The Early Childhood Community and Groupthink

This post will start a series on the present state of the early childhood field as a whole.  Specifically, it will focus on the problem of groupthink and how to fix it.  This particular post will lay out the case for our guilt as it pertains to groupthink.

What is Groupthink?
Wikipedia defines Groupthink as "a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences."  A lot has been said in the media lately about various groups of people living in a "bubble."  That "bubble" mentality could also be considered groupthink.  When a group of people too closely share a worldview or viewpoint, groupthink becomes a danger.  This is especially true if this group vehemently opposes differing views.  In fact, that is the truest sign of groupthink.  Does the group tolerate differing views or do they try to squash differing views?

What is the Big Deal?
You may be wondering (especially if you are part of a bubble) why groupthink is such a big deal.  Groupthink has several negative consequences.  The first one is the demise of innovation.  When a group especially an entire field of study becomes guilty of groupthink, then the next generation of innovations suffers.  Whether you like to admit or not, the next wave of innovation usually comes from the opposing view of the majority.  Why is that?  It is because they are trying to fix the status quo.  Innovation always flows from that mindset.  If a field of study stifles or actively demonizes all opposing views, the field becomes stagnant and in danger of being replaced by an outside force of opposition.  The next danger of groupthink involves becoming blind to their own state of affairs.  When a group or field of study cannot be challenged, they become almost inbred.  They believe they are continuing to innovate when in reality they are only doing variations of the same theme.  How many times have you attended a workshop because the title intrigued you only to leave the workshop disappointed because it was the same old stuff wrapped up in a new package?  More times than I can count.  The last danger of groupthink comes about when they have been in that state for a considerable amount of time.  I call it "going down the rabbit hole."  They become so blind to their own state of affairs that they begin to do harm instead of good.  I also call this "being upside down and backwards."  In trying to innovate without outside or opposing forces to control the process, they truly become inbred and take off on dangerous tangents.  They take good ideas to horrible extremes and take what should be a great idea and mutate it into something detrimental to all involved.  The greatest example of this has to be political correctness.  The beginnings of political correctness probably had good intentions but the nature of the beast stifled opposition and became inbred.  Now we have an uncontrollable monster that makes most of us completely miserable.

Where are all the Conservatives?
At this point, many of you may be horrified and wondering if I mean to accuse the early childhood community and field of groupthink.  I do.  To prove my point I want to pose some questions.  Number one, where are all the conservatives?  I want you to consider this carefully.  How many true conservatives (not moderates) do you know in this field that have a bachelor's degree or higher?  Those with degrees embody the group in this field that make all the regulations and standards and/or provide all the training and technical assistance.  How many of those people are true conservatives?  Number two, how do those in power react when someone questions concepts like developmentally appropriate practice and "best practices?"  If you do not know the answer to that question, try it.  I have, and the result is venomous.  They will treat you like you are guilty of child abuse.  Number three, do the people in this field feel pressured to "tow the party line" in order to be employed in this field?  This one I know first hand.  I cannot get a teaching job in this field because of my conservative views.  They will never come out and say that, but they scrutinize my credentials much more than those with the same credentials and a liberal worldview.  I have been told more times than I want to acknowledge that my credentials do not fit the job just to have them hire someone with the exact same degree.  Lastly, are people with strong religious convictions forced to compartmentalize their faith in order to be taken seriously in this field?  This one I will cover in the next section.

Compartmentalization
What do I mean by compartmentalization?  If a person of faith has to put that faith in a box separate from their career, that should be the greatest indicator of a field enveloped in groupthink.  I know many Christians in this field, but they believe that their faith should only be a personal matter and should not bleed over into their work.  Why in the world should a person of faith feel the need to completely divorce their faith from their work?  That only happens when the field of work has been completely dominated by the secular progressive liberal worldview.  These people cannot apply their faith to their work because they would be ostracized or worse.  Unfortunately for me, I did not get the memo on compartmentalizing my faith.  Actually, I know the Bible too well to get away with that.  Our faith is our faith at work, play, and all other aspects of our life, and if our work forces us to lay that faith aside, something is seriously askew.

How to combat Groupthink
The only way to combat groupthink involves diversity of thought.  I will cover this in more detail in my next post on this series, but I will give the short version here.  We have got to get to the point as a society where we can handle an opposing view without requiring a safe space.  I have had to sit through more trainings and had to read more books that drove me nuts than I can count.  I had to learn to find the nuggets of truth in the most ridiculous arguments or lose my sanity.  Therein, lies the trick.  You have to listen to people to find those nuggets.  If we all learned to listen to one another and find those common ground nuggets of truth and apply them to the problems of this world, we might just get somewhere someday.

Conclusion
Many different fields of study and work have fallen prey to groupthink in our present society not just the early childhood field.  However, this is my field and I want to fight for its longterm viability.  I challenge early childhood professional groups and training colleges to hire more at least moderates if not conservatives.  Groupthink will make us irrelevant unless we begin to take steps to rectify it.

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

 

Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 7)

This post will finish up the discussion of the area of learning, Early Literacy, with the component, Letter Recognition.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first learning expectation is:  Begins to recognize letters.  The first performance indicator is:  Recognizes letters of her own name (first and then last) and letters that frequently occur in environmental print.  The way a child develops letter recognition depends greatly on the underlying philosophy of the teacher.  A great deal of the children I have taught over the years learned the letters in their name as they learned their letters in general.  I have a purposeful and intentional approach to teaching the letters of the alphabet instead of an environmental exposure approach to the letters.  For the children in my care, the letters in their name may or may not be the first letters they learn.  Most of the children unless they have delays or immaturity issues start learning the letters when they are three or three and a half years of age.  By the time they are four to four and a half years old, they know most or all of their upper case letters.  Then we start on lower case.  Remember I have a homeschooling background and know how to properly utilize flashcards in a one-on-one situation.  Flashcards help this process immensely when you use them one-on-one.  The trick is to vary how you make the child respond.  Sometimes let them tell you the name as you hold up the card.  The next time say the name and make them find the letter among a group of letters.  Then the next time have them say the names as they put them in order.  Expose them to one letter at a time and constantly grow the pool of letters you drill.  This only takes a few minutes per day and produces results that honestly flabbergast the "flashcards are of the devil" crowd.  A little direct teaching in this particular department can go a very long way.

The next performance indicator is:  Recognizes letters in a specific context (mostly environmental print), but may not recognize them when the context changes.  Again, this performance indicator depends heavily on how the children are taught their letters.  If a teacher relies on environmental print exposure to teach the letters, this will be the result.  If a teacher directly teaches the letters in the manner I laid out in the previous paragraph, this will not be the result.  Children that have been taught their letters through direct instruction with varying types of exposure will know their letters in any context, period.

The next performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Is more likely to confuse uppercase letters within each of the following groups - DCGOQ, BRPSJU, EF, and NMWAVYHLITKXZ - but may make distinctions between letters that belong to different groups.  There is a degree of truth to this performance indicator.  It has been my experience that children will have difficulty with one or two of the letters in each group not the entire group.  Of course, I direct teach the letters instead of trying to teach them through environmental exposure.  Again, the teaching method makes all the difference in the world.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Knows part of the ABC sequence by rote, but does not use it to associate a letter symbol with a letter name.  Again, this depends on the style of the teacher.  If all you ever do is sing the Alphabet song, this will be the result.  If you sing the Alphabet song as you point to the letters, you will get a different result because you have combined auditory learning with visual learning.  This approach gives the children two different anchors for the knowledge, and that makes a huge difference in results.  My normally developing four year olds know the ABC sequence by rote and can point out the individual letters on the ABC chart on my wall because the auditory teaches them the sequence and the visual reinforces the letter instruction I do with them otherwise.

The last learning expectation for the component Letter Recognition is:  Begins to recognize frequently occurring uppercase and some of the most frequently occurring lowercase letters.  The first performance indicator is:  Can recognize some letters both in a familiar context (own name, environmental print) and in isolation.  I am beginning to feel like a broken record but these standards assume that teachers will teach letter recognition by using the exposure to environmental print method.  When letters are taught directly using the method I lay out in the previous section, the results will be far greater than this.  Most children will learn all or most of their uppercase letters and quite a few if not all or most of their lower case letters depending on how much exposure to the direct teaching they received at three years old.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Recites ABCs; matches letter symbol with letter names by rote, but may have difficulty with letters that come later in the sequence (e.g., identifies KLMNOP as one letter); discriminates differences between upper and lower case letters.  Again, direct instruction with flashcards pushes 4 to 5 year old children far beyond this performance indicator.  A great deal of my children can match the lower case to the upper case not just discriminate the difference.  Also, when I recite the alphabet, I point to the letters as we sing the song and deliberately slow down for the LMNOP section to help them understand that those are individual letters and not one letter.  That has solved that problem almost entirely.

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