05-17-2003, 05:02 AM
Hail Mithrandir,
With the example of languages, there are people today who do that: they ensure there are several different languages spoken around their children all the time so that they grow up multilingual. Trouble is, if the patents themselves are not multilingual, they need to get others in to do it... do you know how expensive it is to learn a language. Now, to complicate things further, tell the instructor that it's not you they'll be teaching: it's your very young child. People do it, but they are not common for a reason ;)
To learning in general, it is known that as we age, our ability to learn does dim - hence the old dog and new tricks - but I am not too sure of specifics. I know it's not impossible to teach calc and trig to a kid in Primary School, but that is not going on any averages or anything: just the fact I know it's been done before. How the average kid would do at this I cannot say... I would like to say they would find it easier than people in their late teens, but I could be proven very wrong there ;)
Of cause, I am personally disapointed by the Australian Education system. I could tell you some horror stories about how bad things are here (though I've heard they are not much better over there either...); I would just love to lay the blame there ;) However I cannot... without more supporting evidence :P If I had any children, I would like to teach them everything I could at a young age - unless they were simply not interested in anything I could pass onto them; it's not be four languages (well, unless you count programming languages :P ), but I would like to give them what I could :)
With the example of languages, there are people today who do that: they ensure there are several different languages spoken around their children all the time so that they grow up multilingual. Trouble is, if the patents themselves are not multilingual, they need to get others in to do it... do you know how expensive it is to learn a language. Now, to complicate things further, tell the instructor that it's not you they'll be teaching: it's your very young child. People do it, but they are not common for a reason ;)
To learning in general, it is known that as we age, our ability to learn does dim - hence the old dog and new tricks - but I am not too sure of specifics. I know it's not impossible to teach calc and trig to a kid in Primary School, but that is not going on any averages or anything: just the fact I know it's been done before. How the average kid would do at this I cannot say... I would like to say they would find it easier than people in their late teens, but I could be proven very wrong there ;)
Of cause, I am personally disapointed by the Australian Education system. I could tell you some horror stories about how bad things are here (though I've heard they are not much better over there either...); I would just love to lay the blame there ;) However I cannot... without more supporting evidence :P If I had any children, I would like to teach them everything I could at a young age - unless they were simply not interested in anything I could pass onto them; it's not be four languages (well, unless you count programming languages :P ), but I would like to give them what I could :)
May the wind pick up your heels and your sword strike true.