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    Joined: Feb 2011
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    Right, and without identifying what one means by "formal education" it doesn't provide meaningful data either way.

    The other thing that I find curious about this article (that is, the original quoted); there is a globalization of the findings, which clearly are about the Terman cohort.

    Can one really generalize to "all children" from a relatively small sample of children with very high IQ?

    Or is the author suggesting that both the study cohort AND the controls experienced the effect?

    That part is not at all clear.





    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by onepie
    I don't think this suggests holding the advanced back. It's just saying that early reading skills do not indicate an early readiness for formalized teaching. And that pushing formal schooling too early can be psychologically damaging, even if a kid can keep up intellectually. Starting school at the normal age doesn't preclude advancement or enrichment later.

    Yes, I shouldn't have posted until I'd read the second article.

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    Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education has been on this particular bandwagon for almost a decade, by the way--

    In 2006, for example: Children are poisoned by today's world, say experts.

    Originally Posted by Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales)
    September 13, 2006
    Childhood is being lost to a dangerous combination of junk food, marketing and video games, experts warned yesterday. A group of 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and other experts wrote to the Daily Telegraph urging the Government to act, warning children are being poisoned by the modern world.

    The group includes children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson, novelist Philip Pullman, Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and child care expert Dr Penelope Leach.

    They write, 'We are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions.

    'Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust as full-grown adults can, to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change.

    'They need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed 'junk'), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen based entertainment), first hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

    'They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.'

    It concludes by calling for a public debate on child-rearing in the 21st century.

    The letter was circulated by Sue Palmer, a former head teacher and author of the book Toxic Childhood, and Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.



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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education has been on this particular bandwagon for almost a decade, by the way--

    In 2006, for example: Children are poisoned by today's world, say experts.

    Originally Posted by Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales)
    September 13, 2006
    Childhood is being lost to a dangerous combination of junk food, marketing and video games, experts warned yesterday. A group of 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and other experts wrote to the Daily Telegraph urging the Government to act, warning children are being poisoned by the modern world.

    The group includes children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson, novelist Philip Pullman, Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and child care expert Dr Penelope Leach.

    They write, 'We are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions.

    'Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust as full-grown adults can, to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change.

    'They need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed 'junk'), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen based entertainment), first hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

    'They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.'

    It concludes by calling for a public debate on child-rearing in the 21st century.

    The letter was circulated by Sue Palmer, a former head teacher and author of the book Toxic Childhood, and Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.


    And I heard this the other day on NPR:

    http://www.npr.org/2010/12/20/132077565/video-games-boost-brain-power-multitasking-skills

    I'm not entirely sure about the study...and the comments, well, some of them are pretty awful.

    Last edited by KADmom; 06/25/13 07:48 AM.
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    One of the fundamental difficulties that I have with this kind of research (and this would include BOTH sides of this particular question)--

    is that it all seems to rely upon cherry-picking meta-studies which go about FINDING the data needed to support particular claims.

    It's fairly clear that whatever was going on in classrooms in 1940 is probably not analogous to what is going on in them in 2005-- or it should be obvious, at any rate-- so making comparisons between today's parenting and educational practices and the Terman cohort should probably be done only with a lot of caveats and accounting for cultural shift in the intervening period.

    On the other side, there are frequently such shoddy practices at defining what is meant by "cognitive skills" in studies that seem to find a lot of benefit to 'screen time' that I have trouble believing that conclusion any more than the converse. Not to be too cynical, here, but all too often, such studies are funded by those who stand to benefit significantly from one conclusion or another...

    Too many variables, not enough controls, and correlation fallacy galore.

    My fundamental beef over this is that the people spouting their conclusions for the edification of the media seem to be blissfully unaware that such practices even matter. frown



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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    It's fairly clear that whatever was going on in classrooms in 1940 is probably not analogous to what is going on in them in 2005-- or it should be obvious, at any rate-- so making comparisons between today's parenting and educational practices and the Terman cohort should probably be done only with a lot of caveats and accounting for cultural shift in the intervening period.

    This is precisely what came to mind after having finished reading the second linked article.

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    I'm with HK on this one. The study doesn't show that early school entry and reading are bad for gifted kids so much as it shows that school is bad for gifted kids.

    Also, the Terman study is known to have enough issues due to selection criteria. Then Kern/Friedman made the problem worse by applying this:

    Originally Posted by study
    2.2.1. Age of learning to read

    In 1922, parents specified the age their child began to read (“Did your child learn to read before starting school? At what age?”). As the average student was almost twelve years old when first studied by Terman, the average time lag from age of reading to parental report was 5.94 years (SD = 2.91 years); this time lag introduces some unreliability and so any associations that emerge may underestimate the size of the true effect.

    2.2.2. Age at school entry

    In 1922, parents also noted the age and grade their child began attending school (“Age of entering school above kindergarten”) and whether or not the child attended kindergarten. School entry age indicates the participants’ age upon starting first grade. The average time lag between starting school and parental report was 5.97 years (SD = 2.79 years), which again introduces some unreliability that may underestimate true effect sizes.

    If the data upon which they're going to base any conclusions is unreliable, so then are the conclusions.

    Plus, when you ask a parent, "When did your child first begin to read?," this begs the question, "What do you mean by 'read'?" We've seen in our discussions here how we sometimes have different meanings of the term.

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    It's always about the lens on these studies. So, I look at the data and am most interested in the bimodal verbal/math aspect. They toss it as an aside and don't even run it as a controlling variable. "However, early school entry was also related to mediocre math performance in 1922"

    Anecdotally, we often hear of the mathematically gifted kid not quite being "ready for school" as early as the more verbally oriented. Looking at part of table 3:
    Quote
    Outcome Variable Early Entry (N = 394) On-Time Entry (N = 540) Late Entry (N = 89)
    ...
    1922 verbal performance 3.35 (1.44) 3.30 (1.36) 3.09 (1.28)
    1922 math performance 2.54 (1.06) 2.63 (1.01) 2.84 (1.01)
    ...

    What a pretty crossover.

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    Originally Posted by onepie
    The weirdest thing was that "conscientious kids" had better outcomes than "cheerful kids". I would have thought the conscientious kids would be more likely to burn out. But I guess it depends on how they coded kids as conscientious vs cheerful.
    I haven't yet read any of the links (except for skimming the thread starter) but, while this is interesting, I don't personally find it weird at all. A conscientious kid is learning to work hard, whereas one who is cheerful but not conscientious may be learning that life is always going to be easy and pleasant. Going out on a limb (and it really is a shaky one...), I might suggest that conscientiousness might be correlated with having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset, and then (further out on the shaky branch) I would expect the former to be more conducive to long-term good outcomes.

    Come to think of it, it must be known how conscientiousness as a character trait measured in children who are not necessarily gifted correlates with long-term outcomes. It's not known by me and I don't have time to look it up right now, though!


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    Exercise was not mentioned per se, but when I read unhealthy, early death, I made the leap.

    I also think of a childhood friend, PG, who was not encouraged to do sports or anything. MD at 21 or 22. Had nervous breakdown, socially isolated. His sister, PG, did other things like musical theater, those marching band competitions, rebelled against the father and has a relatively happy lifestyle with a PhD in nuclear engineering, sought after by the classified crowd for her brilliance. I think it is the extracurriculars, feeling like you a have a life outside the school.

    Which brings in a side note, a bragging side note. We are moving from NYC to Toronto and DD got into the National ballet school...

    Movers come Friday and I just finished my 3rd and last (for now) exam so I can go back to work. On derivatives.


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