My Baby Can Read - But Will She Learn?

We recently had the joy and fear of taking our youngest three year old daughter to her first day of daycare. We sent the little one off to school for all the usual reasons of developing social skills, learning, and giving mom three hours of time to herself. At the same time we have the usual concerns and reservations.

One of my wife’s greatest joys has been watching our baby learn and grow. Babies seem wired to learn and given the freedom will discover. Give a baby a rattle and let them go. I did not begin our baby’s journey into the reproduction of audio phonic brilliance with a lecture and facts. One day I showed her a rattle. She picked it up, dropped it a few times, and then finally on her own successfully learned that shaking it (not dropping it) caused it to make noise that she controlled. Before you know it she was banging on toy keyboards and singing pop songs, absorbing everything around her, and expressing creativity in interpretive dance.


Then at some point we take this eager little princess wanting to discover and who loves to learn to school.

Then they begin to teach her to sit orderly and recite numbers, letters, colors, and shapes. While she continues to thirst for self discovery we teach her to memorize. And the child that constantly ask all those questions of why, who, how, the teacher considers annoying and a disturbance. And the child who stays in her seat, never colors outside the lines, recites back perfectly her colors, and never questions what the teacher is lecturing is considered exceptional and is rewarded. And then things go from bad to worse; they go on to high school and college.

I know this is begging for this statement and I can no longer resist the urge myself – but it almost seems true that “everything we know we learned in kindergarten”.

We are trained:
- look up to authority and they are always right
- it is more important to recite facts than learn concepts
- everyone is a winner so you don’t really have to try
- the people in power will provide everything you need
- never get outside of line and don’t ask to many questions
- girls have cooties (at least that is what I was told)

The conveyor belt education system to take those unruly and independent minded children to be transformed into rule following forelock-tugging employees is a difficult task schools have become champions of and unfortunately has had measurable success.

According to a study, (following 2,322 traditional-age students from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2009), 45 percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.

New York University sociologist Richard Arum (whose book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses"), lead author of another study, found that large number of college students didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. The students, for example, couldn't determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.

From the government sponsored study “A Nation At Risk” done in the 1980’s it showed 5% of 17 year old high school students could not read well enough to understand basic remedial information, such as medication instructions or job descriptions. Only 6% of 11th grade students could solve multi-step math problems.

In a more recent study of corporate employers over 70% surveyed indicated a very “high need” for either critical thinking and/or creativity. (The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training, The American Society for Training and Development.)


As we dropped our child off for school, I cannot help but to think of her future. I firmly believe that if we are to correct the problems we face today or even more important those of tomorrow we must restore critical thinking skills. The answer is not political or who we get into or out of office. The answer is not money, class size, discipline, or the new method of today. If we are to reclaim and restore principles and values and achieve national success we must restore a liberal arts education and empower student’s critical thinking and encourage them to learn not just be taught.


The answer of tomorrow is being trained (or untrained) in the youth of today. We need to stop breeding a society of dependants and give way to a society of self governing leaders.