Hi everyone, I'm finally posting the transcription of the phone conversation I had with Connie Breyer of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP) a couple days ago.
For those of you who are not familiar the original statement in question appeared here from our friend Chris:
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/reading-and-maths/msg8358/#msg8358I was a bit confused and talked with the Institutes myself and thought I would pass on the information to all of you!
I originally emailed the IAHP and this was the reply I received:
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you for your letter concerning the math program. You have obviously been doing a wonderful program with your son. Congratulations.
Thank you for taking the time to write out about your dismay over the misinformation that was communicated via the online forum.
I would like very much to talk with you personally to clear up these misconceptions. If you e-mail me your phone number and a good time for me to call you, I will be happy to follow-up.
With kind regards,
Connie Breyer
Assistant RegistrarHere is the phone conversation I had with Ms. Breyer. The Institutes can be reached at 1-800-344-TEACH
“Good afternoon this is Connie Breyer.”“Hi, this is Elizabeth Staub calling…”
“Oh yay! [laughs] Good, I’m glad you called back. Yeah, so, let’s get this thing straightened out. Um, yeah, so what forum is this?”[She originally had called me but I had to call her back because of a crying baby!]
“Um, this particular forum was on a website called
brillbaby.com”
“Oh yeah we’re hearing a lot about that!”“Oh really? Well that’s neat…But, yeah, what this person was saying is that they had had a lot of success with the reading program but had tried the math program and it didn’t work, and they phoned you and said that you stated that the ability would not be retained past three years old which didn’t make any sense to me considering you still sell and promote stuff for the math program and why would you sell stuff that you say doesn’t work…”
“Well, now, the thing is that in the book it does say that there is this window of opportunity and it closes somewhere between two-and-a-half and three-years-old. Um, after that age, usually, the children cannot see, they cannot distinguish the quantity, in the same way that you and I cannot distinguish 88 dots from 89 dots. You and I, the only way we’d know is by counting. But a tiny baby – a child – can distinguish which one is 88 and 89 instantly.”“Well now, I knew that there was that window of opportunity but like, with my son, he started with the math program when he was almost 30 months and did great, and that was a year ago he’s 3 ½ now and can still perceive quantity, so, shouldn’t children who are trained with this program, the ability be retained?”
“There are some children that are able to retain the ability to distinguish quantity but that is not the norm. The point of the whole program, is to set a foundation for math, for the rest of their lives. Once they understand that a number is a quantity, not an abstract numeral, then everything that has to do with mathematics makes logical sense. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, everything. Once they have that, then they’re set for life, and then they are able to transfer the quantities to numerals. But it’s that understanding that never goes away.”“But, now, when they’re older, they can still
understand math, and do instant equations and such?”
“Oh yes absolutely. Our children are fabulous mathematicians.”“Oh okay, well, that makes a little bit more sense then…”
“Yes there’s just something that happens in our brains that makes it so we no longer can distinguish the quantities.”“Hmm… well that’s really interesting.”
“That’s why we don’t recommend starting our program, with children older than three years old, because we can’t guarantee that it will work. There definitely are some children though who are four and five and can pick it up but,”“Now I’ve heard that, with autistic people, sometimes, even when they’re older they can sometimes still distinguish the quantities, even without training.”
“Like Rainman?”“Yes…”
“Yes, and for our brain-injured program, we teach the dot cards no matter how old the children are. They are neurologically that age, even though they’re not chronologically. So, we use that program with all of our children [in the brain-injured program], even if they’re adults.”
“So, is that making any more sense then? At first it was like, hope they don’t turn everybody off to our program.”
“Yeah, no, we wouldn’t want that and I’m really glad that you were able to clear these things up for me.”
“Yes, me too, and I’m so glad you took the time to call, it looks like you’ve done a fabulous program with your child. And, he has that now for life.” I then told her some thank you's for their wonderful organization and such, and told her about how I had found their books at the library and have really enjoyed learning with my son.
She was a very nice lady and I'm really glad that I had this conversation with her, it really cleared some things up for me and I thank you Chris for motivating me to call.
When I first read the post in "Reading and Maths" it was not clear that "the ability" the was being referred to was just talking about perceiving quantities, from reading the post I thought that Chris was saying that the staff of the Institutes were saying that "Yes, kids under two can do math with our program but once they turn three all the abilities will be lost" which of course didn't make much sense. I know that in later posts Chris had mentioned more about it only being the ability to
perceive quantity that would be lost but it wasn't all completely clear and I'm really glad I got this confirmation that yes, kids do lose the ability to perceive quantity but no, they will not lose their understanding of mathematics and generally go onto be "fabulous mathematicians".
Knowing this has made the many stories of failure with the math program make so much more sense. I had always thought that if quantity training was initiated before the third birthday then the child would have that for life. But now it is clear that quantity training is not enough in order to be able to go on to be proficient in math.
Like I have said before and as Chris mentioned, the Doman program is not actually
teaching quantity recognition but rather
labeling it. A tiny child can already see the difference between 28 and 29 dots without any training - he just doesn't have a name for it. With the Doman program you are first giving those quantities names and then teaching the child the basics of arithmetic - the vocabulary for putting numbers together and taking them apart ("plus", "minus", "multiplied by", "divided by").
After all of this dialog about trying to figure out the high failure rate of the math program here is my conclusion - that
teaching names for math (names of quantities like "twenty three" and "ninety seven" and names of actions like "plus" and "minus") isn't enough: the child has to progress to being able to manipulate numbers in his head and know numbers front and back (know each quantity by heart and know it's relation to other numbers, like knowing that 50 is half of 100 and is one less than 51 and 30 less than 80, etc.), basically, getting to the point where it's all in his head, knowing numbers and their relationship to other numbers by heart.Chris mentioned a wonderful point saying
"If you ask a fluent reader to explain how they read they would simple state that they can. It is possible that the mental manipulation of quantity develops to the stage where the entire process takes place at a subconscious level."I hope I explained this well, but things are starting to make sense to me as to why there are a great number of children who "appeared to be able to recognize quantity" (which in fact they could) but lost the ability once they got older. I hope other people can see the story-line that I'm seeing as to why teaching names (for quantities and actions) isn't enough, the child must truly master the language of mathematics before he loses the ability to discern quantities, otherwise the training will not pay off in the way it is advertised.
I am eternally thankful to Chris for motivating me to make this call, as it is possible that I wouldn't have known this until it was too late and my son's ability mysteriously disappeared. As I have mentioned he is 3 1/2 and can still discern quantities so apparently he is not the norm, but ever since I made this call we've been going full-speed into math and I am introducing numerals now. We have actually started a countdown to Christmas to work with a different number each day and exhaust all the possibilities of that number so I can be sure that he has a firm grasp of each number. I will continue to use quantity cards as long as possible in hopes that the ability can be retained, because like I mentioned in another post I have heard of adults who can still do it and have an inkling that there is still a possibility that it can be retained. I recently posted a blog about it if you want to know more.
There's more that could be said but I hope that this post is informative to everyone!
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