Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 4)

This post will continue the discussion of the component - Expressive Language.  First we will finish the learning expectation:  Uses language for a variety of purposes, and then move on to the next learning expectation.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator for this post is:  Talks about something this is not in front of him ("Last night, we went to the movies.")  This performance indicator does usually manifest before a child's fifth birthday, but for some children it may be the month of the child's fifth birthday.  Those children will language delays will not conquer this one until closer to their fifth birthday.  Those without language delays may conquer this one shortly after their fourth birthday.  Some advanced children may conquer this one while they are three years old.  A child must reach a certain level of language maturity to be able to carry out this performance indicator.  In today's society some children will simply not get enough language exposure to develop this one on time.  A great deal of the language delay we see in early childhood settings these days is caused by lack of experiences rather than a physical reason for the delay.  I am sorry, but parents remain the main cause of this type of delay.  Too many parents in America put too little emphasis on reading to their children and other activities that build language skills.

The next performance indicator is:  Easily expresses his feelings, fears, ideas, wishes, and dreams.  This one goes straight to what is called "emotional intelligence," and it is something American children struggle with horribly.  Much has been written and said in recent years trying to help children express their feelings.  Part of the problem involves the language delay we are seeing in so many children.  However, it goes deeper than that.  Unfortunately, a great number of adults cannot easily express their feeling, fears, ideas, wishes, and dreams.  This rubs off on the children in the sphere of influence of these adults.  The bullying epidemic we have seen explode over the last several years has as its root cause this lack of emotional intelligence.  Children do not come by emotional intelligence naturally.  It must be taught and modeled.  However, the adults must possess it first in order to pass it along.  I know we fight against the tide sometimes, but make it a priority to help children develop emotional intelligence along with academic intelligence.  Both are necessary to function in the adult world.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Says full name and full address; knows more about where she lives (state, country).  Again ten years ago this was a prerequisite for kindergarten and everyone had to learn this information.  Now, it is not that simple.  Many, many children have more than one address.  Custody division is as such sometimes that they divide weeks between two residences or even within the same week.  Very often children do not share the same last name as their mother anymore, and sometimes not even with their siblings.  Many schools require this information still.  Therefore, the last 3 or 4 months before kindergarten becomes a marathon session of learning this information.  Whereas, years ago children acquired this information in a much more natural way.  The children I presently have in my care that will start kindergarten in a few months knowing their full name but not their address.  One of them has two addresses.  This will be something we have to conquer in the next two months before they start school.  Both of them are already five years old.  As for the knowledge of state and country, unless a child has been in a quality preschool setting, they do not know this information.  It is another item that seems to fall through the cracks these days.

Now we will move on to the learning expectation:  Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas.  The first performance indicator is:  Uses past, present, and future verb tense.  Again, this one is affected by language delay.  Those children that have not had good language experiences will struggle with using past, present, and future tense correctly in conversation.  Those children that have had good language experiences will conquer this one.  Good books and good conversation experience develop this particular performance indicator.  Nothing can replace the importance of having adults read and talk to children.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

The Role of Relativism in Early Childhood Theory

This post will continue the discussion of philosophical bias in early childhood theory.  Specifically, it will look at the role the philosophical theory of relativism plays in the foundation of many early childhood theories and conclusions.  Remember, theories in the humanities cannot be divorced from their philosophical base.  It is very important, then, to understand the effect this philosophical base plays in the conclusions drawn from said theories.

The Definition of Relativism
The concept of relativism we will discuss for this article is the absence of absolute truth.  All truth is relative to the cultures and circumstances of the situation.  Universal truths for the relativist do not exist.  Therefore, the concept of right and wrong cannot be taught.  Everything comes down to choices based on the what is acceptable and appropriate according to the situation and societal norms.  I should not have to point out that this philosophy is mainly embraced in the agnostic and atheistic Western world.  Most of the world's religions dictate a definite right and wrong, and thus take issue with this philosophy.  Therefore, when dealing with a theory that has as its base the theory of relativism, the first item of business for you to decide is whether or not you believe in a definite right and wrong.  Are there behaviors that are universally wrong?  Are there behaviors that are universally right?  I find it interesting that even in the Western world, some circumstances make even liberals throw out their relativism.  Case in point, the trial of the Boston Marathon Bomber.  In a state that absolutely abhors the death penalty, he received the death penalty to satisfy everyone's sense of justice.  If there are no absolute right and wrong, why would these people need justice in this situation.  For everyone that has a hard time with this concept, I suggest you read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.  I have never seen someone tear apart relativism like Mr. C. S. Lewis.

Relativism and Choices
Probably the most obvious sign of relativism in early childhood theory is the prevalence of choices over obedience.  Since right and wrong are all relative, it is not proper to teach children right and wrong as they did in the old days.  Children must be led to appropriate choices.  Does this sound familiar early childhood people?  Instead of making a child choose between right and wrong, we give them two positive choices to teach them how to make good choices.  However, when in life as adults do we ever get to choose between two positives?  Do we not most of time have to choose the lesser of two evils or it is a clear choice between a positive we should do versus a negative we want to do?  Is not the latter really the choice that faces most children?  How does two positive choices prepare children for the choices of the real world?  It does not.  However, when you remove the concept of right and wrong, you must find another way to instill social norms.  Do not get me wrong, liberals have their own concept of right and wrong.  They just do not want to call it that.  They want a world without having to answer to a higher authority.  They want to do what is right in their own eyes, but believe me, if you cross their social norms, you will feel the wrath.  They will make you feel like you are the most evil person on the planet because you crossed what they feel is socially acceptable.  I am afraid God built into us a sense of right and wrong that we just cannot shake.  It comes out despite our best efforts to create the world in our own image of reality.

How Relativism Affects Environmental Structure and Practice
You might be wondering how in the world does relativism come into play in how I set up my environment.  The answer to that is one word - accessibility.  How many times does that word accessibility show up in rating scales and accreditation standards?  The concept of accessibility has its roots in the foundation of choices over obedience.  In the world of relativism children should be allowed to grow and discover on their own terms and not the terms of the adult.  Adults should not exercise authority over the children but lead them down appropriate paths.  Children should have access to a multitude of choices and limiting those choices through inaccessibility will hinder their development.  I hope that sounds as silly to you as it does to me.  Early childhood practitioners in parts of the world outside the Western world find this notion of accessibility to be one of the worst concepts of Western philosophy.  They look at this as the reason our children are spoiled brats.  Of course, I have already spoken to how people outside the Western world feel about our notion of choices over obedience.  They understand that the notion of accessibility flows from the concept of choices.  It flies in the face of their cultural foundation.  When I dropped down to unregulated, one of the first things to go out the door was accessibility.  The children in my care have been so much better for it.  I have spoken in other posts about the "poof" environment where everything that is broken or lost is immediately replaced.  Accessibility plays heavily in the "poof" environment, which is not healthy for children.  They will never learn responsibility if everything magically reappears when they have destroyed or lost it.  When my children reach preschool age the destruction of my materials is almost nonexistent.  Toddlers still destroy things but even they soon learn better when those things go away when they destroy them.  My good materials only come out for special occasions, and that has not in the least stifled the development of the children in my care.

How Relativism Affects the Teaching of Academic Content
In the world of relativism adults should never dictate to children but lead them into appropriate choices.  It should be obvious how teaching academic content to preschool children and relativism would clash.  Academic content takes teacher directed lessons.  Relativism wants child directed lessons.  In recent days I have come across an article that states that teaching academic content to preschoolers actually hurts them in the long run.  The bias for that article is so intense it makes blood boil every time I see it.  Remember I told you that it is impossible to divorce a study's philosophical base from its results.  You must take a study of this type and filter it through its philosophical bias.  The philosophical bias for this is relativism.  Adults should not dictate the content of preschool.  The children should dictate the content of preschool.  That is the bias of that particular article.  Let us look at this logically.  Are they saying that children unlearn concepts when they get older?  Does a child that learns their colors at two or three develop learning problems later in life because they learned their colors too early?  Does learning your letters and numbers at three and four cause you to have learning difficulties in elementary school?  This is so ridiculous I do not even want to comment, but I will.  In all my years as a preschool teacher that teaches academic content to two and three year olds that were ready for said content, I have never EVER seen negative results.  Now, there have been many children that were not ready for academic content at three or even four because they had language delays and immaturity issues.  You cannot teach academic content to those children before you fix the language delays and immaturity issues.  I would wager lots of money that the above study used children with language delays and immaturity issues to prove their point.  Trying to teach them academic content would make them hate school and do worse in elementary school.  However, a good half of the population can be taught academic content in preschool and do well for the rest of their life.  Remember, I do not take age into consideration.  I take skill level no matter how old they are.  Maybe one of these days grouping by age will go out the window, and we will understand that not all two-, three-, four-, five-, six-year olds, etc. are created equal.

How Relativism Affects Child Discipline Practices
In the world of relativism adults should not dictate right and wrong.  No where in the early childhood field does the effects of relativism become more evident than in the area of child discipline practices.  Teaching children to be obedient is equated with child abuse in many circles.  Children must be given choices not told "no."  Toddlers must be redirected not told '"no."  Punishment leads to violent tendencies in children.  We must facilitate children's upbringing never dictate.  I am actually very thankful that few facilities follow this philosophical train wholeheartedly.  A great big majority of preschool teachers tell children "no" often, but just not when the state people are present.  Also, when it comes to certain aspects of a child's environment, dictating by the rules is completely acceptable.  Case in point - handwashing and other sanitary practices.  It is perfectly acceptable to force children to wash their hands a thousand a times a day.  However, when you hit the areas that have for generations upon generations been considered "wrong" behavior, you had better redirect or give two positive choices.  People it really is all about removing God and all He stands for from the classroom.  These discipline rules are ridiculous.  I will in a future post look at most of these topics in more detail.  I just wanted to give you a taste of how relativism finds its way into nearly every aspect of early childhood "best practice."

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 3)

This post will continue the discussion of language development in the area of learning - Communication.  We will finish the component - Receptive Language and move on to the component - Expressive Language.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

We are still in the component:  Listens with understanding and interest to conversations, directions, music, and a variety of reading materials.  The first performance indicator for this post is:  Understands simple, then more complex, sequences of events.  It has been my experience that children will little exposure to the concept of sequencing struggle with this concept.  Children that have had good exposure pick up on this concept and run with it.  Therefore, if you have a group of 4 year olds that have had little exposure with sequencing, you will need to start with simple sequencing and slowly build to more complex sequencing activities.  Building sequencing activities in your schedule helps this process immensely.  If you do certain activities in the same order every day or week, then it will be easier for children to pick up on the concept.  However, this does not guarantee that all children will pick it up easily.  It will be necessary to discuss with them on a consistent basis the order of events to give them constant practice.  Sequencing does not come naturally to many children.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Understands concept of more/less, full/empty, which lays a foundation for math concepts.  Most 4 year olds do conquer this particular performance indicator.  However, I have learned to never assume anything when it comes to what a child does/does not know.  Make sure to ask the child to demonstrate understanding of this concept.  If a problem occurs, it usually occurs in the more/less category when actual counting of objects is required.  When a situation is obvious visually, the majority of children know when a group has more/less objects.  If a child has no understanding of full/empty, that usually denotes lack of experience with the concept.  It completely blows my mind how so many concepts seem to be falling through the cracks from lack of experiences.

Now we will move on to the component - Expressive Language.  The first learning expectation is:  Uses language for a variety of purposes.  The first performance indicator is:  Likes telling and retelling stories, poems, and songs.  Most 4 year old children like to tell and retell stories.  However, many times you can tell a great deal about that child's language development by the coherence of those stories.  I can also tell how much a child has been read to in his/her life by the coherence of the stories they tell.  A child that has had good experiences with books and having stories read to him/her will be able to tell stories that have a definite beginning, middle, and end.  Children that have not had good experiences with books and having stories read to him/her will tell stories that ramble without point or plot.  As far as retelling poems, only those children in high quality programs or that have academically devoted stay-at-home moms will even be familiar with the concept of a poem.  Nursery rhymes no longer have the same place in childhood that they once held.  As far as songs are concerned, most children will sing the songs in which they have the most experience.  Sometimes this can be a problem in a childcare setting if that involves certain popular music on the radio.  Some of those songs are vulgar and completely inappropriate for preschool age children.  Therefore, make sure you provide many opportunities for age appropriate music in your setting to give these children something decent to sing.

The last performance indicator for this post is:  Tells the sequence of a story without pictures.  To be truthful, I do not know very many 4 year olds that can accurately tell a story with the pictures.  Only the very top 5% of children today can tell a story without picture prompts.  It is a sad reality of today's culture.  Children are not read to often enough to conquer this particular performance indicator.  In all honesty, American children have struggled with this one for decades.  Even though children 10, 20, or 30 years ago had adults read to them more than children today, most of them did not get enough experience to handle this particular performance indicator at 4 years old.  Reading to children is so important.  If every single American parent would make a commitment to read aloud to his/her child(ren) every day, we would have such a surge in academic performance it would be astounding.  Alas, most parents do not make the time to read to their children.  That leaves it to the childcare providers to fill in the gap, but group readings will never have the same impact as that one-on-one contact between a parent, child, and a good book.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

An Introduction to the Effects of Philosophical Bias on Early Childhood Theory

This post will start a series on how philosophical bias plays into early childhood theory and research.  Researchers in the humanities often do not allude to the impact philosophical bias can have on their research.  Many times these researchers want to appear to be as impartial as research that uses hard data.  However, the nature of research in the humanities cannot be divorced from its philosophical base.  That will be the topic of this post.

The Truth about Bias in Research
Americans live by their research.  However, most of the time we Americans have no idea how bias plays into that research.  We also seem to be very quick to forget how research of even a year ago has been completely disputed by the latest research.  In the humanities, all subjects involving people and their cultures, the data collected for research must come from questionnaires or observation.  Unlike research done using strictly scientific methods involving hard data, this soft data lends itself to bias in ways that hard data does not.  Hard data can be measured and the results computed with mathematical operations.  Soft data can be manipulated using statistical methods but the exact measurement aspect does not exist.  Mind you, even research done with scientific methods can be skewed by bias, but when soft data is used, removing bias remains nearly impossible.  I will explain this completely in the next several sections.

Worldviews
What is a worldview?  It is how a person defines life and existence on this planet.  Everyone has a worldview whether they are religious or not.  Atheists define life in the absence of an all powerful God.  All of the world religions define life according to the tenets of their faith.  We all hold to some belief in the purpose of life or the laws governing the concept of life on this planet.  Our worldview defines us as people.  We function according to our worldview whether we realize it or not.  Therefore, when we propose theories that deal with the human experience, our worldview biases those theories whether we realize it or not.  Our worldview constitutes what we consider to be important and unimportant.  We cannot divorce our worldview from our theories.  It is impossible.

The Foundation - Priorities
This brings me to priorities.  Priorities constitute the ranking system we give to the various and assorted aspects of life.  It is what we consider important or unimportant.  We all have priorities.  Every time we make a decision our brain pulls from our personal list of priorities.  We do this without even realizing that it happens.  When two items from our list come into conflict with one another, the brain will go with the one most important to us.  Sometimes our perceived priorities and our actual priorities do not match.  Oftentimes this shows itself in what we consider bad decisions.  For example, a person may believe that family has a higher priority than wealth, but every time a decision must be made, acquiring wealth always triumphs what the family needs.  Sometimes this is so subtle we do not realize that our actual priorities and our perceived priorities do not match.  However, when we find ourselves making excuses for our choices, that should be a clear sign that our perceived priorities and actual priorities are not in agreement.  Most people have discrepancies between their perceived priorities and actual priorities.  Very few people are so in tune with who they are as people that both of those priorities agree.  Our actual priorities flow from our actual worldview, which can also be different than our perceived worldview.  These actual priorities govern our thoughts and our actions.  They are the rules we live by.  If a person feels that his/her priorities seem out of whack, that person needs to take a good hard look at their actual worldview.  We as human beings very often give lip service to many tenets of thought without actually internalizing those tenets.  We also internalize some tenets of thought without regard to how that fits into our perceived worldview.  Americans seem to be especially guilty of the second phenomenon especially when it comes to the "latest research."  We hardly ever filter new research by its bias and therefore, oftentimes find ourselves conflicted without knowing why we are conflicted.  Many other cultures hold harder to their worldviews and automatically filter new information by their worldviews.  We as Americans tend to flip flop quite a bit in our actual worldview.  This causes us to have a constantly changing list of priorities without even realizing it is happening.  Remember our actual priorities will follow our actual worldview.  Our brains will make decisions based on that list of priorities.  This makes it extremely important for people to understand their own worldview and how new information affects that worldview.  Bias is a big deal.  When we accept information just because it is information and we never filter it according to its bias, that will make us wishy-washy people or brainwashed people.  We need to understand what we believe about life and why we believe that way.  This affects our priorities.

How Priorities Form Theories
When researchers in the humanities postulate theories, the form those theories take depends greatly on their own priorities.  We often do not think about that process, but when we theorize in the humanities, we are often trying to give credence to our own priorities and prove them to be the most important.  This is how bias enters the theoretical process in the research of the humanities.  We cannot escape it.  Our worldview dictates our priorities.  Our priorities shape our theories.  Remember theories are educated guesses.  Laws in the humanities do not exist.  Laws can only be established when dealing with physical properties such as gravity.  The human race consists of so many different customs and cultures that establishing laws of human nature runs afoul of a culture somewhere on the planet.  Many people in the Western world would have you believe that laws of human nature exist, but people of other cultures would disagree wholeheartedly.  Culture plays a major role in how people function and interact.  We cannot divorce a people's culture from the theories that people produces.  This is true of Western culture as well as every other culture on the planet.

How Priorities Affect Conclusions
Now we come to the heart of the matter.  If a researcher's priorities have set the parameters of a theory, does that not also affect the conclusions of the research?  Most researchers set out to prove a certain point to be true.  They place importance on the point and whether they admit or not, the whole structure of the research project leads in that direction.  Some researchers do this blatantly.  Some researchers do try to remain unbiased, but the bias remains.  If you find a research project that proves the opposite of what the researchers set out to prove, that is a rare humanities research project indeed.  Therefore, when considering the conclusions of a research project, the underlying philosophical bias must be taken into consideration.  This is especially true when the research project is trying to prove the tenets of another culture to be wrong.  You cannot compare apples and oranges.  You cannot prove the rightness or wrongness of a point when dealing with opposing cultures.  The results of the research only hold for the culture in which it was conducted.  Any other use of research belittles other people's worldview.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade