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#Post#: 127--------------------------------------------------
Can We Say Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low?
DIR By: Oga informant
Date: September 12, 2016, 8:33 am
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Do Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low?
Might parents and teachers be simultaneously under- and
overestimating children?
"Old-school" parenting and teaching are often distinguished by a
failure to understand what children are capable of doing or
understanding, or to provide the support they need and the
respect they deserve. But does that mean kids are being
underestimated—or overestimated? The answer is less
straightforward, and more interesting, than you might think.
Let's back up for a minute. My premise is that it makes sense to
adopt what might be called a "working with"—as opposed to a
"doing to"—approach with children. That means relying on love
and reason, seeing kids as more than bundles of behaviors to be
managed and manipulated, and treating troublesome actions as
problems to be solved (or, if you like, teachable moments)
rather than as infractions to be punished.
Traditionalists, however, raise this objection: Because young
children aren't yet able to reason or understand long-term
consequences, we need to tell them what to do and employ rewards
or punishments to make sure they're properly socialized. In
effect, children's developmental limitations are invoked to
justify a "doing to" prescription. But the irony here is that
many developmental psychologists and educators with a keen
understanding of how kids' capabilities change as they grow tend
to reject that prescription.
The developmentalists' argument (which is mine as well) runs as
follows: No child is too young to be treated with respect. A
child's point of view should be taken seriously and his or her
choices honored when possible. Sure, the immaturity of young
children may require more patience from us. Yes, they may need
more protection and monitoring, more structure and instruction.
But none of this justifies a reliance on control and a
predominant focus on eliciting mindless obedience. Working-with
parenting and teaching of very young children may be
challenging, but it's not unrealistic. (I've offered practical
suggestions for how it can be done and so have many others,
including infant and toddler experts like Magda Gerber and
Alicia Lieberman.)
In fact, we can go a step further: Our treatment of little
children has an impact on how they develop. Imposing our will on
them (on the basis of their immaturity) makes it less likely
they'll acquire the very social and moral dispositions whose
absence we've used to justify such treatment. If we want them to
consider the needs and viewpoints of others, we have to guide
them gently to do so. If we want them to rely on cooperation
rather than power, we have to set that example in how we deal
with them. By contrast, offering rewards for compliance or
punishments for noncompliance makes it increasingly difficult to
promote other-oriented reasoning and empathy. Just because it
takes time to reach these goals doesn't mean we should head off
in the wrong direction.
An attempt to justify a "doing to" approach on the grounds that
children are too young to be "worked with" is ironic for another
reason, too. Parents and teachers who punish children are likely
to overestimate the capabilities of little kids — that is, to
overlook their developmental constraints. They either don’t
understand or simply deny the fact that kids below a certain age
can’t be expected to eat neatly or keep quiet in a public place
or always tell the truth. Young children don’t yet possess the
skills that would make it sensible to hold them accountable for
their behavior as we do an adult or even an older child.
A pair of studies by researchers at the University of Texas and
New York University confirmed that parents who “attribute
greater competence and responsibility to misbehaving children”
are more likely to get upset with them, to condemn and punish
them. Such parents become frustrated by what they see as
inappropriate behavior, and they respond, in effect, by cracking
down on little kids for being little kids—something that can be
heartbreaking to watch. By contrast, parents who understand
children’s developmental limitations tend to prefer “calm
explanation and reasoning” in response to the same actions.
So which is it? Are "doing to" parents apt to overestimate or
underestimate their children? Are they able to rationalize their
old-school discipline either way? Or are they somehow guilty of
doing both at once?
A similar over/under dilemma shows up in classrooms. It makes
its presence felt, first, with standardized testing. Most
teachers can readily name several students whom they know to be
impressive thinkers but who just don't score well on these
tests. Press further, and teachers may then think of others in
their classes who are great at taking tests but whose
proficiency at critical and creative thought is nothing to write
home about. Test results therefore overstate the actual
capabilities of some kids while understating those of
others—probably because tests tend to measure the least
important kinds of thinking. Indeed, several studies have found
that higher scores on various tests are significantly correlated
with shallower approaches to learning.
Or consider conventional ways of teaching math. On the one hand,
children's capacity to invent solutions is routinely minimized
by teaching them (and even requiring them to use) specific
procedures. On the other hand, children are often taught
concepts that are beyond their developmental capabilities to
understand, as if sufficient practice will make these concepts
comprehensible to them through sheer repetition. Students end up
making nonsensical errors because they really don't—and, at a
certain age, can't—grasp concepts such as place value.[1]
The tendency to underestimate kids — to overlook their often
remarkable observations and solutions — is a common complaint of
progressive educators and those who support a more
child-centered approach to schooling. We don't give kids their
due! But the tendency to overestimate them, which extends well
beyond math, is also worth our attention. Just as a punitive
parent may ignore the limits of a toddler's capacity for
remembering, deferring gratification, or dealing with
frustration, so an Old School teacher may, in the name of
"rigor" or "holding students to high standards," harbor
unrealistic beliefs about what young children are able to
master. Pushing a five year old to spell correctly, for example,
reflects a failure to understand the predictable and appropriate
way that children gradually come to master language, and it has
the effect of turning writing into an unpleasant experience.
Lilian Katz, an influential early-childhood educator, has a
brilliantly simple way of parsing this whole issue. She says we
overestimate young children academically while underestimating
them intellectually. I find the distinction between academic and
intellectual useful by itself: It captures how so much of
schooling is focused on facts-and-skills-based achievement
that's overrated and doesn't really deserve to be called
"intellectual" (even when that word is used in such a way that
it can be applied to preschoolers). But by taking the additional
step of applying this distinction to the question I've been
discussing here, Katz offers an interesting solution to the
riddle of how traditionalism seems to overestimate and
underestimate children at the same time.
The difference between academic and intellectual is less
relevant to parenting practices, of course. But there, too, kids
are often misunderstood in two directions at once. When we pay
close attention to children—what they are and aren't capable of,
what they need rather than just what we want from them—we're
likely to assess their capabilities in such a way that we can
avoid expecting too much, on the one hand, or selling them
short, on the other.
NOTE
1. See, for example, Constance Kamii's excellent book Young
Children Reinvent Arithmetic (which focuses on first grade) and
her two sequels, both titled Young Children Continue to Reinvent
Arithmetic, one focusing on second grade and the other on third
grade, all published by Teachers College Press. She and other
constructivists describe why (and how) to avoid overwhelming
children with concepts they can't yet make sense of, while also
giving them a chance to show what they can do, mathematically
speaking. The prescription that follows isn't just a matter of
adjusting one's teaching style -- consistent with those insipid
reminders offered to teachers that they should, for example, be
encouraging but maintain high expectations. Rather, it's a
matter of changing the basic pedagogical structure: moving away
from having kids memorize rules and then apply them to practice
problems on worksheets -- a process that, particularly in the
primary grades, tends to inhibit thinking -- in favor of
creating opportunities to collaborate in coming to understand
mathematical principles from the inside out. (I describe some of
these issues in "What Works Better Than Traditional Math
Instruction," which is an excerpt of The Schools Our Children
Deserve.)
#Post#: 1821--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can We Say Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too
Low?
DIR By: zicisux
Date: September 18, 2018, 12:19 am
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