Early math instruction may backfire
Dr Peter Gray unearthed an ancient school experiment:
Benezet showed that kids who received just one year of arithmetic, in sixth grade, performed at least as well on standard calculations and much better on story problems than kids who had received several years of arithmetic training. This was all the more remarkable because of the fact that those who received just one year of training were from the poorest neighborhoods--the neighborhoods that had previously produced the poorest test results. Why have almost no educators heard of this experiment? Why isn't Benezet now considered to be one of the geniuses of public education?
The actual Benezet article that sparked controversy and decades of mis-interpretation reads like the best in the tradition of meticulous and passionate experimentation in psychology and education. To read visit the Benezet Centre
Quoted excerpts come from the following reference:
Title: When Less Is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School
Backlink: Toxic memory
This reference is used to annotate "I would never send my kids to school" (2017) by Piotr Wozniak