12 May 2010
David Elkind, not Raymond Moore
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Books.
For some odd reasons, searches for “Raymond Moore’s book The Hurried Child” find their way to this blog. Well, I thought I ought to do everyone a service by correcting an unfortunate error:
David Elkind wrote The Hurried Child
Raymond Moore wrote Better Late than Early
I suppose people get these authors and their books mixed up because they appear to share similar ideas about not hurrying a child before her time, and these experts get quoted a lot.
Dr David Elkind has written a number of books (Miseducation, All Grown Up and Nowhere to Go, The Power of Play, etc) that explores almost similar themes and his books have had considerable influence on my thinking as a homeschooling parent. Dr Elkind isn’t a homeschool advocate per se, but he believes a child is put at risk if she is schooled formally before she is developmentally ready – that would be around 7 or 8 years. It is unfortunate that Dr Elkind’s voice continues to be drowned by the cacophony of peddlers of early learning methodologies and systems.
Dr Raymond Moore on the other hand is arguably one of the earliest pioneers and advocates of the homeschooling movement. Together with his wife Dorothy, Dr Moore authored research that pretty much launched homeschooling as a viable and credible alternative to formal education in schools. The Moores themselves believe a child should begin formal education around 8 to 10 or even 12 years. Their books ( including School Can Wait, The Successful Homeschooling Family Handbook) have become favourite go-to tomes for homeschoolers the world over, and their Moore Formula for home education has assisted many families who chose to educate their children at home.
6 October 2009
A child’s work is play
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Child Development.
The child’s play is important in his development.
As a matter of fact, play for the small child is his work– a means of achieving
better and better skills to do the things he sees older children and adults do.
Raymond & Dorothy Moore (Better Late than Early)
IT WAS OUR OLDEST SON’S FIRST VISIT TO THE DENTIST, and there was a form to fill. He was 5 years old. When it came to the part that said OCCUPATION, Mom told him the word meant a person’s job or work. Without any hesitation he said, “My job is to play.”
Wisdom from the mouths of babes, as they say. Few people would object that children are meant to play and almost all experts agree that play is essential to their development. Without the benefit of playschool or kindergarten, our two boys played endlessly – by themselves, and with kids who occasionally visited.
They pulled out their buckets of Lego, emptied them on the carpet, built things, and knocked them down with glee. Whatever they could lay their hands on were transformed into fortresses and castles, props for tales of adventure and epic battles, interplanetary spacecraft, and improbable mazes or bridges for marbles and toy cars doing an Evel Knievel.
When they were a little older, I remember how they would pick a CD, choose a theatrical score, turn the volume up, and argue if the soundtrack was appropriately triumphant or tragic for the drama played out with their toy soldiers. If they were not at their board games or making things up, they were scrambling in the playground and clambering up monkey bars. After they learned to swim, we couldn’t keep them away from the pool. Often theirs were the only chatter and laughter you would hear because everyone else would be at school.
I can imagine why our boys were the envy of their relatives and neighbours. They inhabited a kind of Neverland without schoolmasters looking over their shoulders or a report card dangling over their heads. It needs be said that far from resembling Toys-R-Us, our home was relatively deprived – all our children had were a few board games, several buckets of Lego, a mixed-bag of plastic toy vehicles, soldiers and figurines (the PC came later, but that’s another story!).
Like all children, what they lacked in an abundance of stuff, they made up with a lot of imagination. All we parents did was to provide the necessary space and time, and also play with them. Tragically and despite our effusion of warm feelings at a child happily playing in a world of his own, more and more parents are beginning to have second thoughts.
Today increasing numbers of anxious parents are resorting to competence programmes to give junior a leg up. The proliferation of preschool courses to build a superkid or a superior mind are staggering. More troubling is the fact that the loss of childhood is uncritically accepted as a necessary price of academic advantage and social mobility.
David Elkind, the author and professor emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University calls this miseducation. Parents have been misled and misinformed, he says. In fact the eminent doctor concludes that all this hurrying is never about the child and all about the parents. Unfortunately much of the pressure put on young children is often a projection of adult insecurity and parental competition.
Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning. Early instruction miseducates, not because it attempts to teach, but because it attempts to teach the wrong things at the wrong time. When we ignore what the child has to learn and instead impose what we want to teach, we put infants and young children at risk for no purpose.
David Elkind (Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk)
I think we are not saying a young child should therefore forego any form of competence or academic instruction. It just means one has to take note of a child’s readiness and consider if any activity is developmentally appropriate. I’ll have more to say in a later post.
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Read more:
Here are two child development authorities whose books had a profound influence on my journey as a parent and a homeschooling father. You can’t go wrong reading their books. Check them out:
Dr David Elkind is a leading authority on child development and the author of several well-known books, including The Hurried Child and The Power of Play. Dr Elkind has a blog at Just Ask Baby.
Dr Raymond Moore and his wife Dorothy wrote the landmark book Better Late than Never and practically gave a new push to the homeschooling movement. Dr Moore passed away in 2007 while his wife Dorothy passed away in 2002.
Related posts:
My previous writings on the same topic-
Preschool for a head start?
Kicked out of kindy
Life in the fast lane
Finding Balance
21 February 2002
Finding balance in a hurried world
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Child Development.
In the course of the new year, we have had the opportunity to meet with new homeschooling families, either in their homes or in ours. Like most eager homeschoolers taking the first steps into an undiscovered country, conviction is usually greater than confidence. That could just as well describe our own state of mind when we took the plunge ourselves all those years ago.
It’s not unusual to feel these unequal tugs of anxiety and enthusiasm (even now, I may add). And depending on which side of the bed your child got up, homeschool is either the best decision you’ve ever made, or the most reckless! More so when your children are preschoolers and under 7.
Then there’s the simmering conflict: how much of study and play should one incorporate into a child’s routine? One of our boys used to say, “a child’s work is play,” which is exactly what Maria Montessori would say, but then, what did she know about the IT Revolution in the 3rd Millennium? If it’s up to the hundreds of kindergarten proprietors in the country, the earlier a child begins school, the greater the advantage. Hurry, hurry, no time to lose. And don’t just stop there – put them on a course of Computers, and Creative Thinking Skills (whatever that is!).
On the other hand, homeschooling’s elder statesman, octogenarian Dr Raymond Moore, thinks that such accelerated learning is a sure recipe for fatigue and stress in children, even serious harm. Start formal education later, he says, preferably around 10 to 12 years. “…the young child needs the early years for a normal blossoming period before he is ready for any serious approach to the skills of reading,writing and arithmetic. “ (Better Late Than Early)
His words follow those of famous Piagetian Dr David Elkind, Professor of Child Study at Tufts University. His book “The Hurried Child” (3rd edition) is a hard-hitting and well-documented indictment against institutionalised early childhood education (including industry and media forces) that only projects the parent’s need instead of a child’s inclinations. “Young children have limited powers of adaptation, which are sometimes exceeded by the pressures of adult scheduling,” he warns.
On the other side of the fence is Richard Fugate, the well-known writer and publisher of homeschool curricula. His book, “Will Early Education Ruin Your Child” is a scathing rebuttal of Moore’s ideas (and his theology). “There is no reason that many children, beginning phonics at four, five, or even six, shouldn’t complete high school requirements by 13 or 14 years of age without undue pressure or strain on parents or child. Homeschoolers should be at least one year above their public school counterparts…” He is however careful to clarify that he opposes any “super baby” type of teaching methods, and is merely challenging the position that early formal education is harmful to the child.
So much for the debate. What’s a simple Mom or Dad to do about controversies like this?
I would say, examine your motives first. Are you exerting adult pressure on Junior just to keep up with the Joneses? Are you egging him on to compensate for or validate your own person?
Second, know your child and decide what’s appropriate to his age and what matches his pace. Some basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic are important, but not every child need or will grow up an orator, a doctor, or a poet.
Finally, seek balance and put God’s desire for your child (and for the family) first. As much as we parents love our children, we can never outlove our Heavenly Father’s love for them. And as important as it is to start right, it is finishing well that matters most of all.