The ultimate goal of education is to be able to solve problems in the real world. For many young children this has meant entering the empirical world of hard core academic training at a very young age. Parents who fear their children will not be able to compete unless they learn reading and arithmetic early in life, are pushing their children into academics when they are very young. These parents believe that their children will fall behind in elementary school if they are not exposed to "drill and test" programs in their preschools.
The problem with this line of thought is that it is just plain wrong. Children who are forced to memorize rather than rationalize will be able to play back the information they received but will not be able to do anything creative with that information. Very young children are naturally curious and open to exploring the possibilities around them. If we fill them up with facts instead of encouraging creative exploration they will lose the ability to be creative with the facts we have given them. In other words it takes creativity to perform any kind of problem solving whether it is a math problem or a science problem.
Yet when we look at the preschool and elementary school world today we find fewer outlets for creativity and more "teach to test". We find less recess time, no art class, no music and no drama. For all the emphasis on teaching "the basics", I believe that academics are important, but studies show that this early emphasis on only hard core academics can result in poor academic performance when these children reach middle and high school. There are no studies that validate this push for early academics while there are studies that show the opposite.
If you want your child to be smart, you need your child to be creative. At these very young ages what your child needs is brain development activities not memorization. Young children need to learn how to recognize symbols and what those symbols stand for, to recognize the shapes of letters and numbers. Most importantly they need to understand that those letters and numbers are just symbols not reality. If they understand this their brains will be more open to thinking in abstract as well as factual reality.
As I said before it takes creativity to solve problems. It takes creativity to be comfortable facing a new problem and knowing how to approach solving it. If I know that 2 plus 2 =4 but I don't know how to imagine having 2 sticks and then picking up 2 more so I have 4 sticks, then it will be difficult for me to solve a "story problem" in my algebra class. The child needs to know the world is not black and white though the colors black and white do exist in the world. The child needs to know it is OK to take a risk and go outside the box intellectually, to solve a math problem by drawing on something learned while drawing or playing music. A creative child will sense the 'math' in art and music. A child who only knows that 2 plus 2 equals 4 will be able to work at McDonalds restaurant, but not at McDonalds.
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