A Parental Learning Plan and Model For Children in the Home
All normal children are extremely impressionable human beings, much more so as pre-adolescents than adolescents, and remain at the proverbial mercy of their parents while in the home as to how they will cognitively, and emotionally, react to learning environments outside the home throughout their developmental years.
In a nutshell, natural or adoptive parents are the first and most influential teachers in a child's life, from birth until the moment the young man, or woman, leaves the home as a presumed adult.
As such, ordinary developing children, equipped by nature with the innate curiosity to explore the environments in which they find themselves, are either encouraged and assisted by their parents to learn and to develop intuition in their beginning public school academic pursuits, or not.
In the course of this essay, I will presume that the active parents in a developing child's life will eagerly desire to provide an effectual learning environment in their home, and will want to know what they can do each, and every, day to systematically help their child aspire to learning.
It's really not that difficult to structure an ongoing system in the home geared to the developmental needs of young, normally curious pre-adolescents; for a child begins the learning process directly after birth, and continues learning until the day she dies.
It's all about parents taking time to take an interest in their children, and in themselves.
It's about sharing what they know, and what they can do, with their children; and allowing their children to share with them what they know.
As a matter of statistical record, only around 83 percent of the adult citizens in the United States, over 21 years of age, are high school graduates, but well over 90 percent of them are literate and able to read.
Unfortunately, only around 30 percent of American adults are college graduates.
Yet, over 70 percent of the high school graduates are working on a standard 9th grade level.
Most of the popular books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals published in the United States are actually written with a vocabulary, and literary understanding, possessed by an above average 9th grader.
This means that most American parents have "some" books in their home, despite the alarming fact that computer Internet viewing is rapidly replacing much of the time, prior to television and the Internet, that was spent reading printed paper materials.
People are currently spending more time sending emails than they are writing letters, and they are watching more movies and television than reading books, especially the classics.
A University of Chicago educator said recently that more people during the past two decades have learned facts about the classics, the sciences, and the humanities indirectly, through television programs and movies than by actually reading them from books, magazines, and journals.
A good example of this very disturbing trend is the lip-service would-be pundits like to give extolling such books as the great classic "Democracy in America," written by a young French nobleman, Alexis de Tocqueville, in the early 1800's.
Many find pleasure talking about it (as though they have perused it thoroughly), but very few of them have actually read it in its entirety, to purposefully reflect on its content.
As such, you have quite a few, supposedly, educated people with "Jeopardy-mentalities," or the ability to spout trivial facts about books, events, places, and history, at will, without the intuition to employ them conceptually in a cogently useful manner.
Of course, this heuristic mind-set does not have its advent suddenly in an adult person's life.
It has, rather, been cultivated from childhood through inadvertent behavioral shaping, stressing anti-productive learning standards which have no redeeming values at all.
To stop and reverse this troubling and ongoing conundrum, I would hope that concerned parents, who realize that this serious predicament is prevalent, eagerly obtain good colorful books geared to the ages of their children; and that they will read them to, and discuss them with, their little ones.
For this is the real beginning of learning for all normal children, as they hear words read to them from books, see pictures and illustrations describing the meaning of the words, and eventually understand that ideas and concepts are expressed through stories.
Moreover, when children hear stories read and explained to them, from books, by people they love and trust, the impressions made in their minds are lasting ones, virtually indelible.
It's really pretty easy for mothers and fathers to make a big difference in a child's familial learning environment.
All it takes is a little time and an eager desire by parents to implement a developmental plan.
What an impressionable child learns during her formative years from peers and other people than her parents, which is bad and hardly conducive to appropriate behavior, is extremely influential and controlling if good parents aren't doing all they can to produce the opposite effect.
Parents will eventually see the resultant positive effects of their nurturing endeavors when their children, later on, independently choose to read books instead of watching television or surfing the Internet, and actually enjoy spending hours doing their homework instead of dreading, and procrastinating, the completion of their studies.
Moreover, when young adults will freely choose to ask their parents questions about their studies, expecting a lively exchange of ideas from interested mothers and fathers, a learning environment of mutual respect and courtesy will prevail.
What I'm actually talking about, for pre-school and elementary school-age children, is at least one hour "every" night spent by mothers, fathers, or both parents, reading to, and interacting with, their budding students.
Why every night? Young children respond more positively to frequent and consistent stimuli.
They are, as I've said before, creatures of habit, and the good learning habits which are formed are those that will provide lasting positive effects.
For the many children who have formed bad counter-productive habits throughout the elementary school years, and are doing poorly in middle school as a result of minimal parental interaction, support, and encouragement, the parents must proactively work to modify their children's behavior through modifying their own behaviors.
In the foregoing generalized scenario, I believe that the best course of action would be a radical realignment of learning interests in the home, where parents show by sincere consistent modeling a real dynamic interest in learning what their middle school kids are studying in their public school classes.
Like I pointed out earlier, most American adult parents are currently working on a practical 9th grade level, even if they have succeeded in graduating from high school at a much earlier time.
The majority of these family-bound wage-earning men and women haven't succeeded in attending college, and could afford refreshing their basic knowledge and understanding of history, English, spelling, writing, math, and the physical and biological sciences.
Studying with their children for, at least, an hour every evening, demonstrating to their young sons and daughters that learning is also vitally important to adults will have a profound effect on their attitudes.
Nonetheless, adolescents, between the ages of 13 and 15, are quite rebellious due to the effects of hormonal maturation, and high school age kids are even more so.
During this age bracket, active developing minds, and their dynamic cognitions, are poignantly competing with body chemistry twenty-four hours per day for control over the decision making process.
The emotion and turbulent feelings produced during this time have a tendency to override good common sense.
This is why waiting until a child is sixteen years old to begin showing interest in her schoolwork is a tragic parental mistake.
To correct the effects of severe parenting errors requires much more time and effort than would have been originally expended through proper developmental nurturing.
To paraphrase an admonition from a very old, but reliable text, "bring up your children in the way they should go, and when they are adults, and grow old, they will not stray from the oft-beaten path.
"
In a nutshell, natural or adoptive parents are the first and most influential teachers in a child's life, from birth until the moment the young man, or woman, leaves the home as a presumed adult.
As such, ordinary developing children, equipped by nature with the innate curiosity to explore the environments in which they find themselves, are either encouraged and assisted by their parents to learn and to develop intuition in their beginning public school academic pursuits, or not.
In the course of this essay, I will presume that the active parents in a developing child's life will eagerly desire to provide an effectual learning environment in their home, and will want to know what they can do each, and every, day to systematically help their child aspire to learning.
It's really not that difficult to structure an ongoing system in the home geared to the developmental needs of young, normally curious pre-adolescents; for a child begins the learning process directly after birth, and continues learning until the day she dies.
It's all about parents taking time to take an interest in their children, and in themselves.
It's about sharing what they know, and what they can do, with their children; and allowing their children to share with them what they know.
As a matter of statistical record, only around 83 percent of the adult citizens in the United States, over 21 years of age, are high school graduates, but well over 90 percent of them are literate and able to read.
Unfortunately, only around 30 percent of American adults are college graduates.
Yet, over 70 percent of the high school graduates are working on a standard 9th grade level.
Most of the popular books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals published in the United States are actually written with a vocabulary, and literary understanding, possessed by an above average 9th grader.
This means that most American parents have "some" books in their home, despite the alarming fact that computer Internet viewing is rapidly replacing much of the time, prior to television and the Internet, that was spent reading printed paper materials.
People are currently spending more time sending emails than they are writing letters, and they are watching more movies and television than reading books, especially the classics.
A University of Chicago educator said recently that more people during the past two decades have learned facts about the classics, the sciences, and the humanities indirectly, through television programs and movies than by actually reading them from books, magazines, and journals.
A good example of this very disturbing trend is the lip-service would-be pundits like to give extolling such books as the great classic "Democracy in America," written by a young French nobleman, Alexis de Tocqueville, in the early 1800's.
Many find pleasure talking about it (as though they have perused it thoroughly), but very few of them have actually read it in its entirety, to purposefully reflect on its content.
As such, you have quite a few, supposedly, educated people with "Jeopardy-mentalities," or the ability to spout trivial facts about books, events, places, and history, at will, without the intuition to employ them conceptually in a cogently useful manner.
Of course, this heuristic mind-set does not have its advent suddenly in an adult person's life.
It has, rather, been cultivated from childhood through inadvertent behavioral shaping, stressing anti-productive learning standards which have no redeeming values at all.
To stop and reverse this troubling and ongoing conundrum, I would hope that concerned parents, who realize that this serious predicament is prevalent, eagerly obtain good colorful books geared to the ages of their children; and that they will read them to, and discuss them with, their little ones.
For this is the real beginning of learning for all normal children, as they hear words read to them from books, see pictures and illustrations describing the meaning of the words, and eventually understand that ideas and concepts are expressed through stories.
Moreover, when children hear stories read and explained to them, from books, by people they love and trust, the impressions made in their minds are lasting ones, virtually indelible.
It's really pretty easy for mothers and fathers to make a big difference in a child's familial learning environment.
All it takes is a little time and an eager desire by parents to implement a developmental plan.
What an impressionable child learns during her formative years from peers and other people than her parents, which is bad and hardly conducive to appropriate behavior, is extremely influential and controlling if good parents aren't doing all they can to produce the opposite effect.
Parents will eventually see the resultant positive effects of their nurturing endeavors when their children, later on, independently choose to read books instead of watching television or surfing the Internet, and actually enjoy spending hours doing their homework instead of dreading, and procrastinating, the completion of their studies.
Moreover, when young adults will freely choose to ask their parents questions about their studies, expecting a lively exchange of ideas from interested mothers and fathers, a learning environment of mutual respect and courtesy will prevail.
What I'm actually talking about, for pre-school and elementary school-age children, is at least one hour "every" night spent by mothers, fathers, or both parents, reading to, and interacting with, their budding students.
Why every night? Young children respond more positively to frequent and consistent stimuli.
They are, as I've said before, creatures of habit, and the good learning habits which are formed are those that will provide lasting positive effects.
For the many children who have formed bad counter-productive habits throughout the elementary school years, and are doing poorly in middle school as a result of minimal parental interaction, support, and encouragement, the parents must proactively work to modify their children's behavior through modifying their own behaviors.
In the foregoing generalized scenario, I believe that the best course of action would be a radical realignment of learning interests in the home, where parents show by sincere consistent modeling a real dynamic interest in learning what their middle school kids are studying in their public school classes.
Like I pointed out earlier, most American adult parents are currently working on a practical 9th grade level, even if they have succeeded in graduating from high school at a much earlier time.
The majority of these family-bound wage-earning men and women haven't succeeded in attending college, and could afford refreshing their basic knowledge and understanding of history, English, spelling, writing, math, and the physical and biological sciences.
Studying with their children for, at least, an hour every evening, demonstrating to their young sons and daughters that learning is also vitally important to adults will have a profound effect on their attitudes.
Nonetheless, adolescents, between the ages of 13 and 15, are quite rebellious due to the effects of hormonal maturation, and high school age kids are even more so.
During this age bracket, active developing minds, and their dynamic cognitions, are poignantly competing with body chemistry twenty-four hours per day for control over the decision making process.
The emotion and turbulent feelings produced during this time have a tendency to override good common sense.
This is why waiting until a child is sixteen years old to begin showing interest in her schoolwork is a tragic parental mistake.
To correct the effects of severe parenting errors requires much more time and effort than would have been originally expended through proper developmental nurturing.
To paraphrase an admonition from a very old, but reliable text, "bring up your children in the way they should go, and when they are adults, and grow old, they will not stray from the oft-beaten path.
"