Establishing Learning Patterns

[slippery when wet]

I appeal to all teachers out there.

As a parent and living in the UK I am concerned about some recent news bulletins regarding teaching and lack of classroom control and actual teaching happening in the classroom.

I am seriously considering putting my child into a reputable private school but would only be able to afford schooling for perhaps 7 years or so.

In your experience would it be better for my child to be educated in the private school in the early years and then finnish off schooling in a state funded comprehensive school or would it be better off if my child went to a kinergarden/infant school for the early years and then studied in a private school at the later stages of her educational life.

A famous quotation stated give me a child up to the age of seven and then you can have them after that!......As I'm not a qualified teacher I was wondering if there is any truth behind the quotation.

I look forward to your advice

[chownah]

Won't try to answer your question directly...but...the most important thing is for a child's parents to be actively involved in the child's education. Every day do something to further the education of your child...it will be way more effective than what happens in school...and...it will bring you and your child closer...and it is FUN!! If your child is old enough to be able to recognize a picture of something in a book then your child is old enough to be read to..at least to the level of turning the pages and pointing at the things and saying what they are....this is the beginning of the love of reading...your child is getting attention for turning pages in a book and as time goes on your child will be getting attention when being read to by you....this is how children learn to love to read.....this rarely if ever happens in the school alone...it takes many happy experiences with books to create a person who likes to read and far too many children don't have so many happy experiences at school...sad but true....it is much easier for this to happen at home.... Any chlild that loves to read and whose curiosity hasn't been totally crushed by the boredom of schooling will grow to be an educated adult if for no other reason than that they will educate themself. End of Rant...think about it.

[Thaiboxer]

I agree with chownah...when a child develops the desire to read and do his/her own research, it makes a world of difference in their education. Fewer and fewer children are interested in learning new things nowadays. Even in my primary school days not too many kids enjoyed reading. My mother read to me a lot when I was very young and that is probably the main reason why I still enjoy reading and doing my own research to this day.

[NextStationBangkok]

beginning of the love of reading...your child is getting attention for turning pages in a book and as time goes on your child will be getting attention when being read to by you....this is how children learn to love to read.....this rarely if ever happens in the school alone...it takes many happy experiences with books to create a person who likes to read and far too many children don't have so many happy experiences at school...sad but true....it is much easier for this to happen at home....  Any chlild that loves to read and whose curiosity hasn't been totally crushed by the boredom of schooling will grow to be an educated adult if for no other reason than that they will educate themself.  End of Rant...think about it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

chownah 100% true.

When your child turs 1 year, buy colorful books with nice pictures and try to read them what it is, they can learn. You dont believe at 11 months my daughter can recognize A-Z through cue card though she cannot speak. At 13 months she could point out 36 animals correctly. All she learned by shown interest bringing the cards and learned through us. Now we are reading stories for her from different books, she is started listening carefully and understaning the words by her self. It is amazing that she is very interested in learning. Keeping books at home is very important and showing interest on children when they want to learn also important. Now her interest is in finding out the spelling, first and last letter of every word she learns. Please keep books at home it is very important.

[slippery when wet]

Thank you very much for your advice regarding teaching reading and encouraging children laterly to take an active role in their own learning.

However important as it is I would like to return to the original question. If you only had enough money to fun private learning for about 7 years of the childs educational life what age group(early or later stages) would you choose and why?

[chownah]

I apologize for the off topic post. I studied education at an American university and don't recall learning anything specifically about your question except of course that if the basics are missing then further learning becomes problematic...this would tend to indicate that the first 7 years are the most important..but the one thing they taught us is that there are so many variable in the learning experience that very few of the ideas for what makes a good experience have ever actually been scientifically tested to see if they actually work or not. I'm hoping that someone will come along and post some good information from studies that would point you in one direction or the other but I doubt that this will happen....in education you get mostly opinions even if you are listening to professionals and this is made even more difficult in that what works in one situation will not work in another. So I'll give you my opinion which is somewhat based on my first post about helping your child. If I were a parent and I thought that my child was going to attend a school with low standards then I would do what I could to make up for it. Assuming that you would do the same, then I suggest that you decide where you would be better at taking up the slack, in the first years or the last. Making up for a deficient school academically is probably easiest in the beginning years since for most people it is easier and more fun to teach your children how to read than to teach them how to compose a report on Aztec history....its easier for most to help their children with addition, sub, mult, and div..than it is to help them with trigonometry....I hope you get the idea. BUT, on the other hand, the first few years in school are also psychologically formative, probably more so than the later years, and if a school is not nurturing healthy psychological development then this might create a problem difficult to correct at home....if I put the child into the substandard school at a young age I would monitor the child everyday at home and try to monitor a bit at school too.....observation of classroom behavior, meetings with teacher.....and at the first sign of a problem start to consider changing schools quickly...perhaps even already have a plan B school picked out and ask school B about mid term placement possibilities.

Being a parent is challenging and rewarding....the more effort you put in the more reward you both will get.

[Abandon]

I would send my child to a Steiner school up till the age of 7 - should not be too expensive.

For the most thorough research on developmental psychology see Erik Erikson - he was a psychologist who made the most relevant research into the field of developmental psychology (in which I have a degree). At this web site you can see what a child learns at what stage in their life. Of course it is a rough guide, but an intelligent one that was formulated after much research.

http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/erikson.html

From my reading, the 7-12 stage would be the most productive for private schooling.

Edited to correct typos due to my own bad schooling

Edited August 31, 2005 by Pandit

[geronimo]

I appeal to all teachers out there.

As a parent and living in the UK I am concerned about some recent news bulletins regarding teaching and lack of classroom control and actual teaching happening in the classroom.

I am seriously considering putting my child into a reputable private school but would only be able to afford schooling for perhaps 7 years or so.

In your experience would it be better for my child to be educated in the private school in the early years and then finnish off schooling in a state funded comprehensive school or would it be better off if my child went to a kinergarden/infant school for the early years and then studied in a private school at the later stages of her educational life.

A famous quotation stated give me a child up to the age of seven and then you can have them after that!......As I'm not a qualified teacher I was wondering if there is any truth behind the quotation.

I look forward to your advice

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree with the seven year thing. Waldorf schools (founded by Rudolph Steiner) work on the principle that a child should be allowed to develop creativity and imagination and this is a solid foundation for academic learning.

It's a shame that in LOS parents seem to think education is a race and the kids have no chance to be kids. The rote learning system then knocks any creativity out of them. BTW ...... The answer to almost all whinges about Thais stems from the fact that they have never been taught how to think for themselves!!!!

[Abandon]

The answer to almost all whinges about Thais stems from the fact that they have never been taught how to think for themselves!!!!

That's a bit steep mate, and a bit off.