[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: velociraptor <velociraptor at gmail.com>
" 
" 
" Schools are so hamstrung by "standards" that the children are getting
" no real education, just being spoon-fed the answers to tests.  It's
" pathetic and makes me fear for the future.

...and pointy-headed politicians demanding action 'to keep the us
competitive' just make the problem worse.  but that's politics all
over; we must all have heard the story of the illinois legislature
that tried to cut through the mathematical wrangling about pi by
declaring it to be 3...

" One of my good college
" friends (a history & classics geek, on top of an IT geek) has been
" teaching his son, who's 8, iirc, Greek and Latin.  His son is gobbling
" up pretty much every piece of info put in front of him by his dad.  He
" loves it, so he doesn't even think it's hard.

it isn't hard, for kids.  we are wired for learning, and learning
language, when we're young.  consider how much english you learn
without even trying, by age 4.  your friend's son is probably helped
by parents who are fluent and comfortable in greek and latin.

brain scans have shown that people who grew up polyglot use the same
language center for all their languages, but people who learn
languages when older use a different part of the brain for the new
tongue.  i wonder if this takes learning method into account...

the critical age seems to be about puberty.  anectodal data: henry
kissinger came to this country when he was 13.  his younger brother,
11 at the time, has no accent.

digression: one of the greatest linguists of all time grew up in a
household where his mother was french-swiss, his father german-swiss,
and - as it happened - each of the servants was from a different
country.  as a youngster he was under the misapprehension that you had
to have your own language to grow up, and he was well on his way to
inventing his before he learned differently.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought