Comments on: Commenting on how mathematics (and everything else) is taught to children http://delackner.com/blog/2008/03/commenting-on-how-mathematics-and-everything-else-is-taught-to-children/ ideas to share with friends new and old Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:08:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Marvin Minsky http://delackner.com/blog/2008/03/commenting-on-how-mathematics-and-everything-else-is-taught-to-children/#comment-27 Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:23:58 +0000 http://delackner.com/blog/2008/03/commenting-on-how-mathematics-and-everything-else-is-taught-to-children/#comment-27 I agree that "the names of many countries and organizations" was a bad example—and, except for more technical subjects, I can't think of a better one. I have seen some excellent results when young children learn to write their own programs—while being helped by an older, competent programmer—because this encourages the use of a pretty big (and useful) vocabulary of concepts. As for helping children, there some discussion of this in Memo 2, and I'm trying to finish "Memo 3," which talks more about the importance of getting one's children to have older, more advanced friends and mentors. So far as I can see, that's just about the only way to compensate for the limitations of schools. I agree that “the names of many countries and organizations” was a bad example—and, except for more technical subjects, I can’t think of a better one. I have seen some excellent results when young children learn to write their own programs—while being helped by an older, competent programmer—because this encourages the use of a pretty big (and useful) vocabulary of concepts.

As for helping children, there some discussion of this in Memo 2, and I’m trying to finish “Memo 3,” which talks more about the importance of getting one’s children to have older, more advanced friends and mentors. So far as I can see, that’s just about the only way to compensate for the limitations of schools.

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