The theory behind encyclopedic knowledge

[DadDude]

Welcome to Prof. DadDude's Philosophy of Early Childhood Education seminar!

As a basically skeptical person, I have to see proof of something before I get very excited about it.  And as a philosopher and recovering academic, I am acquainted with stringent standards of proof, even if I don't always succeed in applying them myself (I'm sure I try most of the time).  This is why, while I'm 100% convinced that it is possible to teach little ones to read at surprisingly young ages, I am still not quite convinced about the benefits of Doman-style "EK" (encyclopedic knowledge) and even less of Doman math.

Anyway, let me get into the meat of my comment here.

It seems to me that there is a certain theory operational in Doman's approach to EK (or just "EK" for short from now on).  The theory is that, if one exposes a child to many facts at an early age, even facts that a child has no way of knowing the significance of, one makes it much easier for the child to learn those facts properly, in context, later on.

I'll explain what I mean a little more later, but first let me explain what I don't mean.  I don't mean that spitting the facts back at an early age is somehow valuable or supposed to be impressive in its own right.  When, for example, a child correctly learns to identify the shapes of the U.S. states (as my own child did, mostly by doing puzzles), that is not the goal.  Similarly, when little "Lily" in the much-watched video is able to identify all sorts of countries as a toddler, that doesn't mean that she actually knows much about geography.  She doesn't even know what a country IS, of course.

So, unless EK is supposed to be a cute parlor trick, it is supposed to make it earlier for children to learn the actual content of geography (for instance).  For instance, having learned the shapes, capitals, and flags of the states as a baby--without knowing what states, capitals, or flags ARE beyond the pretty pictures and words, and without knowing other salient facts such as population, regions, and so forth--will make it possible, sometime in the future, to learn all the rest of the content of geography.

Another example: learning some or all of the chemical elements, as many of us have taught to our children while they were under the age of three (!), will somehow make it easier to learn the basics of chemistry when children get to elementary school.

Here is a real-life example.  If you've seen that Ellen segment (find it on YouTube) where the very precocious Graham is interviewed, you saw how he recited a bunch of facts that I'm sure I myself will never memorize, about which president had which number, what parties they belonged to, and even some seemingly random associated with them.  Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Graham, at age five, really knew what he was talking about.  His performance was awfully impressive, and his parents must be justifiably proud, but I don't think he knew much about history.  I could be wrong, but he probably had no clue what a political party was, not much of an idea what sort of things a President does (although, at age five, he was probably starting to learn), and he almost certainly had no idea what scandals really are, much less what the Teapot Dome scandal was.

Each of these examples is supposed to illustrate the point that while EK gets children to memorize things impressively, the value is supposed to lie in the fact that this is a foundation for LATER learning, because the memory performance itself does not constitute substantial knowledge of the sort children gain later on.

I hope I have made it tolerably clear what EK is supposed to assume.  Now, my question is: is this assumption correct?  ARE children able to learn geography, chemistry, and history after learning these sorts of facts?  And if so, why are they?

Mind you, I am not meaning to deny this.  I am trying to understand it better myself.  I could even supply a theory, the grammar stage of the Trivium, to explain it.  But I am interested in more hard-nosed explanations grounded in details and scientific knowledge of cognitive science and developmental theory.  In particular, I would be interested if someone can explain this with an EXAMPLE.  Bonus points for an example you are personally familiar with, i.e., a child you have seen benefit from learning EK.  The challenge here is to explain exactly HOW your child benefitted from the early training when it finally came time to learn the subject FOR REAL.

I can give you an example of what I mean learning "for real."  Right now, I am reading H., age 4.5, a book for elementary students (I'd estimate it's appropriate for 10-year-olds) about the state we live in (Ohio).  This is pretty advanced for him.  We can't go fast; I have to stop and explain quite a few terms as we go through, and he barely has patience for this (but, to his credit, he does!).  I think he is really learning what is in the text.  He has a good idea of what industries are in Ohio now--we spent a good ten minutes looking at the sort of map of Ohio that has the various crop/industry symbols on it, you know the kind.  I know he knows something about what the industries are, because he knows what corn is, he knows what pigs are, he knows what steel is, etc.  Granted, he doesn't know a LOT about these (except about pigs--he knows a lot about pigs), but he knows enough to give good sense to the text.  I think he's doing well for his age, and he didn't learn TOO many facts out of context, EK-style.

As you might or might not recall, when I started making my presentations for H., 2.5 years ago or so, and published them here on BrillKids.com, I couldn't put much stock in simply showing my boy pairs of words and pictures, without saying SOMETHING about the things.  That's how I ended up with my style of presentations, which have been, I gather, pretty popular with the kiddies!  (That makes me very happy!)  The reason for that is that I couldn't quite convince myself that there was enough point in trying to get my son to memorize facts he knew NOTHING about.  For example, if I were to show E. the names and shapes of the states, well--no offense, but personally, I would feel a little ridiculous.  Maybe I shouldn't, maybe he would be learning something really valuable, but that's how I'd feel.

So anyway, there's my question: can you adequately defend the EK theory/assumption that by learning a boatload of contextless facts, a child thereby will be given tools that make it much easier to learn the facts properly, in context, later on?

(A conciliatory thought: I'm pretty sure that if I had made a series of presentations, all about Ohio's regions, cities, historical events, industries, and so forth; shown those presentations to him at age two, then again last week; he would probably be better able to understand this book I'm reading to him.)

[TracyR4]

Hmm, something to really think about and something I have been wondering about myself. I haven't started EK with my daughter yet because I'm not sure how beneficial it really is.
It could be and I don't think there is much if any scientific information on this as there is very little to no scientific evidence of what Doman, Titzer and the others claim about the infant brain. Even if there are tens of thousands of testimonials on Youtube and Your Baby Can Read that proves that small children learn to read.

One thought has come to mind is sort of comparing it to riding a bike. I learned to ride a bike pretty late in life, actually the age of 10. Once I got going with it I didn't know how to use the breaks at first. I just rode the bike and rode it from the top of the road and turned it into our driveway and the only thing that stopped me was the garage door. This was a skill that I was learning on my own so I had no knowledge of how to stop the bike except that I knew it had to stop. Of course I finally learned how to ride a bike and life was good and I rode my bike until I was a teen.  Of course as a young adult I put that bike away and hadn't rode a bike for at least 15 years! Yikes.
Life happened and I got married , became a mother to four children and didn't ride a bike until we bought a bigger bike for my 13yr old last year. It took me a few minutes to get it going but I did. I remembered how to ride that bike after 15 years Of course if I really wanted to with knowing how to ride the bike I could learn all the fancy tricks like riding with no hands, or pop a wheelie and so forth. I can build upon the knowledge I already had knowing how to ride the bike. Even if I hadn't rode one in 15yrs.

I guess the thinking would almost be the same for a child. Give the child the information now, practice it and as an adult they can expand on the things they already know.  I know I've found that has happened to me. Something I hadn't thought of in a long time and the information gets presented to me again as an adult and I'm like , Oh yeah I remember that and then I learn a little more.

There was a homeschool curriculum I used  for a couple of years called K12. K12 builds on information learned in each grade level. A kindergardener may learn an apple is red and it comes from the tree, a 3or 4th grader will know that the apple is red and it comes from a tree but they may learn the classification of the apple and what type of tree it came from, the high schooler may know that the apple is red, it comes from a tree, the classification of the fruit and the type of tree it is , and then they may learn more about the apple and the tree it comes form and so on. By the time they are older they have the ability to make sense out of the information if its important to them.

So even though young Grahm may not know what a political party is at age 5 he will eventually. And that information that was important to him at the age of 5 will make sense to him when he understands what is if he didn't already. He already may have especially if his parents told him. I know my daughters have a pretty basic understanding of what a poltical party is. That is just because my husband has quite an encyclopedic mind on American history and he talks about politics all of the time.  Of course my 13 yr old ounderstands it more than my 11 year old and my 11 year old understands it more than my 7yr old.

I don't know. i guess I don't have the true answer to your question. Maybe someone else here may.  I guess that's how my mind tries to make sense of it all.

[TheyCan]

Question - Isn't one of the benefits supposed to be developing the brain?  I could be wrong, but back when I first researched this topic, that was my main conclusion....that even if they don't remember the information 10 years later, it's supposed to develop their brain now? 

Anyway...your write-up actually made me a little more convinced of EK - .  I mean, you have to start learning a topic somewhere, right?  Does it really matter if they know the names/shapes of states before they know what a state is (I guess that's what your asking though)?  I would imagine it would make it easier to learn what a state/country is later one?  Personally, I think it's all about making connections for the child / know for sure they're going to learn more about the topic later.  I really feel like I'm wasting my time when I show him pictures of flowers that he'll probably never see again in his life (most of the info included in Doman's cds are like that...really don't understand it..but again, I guess they believe it develops the brain).  Flashing things such as states/countries, local birds/trees/bugs, foreign languages (that we're learning), musical notes, objects/places mentioned in books we read, etc etc make much more logical sense to me.  So...basically, I don't think I believe he'll recall the name of a random flower found in another country if flashed it to him now....but I do think showing him local flowers he'll see this year will help him (or maybe it's just because, me as the parent, now knows more about them and talk about them more....????). 

Aother interesting thought (not one I'm on board with), is that only understanding the meaning  (like...understanding what a state or country is) is the only thing that really matters in today's world because we can pull up the facts in two seconds on our iphone any second of the day.  I don't NEED to know all the random facts (all the flags of the world) because they're always at my finger tips...but I do need to know how to think, understand culture, government, etc etc.  Just a thought. (but again...if it's supposed to develop your brain..that changes things).

[momtobaby]

Hi Daddude,

That's a wonderful thought u have there. Its just natural to wonder if the baby is going to remember all those EK flashacards once he/she grows up. Likewise most probably they don't even know the idea of countries and continents when they are so young. They are probably just byhearting what they see without knowing the meaning of the contents. However, I just happened to watch this youtube video posted by one of the wonderful mom's in this forum.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/uov17e7r5cQ&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/uov17e7r5cQ&rel=1</a>

As u can see the child is great at memorising details and this is especially useful when later on they start learning history and dates. I guess its also important to have memory power to learn a lot of subjects like Zoology, Botony etc where u need to byheart the names of the species and botanical names of plants etc.

According to Doman, the whole idea of flashing EK cards is to increase the brain capacity. He clearly explains how when Dr Klosovskii exposed newborn kittens and puppies to visual stimulation ....they developed 22.8 to 35 % more growth in vestibular areas in the brain compared to the animals that grew up in a normal manner. He saw that both the control group and experimental group had the same number of brain cells but the experimental group had 1/3rd larger and more matured brain cells. In conclusion, its not about the babies remembering what we taught them while they were babies, its about how much matured their brain cells are while they become adults.

Another example:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/WREgHsTr5yE&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/WREgHsTr5yE&rel=1</a>

THERE ARE 5 PARTS TO THE VIDEO....AM ONLY POSTING THE 1ST PART HERE...MAKE SURE U SEE ALL THE 5 PARTS ON YOUTUBE.
Seems like Susan Polgar remembered all the chess games she played when she was young...this MADE IT EASIER FOR HER TO BE A CHAMPION LATER ON IN LIFE...so its possible that our babies might remember atleast some of the EK subjects that we taught them. Moreover, they will by that age know the meaning of a lot those EK cards.

[TracyR4]

Thank you for explaining that. That makes perfect sense. 

[TeachingMyToddlers]

This is completely anecdotal, but somewhat relevant to this discussion.

http://www.internationalparentingassociation.org/Readers/bitmaker.html

[momtobaby]

Woww that's interesting...
While I was pregnant I happened to watch a Documentry (DVD from the library) called smart babies.....the whole documentry was slamming Doman method and in there they featured this one particular baby whose mom did doman parenting including EK flash cards ...they followed his development and when the boy became a teenager they tested him and found that he couldn't remember a single thing that his mom taught him.....but I was amazed at how they missed to point out the  fact that the boy was doing wonderfully well @ college and he spoke in a very matured manner compared to other boys of his age.

[khatty]

DadDude,
Your posts are always very thought provoking and appreciated.  I am curious why you are even less convinced of Doman Math?  What is your thought process/experiences with this?  How does your concept of Math as a language differ from reading as a language?

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Daddude- I missed the part about math the first time around. Is it that you don't believe it works or that you believe it works but it's not beneficial?

I know we're talking EK here but let me derail for a second and address the math comment.

I came across a study recently validating that infants can differentiate quantity to varying degrees depending on age. I will try and find it again and post it. I originally bought LM with a skeptical "what the heck, why not? it can't hurt" attitude. Now, I am convinced if nothing else, LM has helped familiarize my kids with the concept of numbers and quantity and it is paving the way for further math instruction down the road in addition to most likely stimulating those parts of the brain.

Several months ago, my husband was wearing a novelty branded t-shirt that said "est. 1946" with a decorative "plus" symbol in the middle of the numbers. My daughter spontaneously pointed and said "One, Nine, Plus, Four, Six." She did not get it right in the literal sense (which would be nineteen plus forty-six I suppose) but LM was the only time she had ever exposed to addition symbols. Something was sticking. We still show dots along with doing the JG program and I believe that teaching her traditional math has been easier because she already understood valuable addition/subtraction concepts, regardless of if she can differentiate specific quantities or not. I have never tested her on quantity so I honestly have no idea.

In a similar sense, my DD was able to learn sight words using LR and YBCR but never could naturally figure out new words like some kids can from using these programs. Maybe I didn't wait long enough for results before starting phonics, who knows. However, once I did begin teaching phonics, she picked up sounding out new words in about two months at less than two years old. So, although YBCR did not work for my DD as well as it may have worked for others, DD learned hundreds of sight words in the process and I felt it was time well spent front loading. I am convinced that all of the sight reading helped prep her immensely to learn how to read phonetically in a very short period of time. Sight reading was like first showing her the answers and then teaching her how to find the answers herself with phonics. She already understood that the goal of reading was word recognition, so teaching phonics wasn't completely meaningless to her.

If LM does end up teaching my children actual "math" as it is designed to do, I figure that's icing on the cake. Just like I approached reading with some initial doubts, I figured the payout could potentially be huge for very little effort. If the "experiment" failed and was a colossal waste of a few minutes a day, oh well, no harm done. I'm not sure if I explained myself clearly enough, but that has been our experience thus far.

[annisis]

Actually, Daddude, I believe your powerpoints are truly EK.

Doman says in all his books that he encourages parents to manipulate his systems according the child's interest and one's own parental instincts, which is very much what you have done.

And what's more, on page 155 of How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge it says:

"Yet another way to introduce Programs is to make a very nice homemade reading book with one Program per page, five to tens programs per book. You read this to your child and later your child reads it to himself. Of course the size of print used is based on your child's reading level at that moment."

If we consider powerpoints as an ebook, then isn't that what you did? You may have skipped showing only Bits and extended the length of presentations to suit your son's ability to focus, but in essense, it is still EK, right? I haven't viewed all your ppts, but from what I've seen that is what I think.

I suspect you may be thinking a little too cookie cutter on this. Doman isn't about one size fits all. The methods encourage a lot of flexibilty acc. to your child's own needs. The underlying message is not to limit your child to childlike fantasies and overly simple cutesy illustrations, otherwise he may not learn anything about the world.

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Yes, the powerpoints are great and I think they are a form of EK for sure! Actually, do you mind posting the link to them again? I didn't bookmark last time I looked at them.


I started a new thread on Doman Math too so I wouldn't derail this one any further.

[DadDude]

@TracyR4: you can remember how to read a bike, but that is "muscle memory"--there's no reason to think that something similar will happen when it comes a baby memorizing a bunch of contextless facts.

You're clearly right that if there's any benefit, it would come from a child later building on the basis of memorized facts.  But I have a couple of questions for people who have used these methods.  First, can you say definitively that your child DID in fact remember those facts later on?  Little Graham clearly did remember his facts about history, although I'd like to know more about the details in that case.  Second, can you give me a case or two in which having remembered those facts actually did make it easier to learn more, later?

Now, I'll answer my own questions, although we might not be a good example.  Mostly I showed H. my three Moon presentations many times (made into videos yesterday! Part 1 http://bit.ly/hWYEwA Part 2 http://bit.ly/f38Jfw Part 3 http://bit.ly/ihNPhI), my four Space presentations, three constellations presentations, other presentations, read the simplest space-related books I could find, showed him the planetarium (Homestar, $120 or so) regularly, and generally kept reading about space-related stuff from time to time.  As a result, I am confident that he now understands what happened on the Apollo Moon missions, so he could get through You Wouldn't Want to Be on Apollo 13 with no trouble, and was actually interested in the movie Apollo 13 (although he started getting fidgety when too many unknown technical terms came out).  In short, he now has a fair bit of basic knowledge of astronomy and space travel, so that he can actually absorb and appreciate stuff that is meant for much older children.

It occurred to me as I wrote that paragraph that I don't know whether my program is typical for a Doman parent.  I mean, we certainly did a LOT more than what is described in the Doman EK book.  Moreover, I didn't do a lot of "flashing" work with regard to different space-related topics.  So what we didn't doesn't really seem to be a very good example of a Doman approach.

I guess what I want to see are some examples where a child who had a bunch of info flashed Doman-style between ages 0 and 2 later on, at age 5 or 10, was unusually precocious at mastering that information.

[DadDude]

@TheyCan - sure, one of the benefits is supposed to be brain development, but that is pretty speculative, isn't it?  I mean, sure, there's a lot of Doman kids who are brainiacs, but the fact that they're brainiacs does not establish that flashing facts at them as babies made them brainiacs.  It might (just for example) have more to do with the fact that the parents obviously care about the children's education, so they (on average) read a lot more, and it is the reading that makes them smarter.

You're absolutely right that you have to begin learning somewhere, and I agree, actually, with doing things like flashing (or maybe showing more slowly) colors, shapes, common animals, and various other things at babies.  Doing so clearly helps little ones to learn the "building blocks" of the rest of knowledge.  My question had more to do with flashing facts like state shapes, flowers, and flags, the features of different animal groups, and various other things that are not rock-bottom starting places for knowledge.  A good example would be memorizing the presidents' portraits and which president was which number.  Do children who are flashed that info when they are one year old actually remember it when they're five?  Do they have refreshers?  Does it help them when it comes to learning more about history?

I totally disagree with that fashionable view you mention, as you can see here: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/IndividualKnowledgeintheIntern/202336

[DadDude]

@momtobaby, the video about the Chinese kids was pretty amazing.  I'd love to learn more about the 5.5 year old girl and how she was taught.  She would certainly seem to be an excellent "poster child" for right brain learning.  I can tell you one thing, though--she didn't learn to speak and read English just by being flashed cards.  Obviously her parents or teachers did a HUGE amount of other sorts of work with her; they must have read a lot of books to her, and taught her English one way or another.  Flashcards by themselves don't generate that sort of fluency with language.

Anyway, as I understand it, the theory you're advocating here is that flashing EK cards increases right brain capacity, and this makes it easier to learn anything, regardless of what is learned.  Theoretically, I guess, one could memorize a lot of facts about Middle Earth and Narnia, and the result would be the same.  After all, if the case of the kittens and puppies is supposed to be relevant, then it really doesn't matter what they memorize, because of course kittens and puppies don't understand anything.

So you're saying that learning a bunch of specific facts about states, for example, doesn't necessarily help learn geography later on.  What matters is that the child had a lot of stimulation, of a certain sort, which simply increases right brain capacity and hence makes learning easier, generally.

Very interesting

[Maquenzie]

This is an interesting discussion.

I remember talking about something similar in an intro to psychology course in college. It was during a section of the three "r's" of remembering, of which I can only "recall" 2...recall and relearn.  There was an example of a child being read a poem every day as a baby (Jabberwocky, I believe), the child was later able to relearn it quicker than average. But that was the level of remembering, relearning faster. For the life of me I cannot remember more about this, but I can hunt around for it.

It still isn't flashing EK cards though.

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