The youngest daughter is now 33 months old, and many people praise her for her cleverness, saying that she is a "child prodigy" and a "talented woman". Compared with children of the same age or even one or two years older than her, she really knows a little more. When she first went to kindergarten, the kindergarten teacher said that she was the cleverest one in the class. In fact, I know very well that children are children. She is not a child prodigy, but a child with normal intelligence. For children with normal IQ, the amount of knowledge they know is completely determined by the acquired education. Early childhood education is closely related to the importance parents attach to their children's education and educational methods.
When it comes to early childhood education, I feel that I am at least not a loser. Since the birth of my youngest daughter, I have consciously taught her to listen to music, distinguish colors, recognize numbers, recognize Chinese characters, speak English and count ... It can be said that my daughter's early education at the beginning was an all-round development education. Of course, there will be rewards for giving. My youngest daughter has a sense of music since she was a child. When she heard the music, she shook her head and knew that she was dancing with little ass. The youngest daughter began to speak at ten months, and by twelve months, she was able to express herself in sentences. When I was 14 or 15 months old, I was able to correctly distinguish between colors and graphics, which surprised the parents of many children in the community. In order to let children read early, I enlarged and printed a lot of frequently used 100 high-frequency Chinese characters, posted them on the wall and led her to read them several times a day. One day, I found out that she actually knows most Chinese characters. This makes my wife and I very happy, and also increases my confidence in continuing to teach her literacy. When the kindergarten is about to have a summer vacation, I suddenly found that my little daughter's English pronunciation is very accurate, and she can pronounce many sounds that are not easy to pronounce accurately. She seems to like English very much. Of course, she certainly doesn't know what English means. So I began to teach from the everyday things she saw. Every time I met something new, I told her its English name. Now, she can speak more than one hundred English words. During the summer vacation, as long as it doesn't rain, I will take my little daughter to the park and play in the square. On the one hand, let her get in touch with the outside world and other children. Contact with the outside world can enrich children's horizons; More contact with children can prevent children from retreating. Another purpose of taking my little daughter out to play is to entertain and educate. Teach her to know the things around her, teach her the corresponding pronunciation of English words, teach her to get along with others, and teach her the principles of dealing with people. ...
My wife wants her daughter to be left-handed and follow me intellectually, because I am left-handed and like science, and my brain really seems to be more flexible than my wife. But my daughter is definitely not left-handed. It seems that she is not very sensitive to numbers. A year ago, she could count from 1 to 25, and she still does. I tried very hard to get her to count down, but there was no progress. Based on this, I think there is no need for all-round development of education. All-round development is good, but how many people can develop in an all-round way in reality?
Everyone has his own interests and hobbies. Everyone likes to do what they like, and so does learning. If a person learns what he likes to learn, he can learn it quickly and well. If a person is forced to learn knowledge he doesn't like, even if he tries his best, he may not learn it well. So I think education should foster strengths and avoid weaknesses. The purpose of education is to cultivate people into talents, not all of them, and it is impossible to cultivate people into all-round talents. Therefore, I think both the workers in the education front and the parents of children should try their best to find out their children's strengths, let them study deeply in the fields they like and are good at, and let them regard learning as a happy thing, which is also conducive to their success.
Isn't the current curriculum reform providing happy learning? But I don't fully agree with the new curriculum reform, because my new curriculum reform still emphasizes "all-round development", so how can I make children happy? Chicken can't swim, you should train it to swim; Ducks are not good at running fast. You must train them to run fast. Can they be happy? In the same way, so do people. Every child has his own interests and specialties. What our parents and educators have to do is how to discover and improve their children's interests, so that children can learn and become talents in their favorite fields.
Looking back on China's decades of all-round development education, we can't say that we haven't trained talents, but at least we have killed many talents. Imagine: If Deng Yaping is allowed to learn from elementary school to college like others, will she still be the women's table tennis champion in the world? Because Deng Yaping likes playing table tennis, although she is short and trains hard, she studies hard in her favorite field. She is happy and successful. China has many sports champions. How much of it is the result of holistic development education? Hardly! Another counterexample: 1978, China University of Science and Technology established the first university juvenile class in China. Ningbo, Xie Yanbo and Ganzheng were well-known "prodigies" in China at that time, but their fate was thought-provoking. In the end, instead of becoming "future Nobel Prize winners", they became mediocre people. What is this? Because they have been learning things they don't like during the whole education process.
To sum up, I think the initial stage of education should be a comprehensive education, but after discovering the strengths of the educated, they should be allowed to develop rather than make up for each other.
In addition, I don't like the name "prodigy" and I don't agree with the education of "prodigy". The "prodigy" education has been in China for more than twenty years, and the "scheme" for cultivating "prodigy" has been constantly innovated, and the training structures such as experimental schools for extraordinary children, special experimental classes and international Olympic competitions have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Many children attend these training courses. So far, there are no physicists and mathematicians in China. Parents, wake up, children are just children, they are children, not prodigies, even if they are praised by others, they are only people, not gods! Many "prodigy" education and training institutions only advocate their abilities for the benefit. At best, they just let their children learn some courses in advance, but this does not make them "prodigies" and may not even become talents in the future!
So now I take my daughter out to play. Whenever I hear someone praise her for her cleverness, I always smile and quietly say to others, "Nothing, she just knows a few words more than other children, and she is not as good as other children in many aspects."