
Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them Numbers - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/health/research/21brain.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
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tokenadult
"For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that
children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains
simply were not ready."

That's just crazy. I've seen four counterexamples in my own family.

One example: my oldest son received a present from his uncle and aunt for his
first birthday, a toy that allowed putting plastic balls into a chamber, were
they couldn't be seen, and then dumping out the balls again. So my son began
playing with the toy, and after a moment of experimenting with it he put in
three balls, and then inverted the toy to dump out the balls, but only two
came out. (Apparently, as we adults surmised, one ball was still stuck
inside.) He looked at the toy, very puzzled, and moved the toy around some
more until the third ball came out. This was definitely before I made any
formal effort to teach him mathematics. Already at age one he knew that 3-2>0,
so he knew that there was still a ball inside the toy after the first attempt
to dump out the balls.

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PebblesRox
Reminded me of this Feynman story with dominos:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20...](http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=feynman+domino+pattern&source=bl&ots=qUuf6MMMwy&sig=pMuPy8SJjKnV-
inMpFlTyoiE9O0&hl=en&ei=P4EvS8KcD42vtgfXmsSGCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

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logicalmind
Is anyone else bothered by the subtle social underclass undertones made in the
article? Like:

"Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well
behind the curve."

"..two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a
headscarf."

"..a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks..."

It's almost like the point being made is that, even dummies like these can
benefit from our program.

