The theory behind encyclopedic knowledge

[TheyCan]

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

Thank you for your article.  One of the speakers at the huge homeschooling convention, husband of the author of Five in a Row (a popular cirriculum), made this a huge part of his presentation.  He was totally against memorizing!  I got in a long conversation with him and wished I had some better arguments for my points at the time!    

[Frukc]

Dad Dude

1. I think, learning of foreign languages also belong to EK.

Until age of 7, I did not know that such thing as foreign languages exist. However, many of my friends learned another language early. Usually they learned Russian from another kids. I later life, I had to learn 4 more languages and I am bad with all of them. I started to learn English only at 22. For several years, it was my working language. You see how bad it is anyway

Many of my friends had to learn a new foreign language after age 20. And I see a clear difference. These who learned Russian early (until 4 - 6), they are very successful at learning another languages (English, Swedish, German, Finnish etc.). With little effort, they are fluent. These who did not learn another language early - they are like me. They need a lot of time and effort to get a little success.
(Russian and English etc belong to different language groups.)

2. My father says: "kids easy learn and easy forget". I agree. When my first child was 1.5 - 2, I showed her flashcards with local flower species. I am botanist and I love these species. Later in summer we met and learned  these plants also in nature. My girl knew these plants. A year later, she remembered just few species, these which were regularly discussed also in winter. She did not recognize any of these species which we did not study in nature.

I am biologist but I am bad with butterfly  species. I hoped that my girl will learn these species and will help me to recognize them   So in winter I showed her flashcards with butterflies. In summer, we met butterflies in meadows. I knew only a few species and I showed these to my girl. She learned these species. She did not recognize any of these species which I can not recognize but which were on flashcards.

My girl (3.5 now) knows the main plant species anyway. Sometimes she learns (in nature) new species and she remembers them. I think, she has trained the ability to distinguish things.

In countryside, sometimes I meet neighboring girls (8 and 10 years). Every spring, they ask "what are these trees" about hazelnuts, jasmines and lime trees. In the next day they do not remember them. I think, something is too late for them. 

3. Doman says that every mother should prepare her own flashcards. I agree. I have large library of ppt flashcards but only these which were prepared by myself were successful. By success I mean that my kid asks for them again and again, and looks with curiosity.

When I show my flashcards I feel all the reasons why I added these words and why I choose these particular images. Subjects are connected with our daily life. When I show flashcards prepared by someone else - it is like "water on a duck".

DadDude, I tried to use your slideshows. You are very different from me. With terms, you show your associations. But your associations are not mine. Your way of thinking is not mine. Your choice of images is not mine. So I did not use your slideshows very much Your fleshcards are very popular; it would be interesting to know if someone is using them in a long term

4. I believe that any learning is very useful. I does not matter what to learn! Any learning is developing the concentration ability, the memory, the particular type of memory.

[Korrale4kq]

I can give many examples of when 'facts' I learnt as a young child didn't really make sense until I was a lot older. The most common way to introduce or 'flash EK' is not through cards but through simple sayings and nursery rhymes. I remember a book I was given for my second birthday.. I remember nearly every single rhyme in that book, though I can't quote it by heart they come back to me at odd times. A certain rhyme I never understood, but enjoyed as a child was:

"The north wind doth blow
And there will be snow."

This made absolutely no sense to a toddler growing up in the tropical southern hemisphere. However when I moved to Ohio my husband, who is from here, explained to me that wind coming from the north will bring a cold front in from Canada and is we have precipitation we will have snow. That is when I burst out with the rhyme I didn't even know I knew.

Another saying I never understood, and didn't even realize I knew either was:

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning”

I now know that red sky at night means that there is a lesser chance of a storm. I found this phrase came to my mind very specifically when I was studying the Odyssey. Every time dawns rosy fingers were mentioned if made me think that there was some impending doom laying ahead. 

Other examples of when EK I learnt as a youngl child came to the fore was when I moved to the US. It is amazing how much about Sesame Street does not make any sense to a non American child. I never learnt about nickels, quarters, dimes etc. And very few Australians would even know what they are. But I knew the face value of them all from watching Sesame Street in the 80s. I can even recall vaguely a little clip about them. Once again I didn't know what it meant at the time.

Though I didn't learn these things by flash cards I was definitely learning things that I didn't really understand. Basically little snippets of information that was filed away and didn't come to the forefront until I was much older and it was provoked. I may be considered odd that I can recall so much from my early childhood but I have found that many people who had a rich educationally exposed up bringing with books, facts, and  nursery rhymes et al, think that they have forgotten them until they have their own children and all that data is once again released with minimal prompting. 

I believe that young children are sponges. They suck it all in. I think that young kids are more able to retain this information. I know that I can recall more from my early child hood than I can from high school.

I am not convinced that I need to use flash cards with James. But he will be read to a lot and exposed to a lot of information, even if he doesn't understand it, in the hopes that one day it will all make sense.

[Korrale4kq]

Here is a question?
 
How many people know how a law is made? I'm just a bill... yes I am only a bill....Sitting here on Capital Hill.
Or, How many branches of the Government there are? Executive, judicial and legislative. 

I learn those facts from School House Rock with the girls I nannied. The girls didn't understand what it all meant at the time, they were 2 and 4. But both of them now understand what the songs are about 8 years later.

I am sure that we can all bring to mind songs where didn't understand the meaning. I thought that Tequila Sunrise was just a pretty sunrise. I had no idea that the songs Oh What a Night and Afternoon Delight were carnal in nature. 

 

[Denise Joy]

Now this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.  Thank you dad dude for your interesting comments, the rest of you as well.  I have been doing EK with my 4 year old with Down syndrome since he was about 1.5.  I persevered for 2 years with little to no results, then finally at age 3.5 he suddenly decided to show me that he was taking in what I was teaching.  The question now is, is this just a neat parlour trick or is there true value.  I contend that there is great value in this and I will tell you why.  Be warned, my response is rather lengthy. Josiah is only 4 and will be 5 at the end of the month but already I see how learning these facts is helping him to think better.

Let me give you an example of something we are currently working on to illustrate.  I am hoping to get this on video in the next few weeks and I will post when I do.
I have been teaching Josiah some art.  I have pictures of 10 painting from Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Renoir and Gauguin.  I started more or less by flashing a set of one artist at a time.  I then introduced the next and so on.  After I felt he knew 4 fairly well I laid the self portrait of each artist on the table then randomly would say the name of a painting and show it to him and ask him who painted it.  He would say the name of the artist and place it under his picture. (Josiah has only just learned to speak within the last 2 months, he used to point to show me the answer.  He had some words before but now he is putting them together and speech really seems to make sense to him now)

When Josiah could do 4 artists and 40 paintings I introduce Gauguin and within days he could distinguish his paintings as well. To exercise a different part of the brain I sometimes just ask him "Who painted, The Potato Eaters" for example and he will say "Van Gogh.  So he is using visual and auditory memory.  My next experiment will be to show him paintings he has never seen by these artists and see if he can distinguish by style.  I hope to do that soon but want to have a video going.

I do believe there is value in straight memory work as a brain building activity but I also believe that it is better to layer the learning which is what I am trying to do.  We also do flags and eventually he will learn the flag of France, and that Renoir and Monet were French.  Then one day I will have him divide the artists by nationality for example.  My point is that there will be some independent thinking going on.

To illustrate further why I believe this is building his brain power I will give you an example that has nothing to do with EK.  After Christmas we began playing a game called A fist full of coins.  http://fistfullofcoins.moonfruit.com , if you check it out the following may make more sense.  This game helps to develop processing skills.  Children with Down syndrome typically have great difficulty in this area.  I believe that the things I have been doing with Josiah such as EK have helped him to the point that he could follow these Level 1 instructions in the game such as “Put the yellow moon under the red heart box”.  He folds his hand while I read the instructions and when I am done reading he does what I read.  Another example is  “turn the yellow square box upside down and put the orange diamond on top of it.” In 5 months Josiah completed Level 1 (15 card) and we have just begun Level 2.  An instruction he has completed in L2 is “Put the orange button under the green oval box and put the purple car in the box”
This game says it’s for ages 5 and up.  Josiah is 4, with Down syndrome and I believe that the EK we have been doing for the past 3+ years has contributed to helping him think better.  I could be wrong but I am convince it has made a difference.

If you are interested here is a 2 minute video I put together entitled Are you smarter than a 3 year old with Down syndrome.  I have posted it on a forum before but since it is relevant to the topic I will repost. I realize that the video alone proves nothing, but hopefully the other comments I have made make my point.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/N9NqHcHNWWA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/N9NqHcHNWWA&rel=1</a>

[ariel]

Wow!  That is great!  You are a very dedicated mom.  Good job to Josiah.  That is really nice to know, you hardly see any results like these or they get lost.  I completely see how building on to prior knowledge helps.  Show EK facts and then build upon it by showing other things in similar area.  Very nice. 

Just curious, did you make your own EK cards or buy them from Doman site.  I guess the most difficult thing about EK is getting the facts and the site can be quite expensive. 

Karma to you!

[Sarah108]

Oh wow Denise, that brought tears to my eyes!!! What a lucky boy he is to have a dedicated, loving mommy like you and how lucky you are to have such a precious soul

[drummerboy]

Hey Daddude,

Interesting topic.

Here's a living example for you:

I learned dance from a very very young age in fact I was at the back of my sisters' dance classes before I could walk and simply transitioned in so was in full on dancing by one (ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatics, gaelic......).

In the ballet syllabus I did we were taught theory that we memorized by rote - first position heels together and toes turned out, second position heels apart and toes turned out, third position.... and so and so on. We memorized these facts about foot positions and arms positions, names of steps - all in french of course - and what they meant. These were given to us in a book that our parents (who had no balletic knowledge) helped us learn in time for our annual examinations.

Of course I learned all of these well before I was five and yet was still only using the first positions because my body could not do what my mind could. However, when I was 7 and it was time to learn third position I knew the heel of the front foot is placed half way along the back foot with toes turned out. By then I had worked out what toes turned out meant could apply the knowledge and didn't need to be shown third or fourth open or fourth croisse or fifth positions because I could now logic them from long before memorized knowledge.

But the most convincing for me is that much of the theory we learned year after year was technical knowledge about joints and how they worked in relation to our arts. Many many years later as a teacher much of this started to come together for me. Knowledge that had been meaningless had purpose and led to ease of understanding more in depth technical facts. My sister loving the French words from ballet took up French which she speaks fluently and later learned many other languages (inlcuding latin and ancient greek). Neither of our parents are linguistically talented and ballet was our only exposure to foreign languages and this was spoken by a very Australian dance teacher.

I can't agree with you about the riding of a bike being muscle memory. Mainly because muscle memory is in fact brain memory. It's a term I keep trying to stop my dance teachers using as it is very misleading. The muscles get sent a request from the brain they do not react without the brain otherwise there would be no such thing as paralysis caused by spinal injury.

When we first start learning something we waste a lot of energy using opposing muscles and groups of muscles and sending a heap of individual signals to the parts of the body involved but as we become more proficient we start to use only the correct muscles stop wasting energy and start to send packages of signals to the correct muscles instead of individual signals.

One of my coaches explained it like this - when using Word to type a document you want to save you could leave the keyboard and use your mouse go up click on file scroll down to save and clicke. Or you can type cntrl s - a packet of information that is much much faster.

Have read some articles recently (I'm out of town when I get home I'll post the links) about memory. These imply that the human brain does not in fact ever forget anything that it "learns".

But we do lose our ability to access these memories or pathways and access to them relies on a number of things. For learned facts it seemed that the important factor was when the fact was repeated to you apparently the best way to strengthen the recall ability of a fact is to repeat the fact at the moment you are about to forget it (good luck with that one).

Ever forgotten something and then when someone says you go oh hang on I did know that but you couldn't recall it for yourself? The information is all there for these children you just have to make sure you don't close the paths to the recall ability of said information. This is probably why some Doman children still remember the facts and others don't it would be entirely dependent on whether their programs were set up in a way to maximise recall ability.

[fma001]

When I was in college, I read a how to study book (I really wish I could remember which one, so I could buy it again). One recommendation was to go over the chapter that would be covered in class beforehand. First, you had to look at all words that were bold. You had to read all captions. Second, you had to quickly scan the whole chapter without worrying about what any of it meant. The idea behind it was this. If you come across a word or idea you have never been exposed to before, your brain starts to tune out. This can cause students' minds to wander in class or while reading the chapter. Giving your brain just a brief exposure can help avoid this. I tried it and found that it worked. When I scanned a chapter before class, I was easily able to pay attention to the whole lecture. Whenever I was too busy to do this, my mind wandered.

This could be relevant to EK. Does early exposure to various concepts give the brain enough familiarity that the mind does not wander during reading in later years? It's possible, of course, that there is a big difference between exposure a day before versus 10 years before. But surely that EK info is still there in the brain available for retrieval. I didn't do EK with my own kids until about 2.5 years.

I homeschool and I noticed something interesting. I did a huge amount of early learning in science with my older child but very little in history. I had a really hard time finding age appropriate history books. I did read several of the Little House adaptations for young kids. I honestly taught I was wasting my time with science. It seemed to be going way over her head. But I really saw the effect in Kindergarten. We raced through the science lessons. They were way too easy for her. But she struggled with history. Except when learning about Pioneers, a concept she had been exposed to in the Little House books. So, I think EK does work. I don't know if it works with infants. But I definitely think exposure in toddlerhood, even if it seems like it's going over their heads, does seem to work. I think it probably is creating a foundation that makes later learning easier.

[Denise Joy]

I want to respond to Ariel's question "Did you make your own Ek cards?"  The answer is "yes"  I have tried Domans cards but find the content sometimes not that relevant.  Someone already mentioned how they preferred to learn things that they would encounter such as local flowers. This is how I feel.  I also like to keep the facts simpler.

Even though I feel that it's not so much about the facts themselves as it is about what it does in the brain, I prefer to show things that I also enjoy learning that way I can be genuinely enthusiastic as I teach.

Thanks to all who have posted, I am enjoying reading everyones thoughts.

[fabangel]

Hi,
I'd just like to confirm what many others have said.  When I was little, I had all the "Mr Men" books.  I swear I couldn't remember any of them.  Just the other day, my son wanted me to read Mr Strong and the story came back to me very quickly indeed. 
Now, I can't remember the story of Little Miss Splendid at all, but the box set has just arrived and I'm confident I will know it when I read the first page....

[Paddy Jim Baggot MD]

One way to think about this is to consider it from the perspective of ther anatomic brain, rather than from  the perspective of the (cybernetic?) mind.
All information, new or old, stimulates synapses in the brain.  Information which relates to what we already know, also will stimulate whatever pathways that information is stored in. 
Thus, learning things which have practical relevance to everyday life will result in more brain stimulation than esoteric information.
Also, what the brain does is learn.  And learning ANYTHING develops the brains ability to learn easily, which is called intelligence.
Thus, learning anything develops the capabilities and microanatomic circuity of the brain, and is therefore good.
But, I think it would be better to learn things of practical value.
This would stimulate previous circuits.
And the cybernetic goal of knowledge aquisition is to facilitate the use of facts as components of logical arguments.
This will occur more frequently if facts relate practically to the environment.   
When i know where china is, this facilitates my reading history, philosophy, economics as they relate to china.
Thus, countries, langauages, major cities, history might have more relevance than state capitals.

[DadDude]

I agree with you 100%, Dr. Paddy--and welcome to the forum!

[Paddy Jim Baggot MD]

To continue:  Thus while i applaud much of  the outright genius of glen doman and others who are supporters/practitioners of early education, i think that which is practical is learned better.  Since following his teachings somewhat, my kids are fairly smart, which i thank him and my wife for; but if i  try to teach my children anything, but a little more practical e.g. if birds, then the ones in CA.

A neurobiologist at UCSF, marian diamond wrote a book called Magic trees of the Mind.  Anatomically, she compares the dendrites (receptive processes of brain cells)  to the leaves of a tree.  Thus, one could shine any color of light from any direction, and it would all be good.  But i think it could be practical and that would be better.  If my daughter is walking around and she knows the name of her street and can read it, then she is getting more brain stimulation than if she does not understand her environment.  Or, the more she understands her environment, the more it stimulates her brain.  And the stimulation is the sunlight for the magic trees of the mind.       

[DadDude]

Indeed, one set of presentations I made for my little boy is "Birds of Ohio."  Never posted it...  Similarly, one of the first presentations I made for baby E. was of objects in the house.  I went around and took pictures, then labelled them in a PowerPoint presentation.

But I would generalize your point beyond the "merely" practical if by that you mean information that you can "use" or that is about your immediate surroundings.  The more general point that I adhere to is that knowledge is better learned if it is understood to some degree, or at least likely to be understood soon.  This is why in introducing chemistry to my little boy, I spent time explaining the basics of atoms and showed lots of pictures of a few elements, instead of having him memorize the elements at age 2.  I'm sure he could have, but...why?  The same time could be spent learning things that he would actually understand and benefit more from in the short to medium term.

Now, I could be wrong, and maybe someone else would have done better with him (by drilling him on disconnected facts that he didn't understand), but I think he's doing very well in terms of being able to understand what he reads.  His vocabulary is excellent, so he just finished reading Harry Potter #2 to himself, and I'm reading Pyle's Robin Hood to him (we're about 25-30% of the way through the 600+ page book), which he really enjoys.  He didn't remember any but a few constellations when we first revisited them recently, but because we had read so many Greek myths, he was able to associate all sorts of things with them, and (so) he was able to pick up the constellations again very quickly.  He also gained a new appreciation for my old constellation presentations--but we were able to through them faster, because instead of introducing the highlights of stories he'd never read before, they now reviewed stories that he'd read several versions of.  We just finished D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths today, and he was excited to learn that Castor and Pollux (the Gemini twins) were actually brothers of Helen of Troy.

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