“If you immediately (not) teach, then …”

One of the most harmful formulas in education sounds like this: “If you immediately (not) accustom a child, then it will always be so.” You don’t need to train your hands. You need to learn to be careful right away. No need to teach to sleep with mom. It is necessary to immediately teach how to draw up written work correctly. Etc., etc.

Well, what nonsense, huh? This approach involves looking at the child as a jar with a lid, where you put something, it stays there. With all the obvious seemingly absurdity, this look has a downright magnetic effect, literally hypnotizing adults. “Well, how is it? And leave it like that? But then he will ALWAYS (suck his thumb, sob in a toy store, forget to do his homework, play computer, love Dima Bilan – underline as necessary)! Something must be done!” Ahhh, we’re all going to die!

I usually say: “Listen, this is generally an interesting train of thought. I suggest not to take the child by the hand across the road. Gotta get used to it right now! And then what, it will ALWAYS just walk with us? Confusion. “No, you can’t, it’s different.” What else, huh? The child is afraid to sleep alone. Well, we certainly know that the skeleton under the bed, which he is afraid of, is unreal, unlike cars on the roads. But for him it’s real! Much more than that, because he almost directly sees the skeleton, so terrible, and almost directly hears how it scratches its bones on the floor. And the car – why be afraid of it? Rides and rides. Bright, beautiful.

(How, interestingly, children explain to themselves why adults are ready to protect them from some dangers, and even with excessive zeal, while others calmly give to be torn to pieces, and even ashamed that you are afraid? What is their version of this topic in head? I would like to know.)

Or here’s an elementary school. Well, why is so much attention paid to decoration in the first grade? “To immediately accustom, otherwise …”. OK, let’s teach integrals to solve right away, shall we? For some reason, the idea that a seven-year-old child cannot solve integrals is obvious. And the idea that, simply due to age characteristics, he CANNOT remember all these algorithms: four cells here, and if on the last line, then we don’t start, and if it doesn’t fit, then like this. And all this must be done simultaneously with the actual writing and thinking!

Such a wonderful age – from 7 to 10! Such a creative, rich, such a passionate interest in how the world works, such a capacity for unexpected generalizations, associations, such a synthetic perception of any subject! To see the world not as a set of scientific disciplines, but as a whole, as a living single organism, to think about butterflies, about stars, about the composition of the dirt under the nails, about hurricanes, about Vikings, about atoms, about why people laugh – with an interval of five seconds , or even at the same time. Don’t just think – FEEL about it, pass it through yourself.

This incredible perseverance and dedication in doing what is interesting! For hours, with rapture, forgetting about everything, whether it’s football, constructor, drawing, fantasizing – who has what! Games are invented, their own Shvambrania and Terabithia are born, all these treasures, secrets, ciphers. The rapid development of all mental functions, like a flower unfolds from a bud in a fast motion. Grows (should grow, at least) self-confidence, independence, ability to act in unexpected, changing circumstances. Craving for adventure, for new experiences. The birth of friendship, no longer childish, but real, which can last a lifetime.

The ideal world of a child of this age is shown in the cartoons “The Land Before Time”. Your own company of friends, freedom, real adventures, but somewhere nearby there are wise and strong adults who, if anything, will come to the rescue and put you to bed in the evening. And nothing else is needed from them.

And now let’s think about what these years are wasting.

Four cells down, skip two lines. What are you thinking, Petrov? Are you heading in the clouds again in class? FOUR cells, what is not clear here? Once again, let’s fix it. Let’s repeat. Rewrite twice. Write three lines of this word. Don’t whisper. Do not speak. Don’t run during recess.
Why do you have such a mess in your briefcase? Is it really difficult to fill out a diary accurately? Stop playing, we have no time, it’s time for English. We can’t invite Vladik to visit, you won’t have time to study music. You won’t go out until your homework is done.

EVERYTHING is contrary to the tasks of age, EVERYTHING is contrary to the nature of the child.

Textbooks. Longing is mortal. Who selects these texts? Who lays these endless nauseating loops of repetitions of what has been passed, so that the child gets the strong impression that a quarter was leaving and learned NOTHING new? (The exception is L. Peterson’s textbooks. They are very well done taking into account age, but they are not liked in schools – it’s hard … You have to think … It’s better to repeat it again …)

Evaluation standards: dictation without one mistake, but sloppy and with corrections. Troyak. Moral for a child: content is nothing, form is everything. The main thing is to look, the essence is not so important. Another moral: a mistake is fatal. Noticed and corrected – it will not save you. Then we wonder where the neuroses and the tendency to give up at the first failure come from …

Program: division into subjects, topics, blocks. Everything is fragmented, one lesson finished, another started, one topic, then another, no connection. The child comes at the end of the first grade with tears: “The task is not working!” I check – everything is correct, there are 9 books on one shelf, 15 on the other, the answer is 24. The child, already sobbing out loud: “The answer cannot be 24, because – attention! – we still do not go beyond two dozen! I made the wrong decision, I’ll go and think more.” Hit the wall. An hour of desperate efforts to ensure that the child still concludes that you need to believe in yourself, your mind, and not incomprehensible limits that the compiler of the textbook themselves inadvertently violated. What if she hadn’t come?

Look, I honestly don’t understand why this is, huh? Why trample down everything that is growing rapidly at this time, and diligently cultivate what should not and cannot grow yet? As in the well-known fairy tale about a foolish princess who wished for snowdrops in December and ruined the holiday for everyone, and promised to be fun without snowdrops.

Why not JUST WAIT?

Here are 10-11 years old. Synthetic thinking gives way to analyticity. A passion for collecting, systematization, classification, putting things in order, interest in details, attention not to connections, but to differences and oppositions, wakes up. So let’s! Now let’s explain about four cells, and about keeping a diary neatly – it will go like clockwork. One, two – and everyone understood everything. And they have not yet received disgust for the process itself, with pleasure, with excitement – who better to defeat chaos and create order? Now it corresponds to the age, the soul asks for it, it will be just right! Why waste hours and nerves on this, when it is not in the suit, at the wrong time, inopportunely? Why break on a door that is still closed and that will surely open itself in due time?

It’s all sort of described in developmental psychology and even studied in teacher training universities. Well, or at least, it is visible simply when observing children, when working with them. Of course, specific children may have their own developmental characteristics, but the general trends are still in this approximate direction.

Why are features of age ignored? It seems to me that the reason is just this fear. “If you immediately (not) accustom, then …”. The perception of the child as inanimate, non-subjective, non-developing, not striving for better and more. The maniacal confidence of adults that it is they who bring up and form children, and everything must be foreseen, good things should be laid down, bad things should be stopped in advance. As a result, a child, who was treated as an object of educational efforts, by adolescence often becomes an object, an almost inanimate object that “wants nothing.” He lies on the couch and clicks the remote control. This happens in children who grew up in a state-owned home, who were constantly told what to do and when, and, oddly enough, in the children of parents who “dedicated their lives to them” and always “knew how to do it.” Because everything a child ever wanted was “not right or wrong,” and everything that adults thought he should want, and sometimes he even did a pitchfork, did nothing for his mind and heart, that’s they wanted, not him. Well, they all wanted it. And all this makes adults themselves deeply unhappy, they are killed because of deuces and triples, because of a sloppy diary, and then because “he is not interested in anything” and “he does not want to go to school.”

Inspired by two parallel experiences. Outside the window – everything is melting, although only yesterday it seemed that winter was forever. The child suddenly has beauty and accuracy in his diary and notebooks, at the beginning of the year it was terrible. My merit in this is exactly as much as in the arrival of spring. I open all this farm once every three months, so it caught my eye. Just an equinox, a fracture. It’s just that my daughter will soon be ten.

Psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya