class one.

Physically, emotionally and mentally, humans are supposed to have a long childhood, a short adolescence and then adulthood. However what we see children experiencing nowadays is an ever-shorter childhood, followed by a premature extended puberty. Children are forced to sacrifice carefree play time in exchange for learning something 'proper', like reading and writing. However for children under the age of seven, play is their way of learning. If the learning gained through play is incomplete, reading and writing becomes a struggle, if not an impossible task. Due to our modern lifestyle -see above - some very early learning experiences may not take place and many children these days are delayed in their development. They may have poor motor control, fine movement, hand/eye control, listening and language skills. However, reading and writing rely totally on a good working order and exchange of information between the senses. To expose children to structured learning before they have reached maturity on all levels: physiological, social and emotional, means setting them up for failure and frustration.

Reasons why early teaching harms many children:

  • If it is experienced as too difficult, children will lose all joy and interest.
  • They will become tense whenever confronted with written language.
  • They will try to manage by 'hook or crook', and develop bad habits (like wrong pencil hold) which may stay for life.
  • The time used to understand written language takes up play time and therefore children do not develop basic skills. Listening, co-ordination and many other skills are not exercised and will most likely stay underdeveloped.
  • Children who are slower than the rest of the class will assume they are stupid and may carry this negative believe system into adulthood.

7. Reasons why some toys, like concept toys, are the antidote of real play and should not be given to any child.

Play is nature's gift to all children to make sure they will be prepared for adult life and as remedial therapy to heal the wounds life may have caused them. This kind of play does not need toys but open ended material which can be used for whatever the situation asks for. Concept toys (which come with a story line) or toys copied from movies and TV programs dictate children's play and ignore their personal needs, abilities and creativity.

Reasons why children need less ready made toys but more time, space and things ( like wooden blocks, ropes, sticks, boxes...) for creative play:

  • Open ended materials and basic toys leave room for children's personal needs and fantasy.
  • The making of the toy needed (building a cubby house) is the best part of play.
  • By making what is needed important skills are learned, like fine motor and practical thinking skills.
  • Self esteem and confidence is gained.
  • Creativity and fantasy is developed.
  • Living skills are practised. (playing father-mother-child or shopping)
  • Personal fears are acted out or personal joyful moments relived.
  • Life scripts are learned and practised which build the base for social interactions.
  • Real play is deeply fulfilling, it makes children happy and occupies them for many hours. There is no need for entertainment from any outside source.

Toys which dictate the play can not provide any of these learning steps. Their play value is so limited and limiting that they produce boredom, from which destructive behaviour can rise. Bored, destructive or fighting children are unpleasant and the easiest solution is to let them watch television. Television promotes concept toys and provides only short lived or destructive play ideas .... and on it goes.

A healthy, happy child is the biggest joy any parent can experience.

I wish you lots of love and joy with your children.

If you should need help, do not hesitate to contact me.

HannahAna Super Nanna


1 www.brainwave.org.nz

2 Dorothy Rowe, Ph.D Time On Our Side, (Rowe talks about the importance of face experience in most of her books )

3 Jean Ayres,Ph.D Sensory Integration and the Child, Barbara Pheloung and Jill King, Overcoming Learning Difficulties

4 Paul Madaule, When Listening Comes Alive

5 Carla Hannaford, Ph.D., The Dominance Factor

6 Kathleen Strassen Berger, The Developing Person, Maslow's hierarchy, p.60

7 Rainer Patzlaff, Childhood Falls Silent


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