It's Elementary

This past weekend I spent an evening with the small children of my roommate's uncle who lives nearby. Having been thoroughly removed from the world of crayons and My Little Pony (this reference itself probably dates me), I was fascinated by everything about this magical time, especially the incredible capacities of those living in it. At four years old, a lisping munchkin with deep-blue saucer-eyes had almost fully intuited the myriad arcane, inexplicable rules of English grammar, and was constructing extensive stream-of-consciousness narratives on a wide range of topics from proper dining etiquette for tropical fish to the telos of motherhood. Her speech was even peppered with endearing neologisms applicable to her world (like "encenter" meaning "ready for the new day," a word which I now find quite useful too).

But along with this incredible burgeoning linguistic aptitude comes a overwhelming fascination with the external world, as if while attempting to perfect her communication skills she had kept a mental list of all the puzzling and troubling circumstances around her. Now that the communicative barrier has been mostly demolished, these queries and quandaries come bursting forth to couple with the cold-fusion energy of most toddlers, transforming peevish monosyllabic terrible-twos into an inquisitive whirling dervishes, ready to drink in the world with one great gulp.

I am convinced that at this juncture, when the world of spoken language opens for the first time to an incipient consciousness, the mental foundation for the analysis of the external world is built. As the linguistically augmented bandwidth of data about the world expands, a child's developing mental machinery orders and arranges the incoming deluge into a model of the world that will serve as a foundation for the rest of their understanding. At such a crucial juncture, it seems that the opportunities for education to channel and augment this development are infinite.

But based on what I can remember of grade school, I am relatively under-whelmed at what was accomplished. It seems to me that in grades 1 through 5 teachers were not so much mentors and confidants, molding the malleable minds of youth into receptacles for knowledge and engines of analytical thought, as they were herders, attentive sheep-dogs that rounded up the young'uns and kept them under control with colored paper and white glue. This observation by no means demeans the job of elementary school teachers in any way; with an entire battalion of hyperactive, incoherent children bouncing into one another like paste-eating billiard balls, only the most impressive manipulation of mob psychology is effective in merely controlling the little monsters at these high densities. But it does show that while the most crucial portions of children's brains are being wired, and their language centers are first coming to full functionality, they are placed into a holding tank, in a glorified mass day-care operated by local governments at varying degrees of efficiency and quality.

Instead of overwhelming teachers with this raw energy by packing these dynamos into classes, we ought to reduce the sheer wattage in each classroom to levels that teacher might be able to direct, focus and harness for the good. Here begins my brainstorming: what about having highly trained teachers stay with a very small group of 7-10 students from K-5th grade, allowing them to truly monitor and witness the development of their charges through time? With this level of commitment over a number of years, a grade-school teacher becomes less of a teacher and more of an extra parent, augmenting whatever existing family structure there is at home, eliminating those children growing up without long-term adult support. With this level of individualized attention, cracks in the system close, and each child is guaranteed individual, intensive attention just when their understanding of the world is just starting to solidify.

My conclusion from a day's worth of anecdotal evidence is simple. The drive toward exploration and analysis ought to be cultivated early, as the Playdough in the hands is as pliant as the Playdough in the head. This drive need only be guided and focused by educators further down the line, as the planted seeds of inquiry and thought grow to fruition. If the paralyzing awe of the world can be buttressed to withstand adolescence, the fertile mental fields and greater freedoms of youth will couple with this wonder to create a lust for lifelong learning.

B.J. Greenleaf '01 is a physics concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.