Early Education and Second-Guessing

Here is an article on the benefits of delayed entry into formal school settings.  It's written to a British audience and recommends that formal schooling for children begin at about age seven instead of age four as is the current practice in England.  What it says about the benefits of play-based learning before then caught my eye.  The author of the article is David Whitehead, a Cambridge researcher from the Faculty of Education.

The author was part of a group that compiled research from the fields of anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and education to reach the conclusion Whitehead wrote about.  Research in the field of neuroscience has revealed that play-based learning increases the growth of synapses in the frontal cortex of the brain, the area "responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions."  (Increased synapse growth means brain growth.)

Research of another kind showed that by age 11, no difference existed between the reading ability of children who learned to read sooner rather than later (age 5 or 7).  The difference that was documented was that the early readers enjoyed reading less than the late learners of reading.  The early readers also showed less comprehension of what they read.

As I read the article I hoped it was as clear as it needed to be that the problem with early reading is not reading, per se.  It is early formal education that limits play opportunities.  The first commenter articulated the same sentiments in this comment:

Louisa Southey • 9 months ago

When you home educate you realise that formal learning and learning through play are irrelevant terms. Children learn continuously in a multitude of ways, sometimes as a result of games they play and sometimes with direct relavence to their everyday lives. Formal learning is done to control children in a classroom setting and has nothing to do with what is best for the child.

The findings in the above article fit nicely with one piece of Peter Gray's work that was the subject of several earlier posts.

************************

On a very different topic, several times recently when I have tried to say something about problems I see with Bill Gothard's "Chain of Command" teaching, I have been dissatisfied with how it sounded.  Saying it right is easier in writing than saying it verbally, but in both cases, I've been second-guessing what I've conveyed.

I wish now I had been able to think to say something like this:  The chain of command idea has elements that I see also in Scripture in teachings about leading and following or submitting.  When uncoupled, however, from an emphasis on obedience to God and accountability in every link of the chain, the teaching has potential for serious abuse.

The most obvious potential for abuse is the one that occurred within Gothard's organization:  People with power took unfair advantage of those under them.  In Gothard's case the problems included sexual abuse or promiscuity.

Another potential for abuse is more subtle:  Underlings do not resist when they should.  To their great regret, some of those young people who were abused by Gothard now see that their "submission" was wholly inappropriate.  At the time, though, they thought that if they resisted Gothard, they would be stepping out from under the protective umbrella which the chain of command provided. Other young people who resisted him were, in fact, often disciplined or sent away in disgrace.  The cost of resisting was high.

I believe that Gothard's teaching on "Chain of Command" strayed in some ways from the clear teaching of Scripture, but in the way he applied it in his personal life, he strayed much farther from Scripture.  In scenarios that are now widely known,  he kept his thumb firmly on those under him, but refused to answer to those over him.  In the early 80's, when his board learned of his wrong behavior and relieved him of his position in the organization, he simply reorganized under a new board who reinstated him.  

I appreciate that Scripture gives us a framework and structure for healthy, God-honoring relationships, and I believe following the directives in Scripture is important.  I'm still learning what that means for me personally.  I'm pretty sure, however, of several of the omitted truths in Bill Gothard's Chain of Command teachings:  Leaders must be held accountable by someone, and followers must do what is right, regardless of what their leaders do.  "I was just following orders" didn't exonerate those at the Nuremberg trials, and it doesn't exonerate twenty-first-century Christians.