Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?
There is a lot of material out there for teens and older kids.
I am curious what material or activities you use for kids ages 6-8 for helping them to learn to think on their own.
I am curious what material or activities you use for kids ages 6-8 for helping them to learn to think on their own.
I have no idea how conscious it was on the family's part, but it seemed like everyone in that family ALWAYS had a creative project that they were thinking about, talking about, and was celebrated by all in the family. It could be the dad talking about some data he was cleaning, or the younger kids about some new comic character they were developing, etc. It was clear that there was absolutely NO judgement as to what everyone's endeavor was, but that being a creative person and exploring and thinking was table stakes to being part of that family.
I don't know what the answer is, but I think if you manage to cultivate that kind of culture in your household, everything else will come easier, because above all, it seemed like they all had JOY in doing all of this. I could easily see how it could become a chore and even a burden, but somehow those parents really managed to lose sight of having everyone see thinking and exploring as primarily a fun thing to do, and it seems to have stuck.
This whole question got started in my mind after recently reading the book A Mathematician's Lament.
The comparison in the book is along the lines of memorizing methods and facts verse exploring ideas with the mind.
It's this idea of pursuing anything interesting just for the sake of it.
Could you elaborate on the insight you learned from "A mathematican's lament"?
I made an acquaintance with a retired math professor. We had some long discussions about education. He had stated he kept his kids out of school as long as he could. It was his view that much of the structure of the public education taught your child not to think. His son eventually went on to get a PHD in theoretical physics if is any reflection on his methods.
"So how do we teach our students to do mathematics? By choosing engaging and natural problems suitable to their tastes, personalities, and levels of experience. By giving them time to make discoveries and formulate conjectures. By helping them to refine their arguments and creating an atmosphere of healthy and vibrant mathematical criticism. By being flexible and open to sudden changes in the direction to which their curiosity may lead. In short, by having an honest intellectual relationship with our students and our subject."
And it may also sound almost obnoxious by just describing it this way, but it truly felt almost joyous around them. It's like they made it super fun to ask questions, think about things, explore creative endeavors...
With my own children, I read to them, have them read to me, and allow them to pursue their own interests, which as kids under 10, are admittedly not too many or technical, although they are wanting to learn Raspberry Pi stuff. I tend to walk them through their own questions, such as having them analyze potential outcomes. At the same time, I don't want to be a helicopter parent. They play outside, largely by themselves since we live in the county. I do keep on eye on them, but they tend to build things out of wood or look for frogs and lizards. We have agreed they want to build a small-scale replica of a fire lookout tower and they will help choose parts and assist in building. One of them already wants to be in Forestry and has for the last few years. I guess my answer is to allow myself to see our comings and goings as projects that we all enjoy and help them learn along the way.
We had our first baby this year and I'm the one who does all the research and evaluation to ensure that we're taking care of our baby well and doing the things to help our child be setup for success later in life.
The problem is I work full time and she stays at home and is the primary caretaker. So I'm not there most of the time to give intellectual input.
As someone who seems to have grown up in similar circumstances, do you have any advice to make the best of this situation?
And just curious. Don't have to answer if this is too personal. How was the dynamic between your parents given the intellectual disparity? And what was your attitude and experience growing up with this disparity?
For myself, I love my wife dearly and she is a kind and loving person, but the intellectually disparity is a cause of disappointment at times. Of course, I don't express that directly. I just lower try to lower my expectations and find intellectual stimulation in other arenas.
What i tell myself is that a happy mom is probably more significant than most scientific advice about average kids. I think twice or thrice if i really want to push for something. One example I would have pushed for is "no rewards for good grades but for effort" but she actually agreed immediately.
I get what you mean, but I’ll add the following: I’m sure she loves the child as much as you do, and wants it to turn out well and happy. Books and formal knowledge are only a small part of human understanding; if your wife is kind and loving, chances are she understands certain things (esp human aspects) better than any book can teach. I’m sure your child will find a lot to learn from her too (and so could you) :-)
My wife has a doctorate. She's very intelligent, far more than I am, if I'm honest, but... she cares nothing for anything other than her field. Nothing. She won't entertain ideas other than her own. I love her to death, but she's very narrow minded.
My parents (deceased) were chalk and cheese. My mother was sweet and loving. Her skills ended there. My father was likely a genius on many levels. There was nothing he couldn't suss out. I was having issues compiling a program written in Basic one day in 1983. He was an Ada/C guy and in 10 seconds saw the issue and had me correct it. He was a math wizard--had to be--he designed flight systems that people's lives depended on. He was anal retentive to the nth degree and that rubbed off on me. He always said, "Son, if you're going to do anything, do it as if your life and others depend on it." He even had me PM my own bicycles and the lawn mower. My mother was distant in many respects and died an alcoholic. Maybe she felt like she never fit in. I don't know. Her parents, my grandparents, were very educated and well read. Odd.
Like you, I find it incredibly frustrating that I cannot get an Arduino or Raspberry Pi project launched and share it with my wife. Her eyes glaze over and she's actually said, "I'm not interested." My kids are too young to grok what I'm doing and don't have the patience yet to learn (yet). She likes those brain dead games and TV shows that offer zero in the way of intellectual worth. I love anything sci-fi, coding, fishing, woodworking, etc. Don't lower your expectations. I would try and find common ground with her in something you both enjoy and let that be your communal source of joy with your wife. You need you time and so does she. Parenting is no joke and she is performing an unpaid job that is high stress. Take the kid out, just you and the kid. Give her some downtime to recharge. Women love that stuff. Just what works for me.
Amen that parenting is no joke. She's a trooper with our kid and is way more patient and persevering that I am. I'm very thankful for her.
Thank you for your sharing and advice. I have this whole subthread bookmarked.
With some things, we can see what's needed, even if we're not set up to attempt it. Education content could be transformatively less wretched, even with current tech. Critical concepts and misconceptions could be punchlisted. Support networks could be thicker, deeper, and non-local. To avoid so many falling though such large cracks.
But embedding in an excellent culture like this? There's some work from MOOCs. But especially for young kids, something more immersive is needed. We could be waiting years for child-compatible AR. And for humans-plus-AI-NPCs local-plus-remote collaborative learning communities. Is there anything beyond "well, there's the daily triage struggle towards slightly less toxic cultures, but really, unless you have an extraordinarily outlier family, you're just bleep-out-of-luck until mid-century"?
Which isn't intended to disparage everyone's day-by-day efforts. But if something like this family's environment is to become norm rather than outlier... we also have to be thinking and aiming bigger.
I would also be very interested in knowing more about how the parents of those noble-prize winners, renowned academics, and award winning authors raised them :)
I just started reading a book that talked about that, called "The self-driven child", and the main message of what the book is trying to say is, give your kids "control". Instead of telling them to do this or that, provide them choices and let them decide for themselves. And let them feel confident and not worry about failing.
Honestly, I'm still going through the book and curious to see how we can apply to our kids.
This is great, but the _last part_ is so important. A lot of parents try to follow this path, but they end up providing the kids only with false choices. Think "do you want to do your chores or play outside?" where the only answer the parent will actually accept is "do your chores". This is ultimately still parents telling their kids what to do, but framed as though the parents were _helping_ the kids. Children faced with these sorts of questions can grow up always seeking validation, always trying to pick "the right answer" -- leading to failure avoidance, lack of confidence, etc. This can lead to an adult who cannot make choices for themselves (everyone knows people who are always paralyzed by decision-making). Works great for training kids to do well in school, though, since school follows a similar pattern of always having one "correct" answer...
out in the world, she's a relative independent creature free to explore and make decisions (it's my job to be patient and supportive, but not overly so). of course i steer her away from sitatuions that are certain to overwhelm her, exposing her to them a little at a time so she eventually learns to handle them herself without otherwise damaging regression to her self-assurance. exposure to small risks, and overcoming them, allows her to build that confidence herself, with minimal intervention on my part.
she's had a few (minor) mishaps, but she's also grown quite a bit in her self-confidence and trust (especially at home, where the relative confinement manifested in near constant anxiety behaviors before). she's learned how to approach other dogs, and the social etiquette therein, able to disengage with (usually fearful) aggressors on her own without my intervention. she's learning that not every large human is a danger to her, but that cars (and roads) are. she knows squirrels and pigeons are fun to chase, but not cats (she lives with a feline sister who's friendly and kind, but still has claws).
it's how animals develop self-sufficiency in the wild, including us if we weren't so obscured by domestication.
As a family we have had two activities that have really bound us together, one is my wife's insistence that we always had dinner together, and camping. We also had a used copy of the World Book encyclopedia in a bookshelf near the dinner table, as a series of the Time-Life books on various topics, as well as various popular desktop references like the Scientific American Science Desk Reference.
At dinner we would talk about things. All sorts of things. And when we wanted details of a thing we would look it up in the encyclopedia and read aloud from it to share that knowledge. Anything could trigger a wide ranging conversation, from why to police officers give people tickets to people crossing the street to why are there parrots living in Sunnyvale, to how do cellular phones work. And model both learning new things as well has how to find things in available sources. We are fortunate to live within walking distance of the library so the kids could check out a wide variety of books.
My wife would often "auction off" the last tasty thing (generally one of her rolls which are super yummy) with an open ended question, best answer wins the treat.
Camping was sort of like dinner++ in that there are things to do while camping, like hiking and fishing and whittling different shapes out of sticks, but there was also a lot of time to just talk about things without the distraction of phones or computers or day to day things.
All of those things to feed curiosity, provide the time to explore the questions and answers, and try to understand things about the world around us.
For our family this worked out well. I don't know if it would work for every family of course. Feeding curiosity is something my parents did and I simply modeled it to my children.
Walking is something I started doing when I began focusing on my health and where I'd be if I didn't do something. These days I walk about 7 - 8 miles a day but being semi-retired helps there. Another friend of mine and I found we can spend our time walking and talking on conference calls very effectively to 'double use' the time.
This sounds like the fairy tale version of that. Probably doesn't make for great cinema. But I imagine a lot of people here would have loved to have grown up in a family like that.
I think I would have. Then again I asked to be excused from the honors program in elementary school because it conflicted with PE. (Begged to get back in once I hit junior high and got my first taste of an ordinary junior high English class.)
Royal Tenanbaums trailer just because I love this movie:
You do not teach a kid to think, you provide and environment that allows them to. They will learn to do this on their own.
* When they ask a question, I often say “I don’t know” in order to stimulate a discussion rather than just telling them the answer, and also to make it clear it’s OK not to know things.
* As well as “I don’t know”, I might also ask them why they think something and whether they would like to do a test or experiment to help them find out. I’m not talking science experiments really - questions like “Why is your shirt always tucked in?” I would answer by trying to put some action on them, like saying “Why don’t you try some different styles and see which one is best and then I might change my mind?”.
* I ask them questions about everyday situations even when I wouldn’t expect them to have any sensible answer (e.g. “what do you think I should write in this email to my boss?”), just to help broaden their understanding of the world and to demonstrate seeking advice and input from others.
* I sometimes throw them out into the garden and tell them to do whatever they like. Make-believe, bash rocks, whatever. As long as they are forced to entertain themselves!
* I let them watch YouTube on the TV (supervised), but I set the PIN as a solution to a puzzle. Turns out they like solving the puzzles as much as watching YouTube trash.
* On the theme of trash content consumption, I don’t ban it but try to talk about it (aside from setting some reasonable time limits), guiding the conversation towards questioning why they would want to spend their time on that. And you know what, sometimes they happen upon something cool and I let them change my mind and we watch it together.
* I tell lots of bedtime stories that I make up as we go along, letting them decide some things as we go. Strangely, eldest loves this but youngest is indifferent and would rather hear something familiar.
* Recognizing that they are still young kids and still letting them be kids and not expecting them to be debate prodigies or other tiger parent nonsense.
As an example, my son often asks me scientific questions, and I provide the answers, and we talk a little around the subject. Eventually he stumped me though, when he asked if you were travelling at the speed of light would you cast a shadow. At that point I actually had to say "I don't know" and we ended up asking Twitter for an answer, and we both learned something.
Domain-specific background knowledge is incredibly important. It turns out (for the most part) there are no general purpose cognitive skills... it's all domain specific. A student that knows about baseball will comprehend an article about baseball much better than one that doesn't have the core knowledge of what a run, base, double, home run, etc. means. Decoding strategies be damned.
Helping your young child develop said background knowledge will put them in a fantastic spot as they enter school. They'll 'get the joke' - it's a bit like velcro for the brain. Nothing sticks for the students that enter school without the cognitive velcro that is domain-specific background knowledge.
I know this sounds completely contrary to the progressive education philosophies that domain our culture about teaching kids how to think vs what to think... no memorization, etc. It surprised me too.
Check out the work of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, Natalie Wexler (The Knowledge gap is a great book) or E.D. Hirsch for a deep dive.
We do some activities at home. Chemistry, electronics, scratch programming. Stuff that is not taught in schools.
I use to live in radio shack as a kid. Putting together circuits was thrilling.
As others have mentioned in this discussion, I think giving the child both a sense and actual control over what they work on is one of the keys.
Children want to please their parents, so they might work on things that they think you would like. They are extremely good at reading people even if other actions seem uncoordinated. It is best to listen, in all senses of the word, to child and find out what they really like. Once you have found that, you have to make enough space for it to bloom.
One example for me was in getting my very adventurous athletic child to ride a scooter and a bike. I thought she would be one of those badass three year olds skating around with the big kids. She didn't really take to it, I tried to push it a little bit and I found myself a little deflated when said she didn't like it.
I sat back and figured out that I wanted it, and it wasn't fair for me to put that on to her. A smile isn't always a smile and encouragement is always what it seems. i backed off, would ask about it once in awhile but didn't pressure her again.
About 6 months ago she asked to ride the bike again, that she really wanted to learn. I told her she is gonna crash, it might hurt, but that anyone can do it. In 5 days of two 20-30 minute sessions a day, she was starting, stopping and turning all on her own. She was so excited to have learned it, I could see the accomplishment on her whole being.
Humans are wonderful all purpose devices, the spark that guides us the leads to our differentiation is the interest reward function. Capabilities are one thing, but interest, genuine interest is where the magic lies. The most interesting people are to me are the ones that ask the best questions, or give the answer you weren't expecting.
Our job as parents, I believe is to be a social and metacognitive mirror so that everyone can get a different perspective to explore and understand the world.
I think this is known as the Pygmalion effect. It is very powerful, and we as parents/teachers have to be very careful with this.
Knowing what each of us really wants is a difficult question to answer.
I often wonder how much of what my parents were and were not shaped what I have become.
My daughter actually just taught herself to ride this past weekend. Her biggest hurdle was getting over the fear of crashing. She started out balancing for a few days before she just magically started pedaling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
My kids first word was, "no". Her first sentence was, "help me no". I use those as guides to maintain the distance she desires.
Athletics like art are one of those accomplishments and outlets that kids can embrace at a young age w/o having the "when I grow up" statements. They can start living their lives in the now w/o adults putting it off to a later date.
Watching a kid finally get riding a bike is a wonderful thing.
Especially around age 13 or 14, pissing off parents is a sport.
There has to be at least one, even on your own account: knowing how to learn the domain specific knowledge for a new domain.
I would also add another: knowing how to spot and make use of common features between domains. But it's true that this skill can't even be developed until you've learned the domain specific knowledge in quite a few domains.
You see that when you hand word problems with more than one step to the poor kids. They use "solution strategies", that is they circle numbers and what they think are keywords, and they full well don't know what those words mean.
They circle "concentration", and they even can calculate a concentration given a mass of solute and volume of solvent, but they never thought about solutions and what solutions of different concentrations might do for you.
There is a paper somewhere in the Journal of Chemical Education where they handed numerical and conceptual questions to kids from Yale and FAMU. Quite contrary to expectations, the Yale kids did much better on the number questions, but on the questions what it all means both cohorts did equally lousy - 1/3 of kids at either school had an idea what those numbers they just calculated meant.
Her teacher tried to show her that it's ok to make mistakes because it's a natural part of learning. She said "Look at your little brother; he can't walk yet but he's trying and trying and falling all the time. But eventually all those falls will have taught him to walk!"
My daughter considered it, then looked her teacher in the eye and replied "we don't know that yet".
You want them to think on their own. The best way to do this is to allow them to think on their own and nurture their own excitement to do so.
What reading or other material have you enjoyed on this topic?
This list of resources is pretty great: https://livingjoyfully.ca/resources/
The book Free to Learn and the John Holt books listed are excellent starting points.
We would also highly recommend Pam Laricchia’s books and podcasts.
I like to think I'm teaching my kid to think. Last night we started wondering why fish can swim near sharks and not get eaten. We talked, we speculated, we joked, we researched and discussed what we had found.
I wasn't trying to teach her to think. I had no ulterior motives at all, I was genuinely curious about shark feeding behavior. As I look back on it now I feel like I was teaching her to think by encouraging her to think, sincerely considering her ideas, showing her how to test them, and coming away with more knowledge than we started with.
Also, you need to make sure you yourself don't lie to them. A lot of parents still teach their kids to believe in Santa Claus. I know this is one of those cultural sacred cows, but I strongly think this should not be done. Kids need to be able to trust their parents and caregivers to a higher degree than the rest of society.
I've done some formal "activities" with them in homeschooling, like sorting "real" vs. "not real," but even I don't think those are as good as leading by example.
Everything fictional is in "stories."
I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story. That said, we can do all sorts of fun imaginative things with story characters because we know they are not real.
This allows us to have the magic of Santa, without eventually having a large breach of trust.
And because of that I want to add how my parents did it, which was kind of along the lines of "teaching children to think": They kept up the myth until we started questioning it, turning it into a sort of rite of passage.
I figured it out in 2nd grade, age 7 or 8, right at the point OP is asking about.
I find this interesting: do you believe there is something intrinsically bad in the lies?
Normally, I would think they lead to lack of trust, but I don't seem to remember children losing trust in their parents when they discovered _they_ are really Santa Claus.
I mean, it seems to me that not all un-truths are created equal.
Now I can't say that this will actually have much of an effect, like I said, we can naturally work out these contradictions over time, but I think this is why one should not lie to children in general.
Like you say, not all untruths are created equal. It could be quite easy for them to fix their concepts once they realize it is a lie, but perhaps it could have some lingering effects. I can't say. I'm not a psychologist and each individual, and their mind, is different.
This may be of paramount importance when it comes to forming a critical mind.
Moreover any human group is built upon myths.
Indeed, and I didn't write that the Santa Claus myth is sufficient on this behalf, but that it may help.
Are you rejecting anything but a perfect (simple and exhaustive) way to teach critical thinking? I never crossed one, and doubt it exists for any complex philosophical asset. Refusing any other way exposes to the 'perfect solution fallacy'.
> if you sabotage the process by openly betraying them in a huge way early on.
I doubt kids learning that Santa Claus is a myth feel betrayed, and never perceived it (I was born in 1967 and have a daughter).
The SC myth is well-built because when discovering its nature a kid understands that the lie is innocuous and even pleasant (gifts, gatherings...), and therefore not really a 'betraying'. He can then proceed to other conclusions about intents, the way he forms his own beliefs...
I'm not fond of the SC myth nor do I practice it, however I try to be objective (this is part of critical thinking!).
After discussing it with my wife we opted to go on with the lie under the conditions that it not be used for any kind of negative reinforcement-- none of the "Santa is watching you..." kind of stuff-- and that the "reveal" needed to be handled appropriately.
When she does deduce the lie the plan is to explain to her as such:
- It's a tradition that is passed down to bring joy to children. It allows parents to give gifts in a way that carries no expectation of thanks or praise.
- She is now in on the "secret". It's her responsibility to guard the secret the same way her parents did before her. She knows what joy it brought to her and she shouldn't spoil that joy for others.
- We do not lie to her, as a rule. We took this very seriously and thought hard about it. We decided the joy it would bring to her, and to the people she might one day be "Santa" for, was worth betraying her trust in this case.
I still don't feel great about it, but I can live w/ myself.
The little girl is 7 right now. She has said stuff like "I think Santa is really you and Mom". She also questions that conclusion, though, because because she says, effectively, that she doesn't have evidence for it. (I need talk about about Occam's razor and the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... >smile<)
To tell you the truth, I think back to that when I question my gut to this day. I'm thankful my parents never lied to me outside of it, but the wonderful thing about Santa is that everyone is in on the conspiracy, so if you can see past it you'll only ever be more confident in the truth when you find it, without taking it for granted. If it means anything from a random person on hacker news, I benefited from being told that Santa existed, and from the sound of it your daughter will too.
But, um, I don't think we took the same tack with the Tooth Fairy. We told our kids that the Tooth Fairy recycled teeth - when they fell out of kids' mouths, the Tooth Fairy took them and gave them to babies that were just getting their teeth.
So I guess I'm a hypocrite :-(
Physical learning seems to be important. Legos, science experiments, flying kites, etc., are all great ways for kids to learn about things in a concrete way. One science experiment I did with my oldest daughter was a "Will it sink or float?" experiment that is easy to do - just get a tub of water and random house hold items (coins; cereal; piece of bread; piece of paper; etc.).
Reading to them, and stopping to ask them questions about the book. What's happening on this page? How do you think that character feels? What do you think is going to happen next?
Show your kids that they can write stories. It doesn't have to be something fancy, just a bunch of pictures on regular printer paper, each with a sentence describing what's happening. If your kids are too young to write the words themselves, you can ask them what the page should say and write it for them.
Let them be bored sometimes. When given nothing to do, kids are forced to figure something to do by themselves.
* Every night, read them out loud classic books slightly over recommended reading age. We started with Jungle Book, Riki Tiki Tavi, other Kipling, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, etc. These days we just finished Lord of the Rings and are doing Silmarillion. Jules Verne is another favorite.
* Audio books. We use Audible and always play something when traveling to swim practice, etc. Boxcar Children, Historical fiction, Paddington, etc.
* Encourage imaginative play based on the stories. Ours have an ongoing play containing Hobbits, bears, elves, Harry Potter and Star Wars ;) Encourage them to make up and tell their own stories.
* Go to the library weekly (ours just reopened on a limited basis). We let ours check out 5 books of whatever they want, but say 2 must be history, science, literature, etc. Get them their own card as soon as possible.
While fiction might not seem at first to "teach kids how to think", it really can. It simulates what people are thinking in various situations the kids can relate to. Storytelling can help them reinforce that and extrapolate to new scenarios in fun, safe ways. Mensa has some great reading lists: https://www.mensaforkids.org/achieve/excellence-in-reading/
Not reading, but we also:
* Discuss and research together in depth things that interest us and them. For example, I talk to mine about the latest space news over dinner. They love hearing about various missions, challenges to space travel, etc.
* Play chess and/or other strategy games.
* DuoLingo on a regular basis. We let ours choose what language - I have one doing Dutch and one doing Latin.
* Code.org, youtube DIY and educational channels
Again, I believe in aiming slightly over their heads. Not so much you bore them to death, but enough to get gears turning. Even if they don't retain details, it builds a framework for them to build on. Susan Wise Bauer in The Well Trained Mind talks about how doing this can provide "coat hangers" for them to hang bigger thoughts and more details on in later years.
I have been trying to read to the kids as much as I can. It depends on homework and schedules. Right now we are almost through The Hobbit.
We love The Hobbit. My 8yo the other day at dinner said "If Frodo or Bilbo had just killed Gollum instead of being kind to him, then Middle Earth would not have been saved." A great discussion of justice vs forgiveness ensued, but unfortunately did not carry over to their sibling rivalry ;)
I myself get extremely tired when I try to read something close to bed.
https://austingwalters.com/talk-to-yourself/
IMO it’s all about giving kids time alone, Not stimulated, to learn how to think about the voice in their head. A lot of what we do is try to inject more stimulus to teach, instead (and this is similar to the Montessori school of thought) they need some time to formulate a self image and learn to reflect and build an ego (self).
For example, with my very young niece, I would tell her nonsense stories, where there's a purple lion on the back of the turtle, etc. Keeping track of this weird story kept her gears spinning.
Other times I would tease her and say that my name was her name, or that blue was purple. I would try to mimic her voice, or draw out syllables in a funny way. The net result is hilarious conversations where she is explaining very carefully why I am not her, and why colors are different.
Basically, keeping things fun is useful for everyone, but even more for kids.
(Jokes aside, is it that different? Isn't the larger question: what does it mean to "think", and what does it mean to "teach" someone to do it?)
The Thinking Toolbox by Bluedorn is pretty good. The target age starts at 12-13.
For me, this is still too advanced for the age range 6-8 I am looking for. The biggest challenge is taking these abstract ideas and making them accessible and interesting to a child.
I taught a few lessons in Scratch programming last year to grades 1-5. Before I conceptualized the lessons, I had listened to the audio book Made to Stick. I found this was helpful in thinking about how I should communicate these abstract ideas about programming to younger kids.
That is a more specific — and therefore more answerable — question. I thought you meant thinking in general from the post.
1. First, linking intrinsic motivation with something meaningfully contributes to something outside of them. The catch? This is something the person chooses for themselves, based on what Sandford calls “essence”. Rewards and incentives are still external. Whatever is chosen may be beyond the child’s current capability.
2. A framework (a way of seeing the world and self) is given so that the child can grow his own capability in order to accomplish what he set out to contribute. Those things like observation, problem solving, critical thinking, systems thinking are developed by the child, and driven by the child’s intrinsic motivation.
There is a lot more to that, and I am still learning and applying this myself.
Something like this does not require a child to have genius level iq.
The biggest thing about what she teaches is a different way of viewing the world. How to identify the paradigm, epistemology, and frame, including your own patterns of thinking. The kind of problems she is addressing cannot be solved through the paradigm that generated those problems.
I would say start with _Regenerative Life_ unless you intend to try applying this in business first. I think she has community somewhere specifically for educators and homeschoolers, but it is radically different because it is developed from a regenerative paradigm.
If you are looking for a single resource that gives you a broad taste of many of the things she teaches, I’d say go with this podcast interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-regenerative-real-...
But it wasn’t until I started trying to examine paradigms, or heard Sandford’s approach to growing people, that I understood why it works for indigenous families, or how it can work in the modern world. Those toddlers want to contribute something meaningful and the indigeous parents let them, growing their capacity. When the scope of the contribution expands from helping the household to helping the community, helping the society, helping the world, such a kid becomes powerful agents of meaningful change.
My six year old has the bullshit detector of a street smart teenager, not in all aspects, but in enough. I cried a little bit when she asked me, "how do you know that is true?"
Here's one: https://www.paradoxlab.org/
What's praise-worthy about this initiative is philosophy Ph.D. - level organizers: https://www.paradoxlab.org/our-team-1
I stumbled upon this book Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy when I was wandering the library on my lunch break last year.
But my approach has always been:
1. Read every day and spice it up with my own freaky tales of spiderman, witches, jungles etc. My dad used to do the same and my kids like it a lot.
2. Be outside in all weather and all times. Nothing hits jumping in pools of water with or without boots. We dig a lot in a nearby field of dirt, making caves and talking about materials etc. Also we like fishing crabs and making bonfires year around.
Being outside is the only place i am at piece with my sickened head so it also means they get to spend time with "not stressed dad"
3. We draw a lot, have paper and drawing stuff everywhere. We hang them up and talk about them.
4. Recently we have begun to make simple "turtle drawing" programs together to show them how fun it is that if you can instruct a computer to draw one tree you can also tell it to draw 100 different trees of different size and colors.
5. We talk a lot and we never "dumb it down" instead i spin the history stories or the science stuff i like to talk baout so they get intrugued .
The outcome: they are happy. I value their happyness as its sadly not the feeling i wear. My sadness is not invisible to them but the time we spend together and my openness about it has not yet had a negative impact on them.
They are also very socially engaged and thoughtful which i hope is as well connected to the many different types of people, from all layers of society, that they see me talking to.
https://www.amazon.com/Absorbent-Mind-Unabridged-Start-Publi...
This stands in contrast to modern practices of shuttling children from activity to activity, arranging their lives for them and depriving them of control.
Independence in daily activities dovetails into independence in intellectual educations. Children tend to develop those activities over which they have the most hands-on control and most freedom for self-exploration.
Just reading up on the "growth mindset" now, and it seems there is some recent criticism of the idea, although that stems from inability to replicate the research results, not that there is a more widely preferred alternative.
I think that aspect of growth mindset is still valid. If you tell a kid they are smart, they will be in for a shock when someone smarter comes along.
Sometimes they request specific questions (so they can show off what they've learned) and I lob them softballs (addition, geography, and other stuff they are learning about in schools often shows up). But sometimes I like to explore deeper questions that don't have clear answers. For example:
- Why are some people rich and some people poor
- What is justice?
- What does it mean to be a good man?
- Who should pay your teachers?
and so on.
A lot of the source topics are covered in classical books, particularly Plato's Republic (a dialogue where they go about conjuring up an ideal society), but I find that the kids will quickly take it in their own direction.
Honestly it's one of the more enjoyable things I get to do with the kids.
Good activities are open-ended for more opportunity to question. Drop an egg, improve its survivability.
Actively prevent loss-aversion from being the only learned lesson of failure. Encourage risk-taking by providing a safe space to fail: https://youtu.be/lJs-RiPOKVY
I like how Waldorf approaches this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education#Developmenta...
Notice that 'thinking' isn't really a focus with Waldorf until around age 14.
If we were to invert the question, How to teach kids not to think?
What would the answer look like?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_%28programming_languag...
That's something they already do, and most enjoy doing. We just need to guide them to question the rules in a coherent manner.
Besides critical thinking and argumentation, by letting them question your own rule, the meta skill you're demonstrating here is intellectual humility, IMO the most prized quality of a great thinker.
My daughter is very creative and loves to spin up ideas and stories. When she asks me a question about the universe, I throw it back at her.
“Daddy, why do flies have such thin wings? Why don’t they break?”
“Well, what do YOU think?”
She’ll then invent some explanations, we’ll have fun questioning them, and eventually look up some real answers.
My son is much more execution-minded. He usually asks questions because he wants to understand how to build something. With Legos. In Minecraft. Whatever. He’s less interested in creative word play and more interested in creative building. Sometimes I can use the same tricks as with my daughter. “How do you think it works?” With him, I can often reframe the question and make him grapple with his goal at a higher level.
“Sure, here’s how a gear box works. But what do you really want to accomplish here? Is there a better way to do this?”
I haven’t read any books, this just seems to work for us. In either case, it’s critical to encourage kids to ask questions, and to teach them how to ask effective questions.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wSEGsjDPtSWkAtXce/teaching-r...
[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NAfZr8tHe5fPZyab4/bed-time-s...
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZhoyWrqXRShbee4bS/raising-nu...
<proud papa incoming> My kid got to Ganon in Link to the Past Randomizer a week before his fifth birthday.
I see him applying the same type of logical processing - and readiness to deal with randomness in the world - throughout his play and behavior.
When they ask a question, instead of giving them an answer, we just ask what they think first. Often that leads to a rather wild/creative prediction, something that comes out of their understanding of thew world, which although limited, is beautiful. We explore forward from there.
Generally, it helps to put kids in charge of their own life in whichever capacity they can at this point in time. If they know they can put on their own shoes, clean their own dishes, make their own breakfast ...etc, they also learn implicitly that they have full ownership of their thinking too.
To be honest, it's hard because very often it's easier for us, the parents, to just have the kids do what we need them to do, rather than what kids want to do, or think is the best way to do it. But, it's a tradeoff. When they get more freedom, they engulf in it.
My 2c.
thank you for the recommendation. What did you like most about this book?
In a situation that requires thinking, encourage the child to come up with more than one idea. Praise every idea.
So the first thing is not to squash their curiosity. The second is to train them how to find answers. Right now, we find the answers with our 6 year old but soon he will be able to do it himself.
Something people haven't really mentioned, and is hard to do as a parent, is to get out of the way. Give them a problem or a tool and let them get bored. Boredom is the scarcest resource we have nowadays and it is critical to let kids be bored so their natural curiosity can take over and lead them to do things that they want to do, not what they are told.
Who decides what the simplest explanation is?
Learning how to represent both sides of an argument is both academically rigorous and opens kids to the idea that there are other sides.
You can do this at the dinner table, but also through formal debate clubs and classes. There are some doing this over zoom.
Learning how to learn for teens Getting things done (gtd) for teens
How did they come up with their statement?
Please don’t do that to your kids. If you have the means (not everyone does), check in with them on homework, for example. See what they’re learning about — and ask them questions about it. Show curiosity and interest. In my opinion, that is a good way to jump start your child’s curiosity. Help them understand the significance of what they’re learning - if you’re able to.
Ask them to question things. I grew up in a household where I took textbooks and papers as all being fundamentally correct and true, and that’s not always the case. Skepticism is a good thing. Encourage your children not to take things at face value but dive a bit deeper to understand if something really makes sense or if it’s even true.
I do not recmend the above games to 6-8yo, buy something like Azul Summer Pavilion might be up their alley.