We all try to do what's best for our kids but, in doing so, are we considering their total well-being? Are we making decisions based on sound strategies or just because something sounds good and everyone seems to be doing it?
Read MoreWhy Grading Your Kids Causes More Harm than Good→
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While grading students on a bell curve may make some sense in a college setting, it's a harmful system for measuring the comprehension and knowledge of younger students. The Bell curve was designed to determine where each student ranked in relation to the rest of the group, but each child has a unique mind that is developing at its own rate and understands things in its own time, and, therefore, to compare a child's ability to those of his peers defies common sense.
Read MoreRaise a Smarter Kid with This Simple Practice
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The Practice
A strong memory is the foundation of high intelligence. Having young children to memorize rhymes and poetry is an excellent way to develop their memories and their intellects.
Once they are in the formal years of instruction, you can have them memorize wise maxims and worthy passages from different books too.
Children who are raised with the habit of doing memory work will become accustomed to it, and not shy away from it when they're older. Young children particularly love to memorize anything, so this is the prime time to do memory work with them.
“Let us not then lose even the earliest period of life, and so much the less, as the elements of learning depend on the memory alone, which not only exists in children, but is at that time of life even most tenacious.”
They won't see it as a difficult task or an impossible task like children do today, but they'll tackle it with determination, and they'll succeed which will have the added effect of building their confidence.
A Declining Skill
A useful skill that memorization teaches us is the ability to focus. In an age of constant distraction, focusing on anything for more than a second is under siege.
There is no quicker way to lay waste to our memories than by distraction. If we aren't present in our actions and our thoughts, we shall fail to store them in our minds. This is true for our children too.
As mothers, we tend to set a bad example for our children on this point. It happens when we have young children demanding our attention while we're trying to focus on something else.
We get pulled into too many directions, which is why you often hear women complain of a declining memory after they have children.
(Protecting your memory is another good reason to raise your children to figure things out for themselves, and thereby reduce the number of times you're interrupted during the day.)
We want to protect our children from having weak memories by starting them with memory work even before they begin grade school. Around age four would be a good time to start.
A Happy Spirit
Keep it light and fun though–you never want to put undue pressure on a child’s budding heart.
Read rhymes over and over again, and your children will memorize them without effort. Read age-appropriate poetry to your children and have them learn short stanzas by heart.
When you go to the grocery store, introduce a memory game. Have your children memorize the shopping list. You can learn it, too, and then see who remembers most of the items on the list.
Children love this game especially since they usually win!
Learn by Heart
Memory work, or learning by heart, as it was once called, was a vital component of the Ancient Greek and Roman education. The Greeks and Romans had sophisticated memory tools to facilitate the learning by heart of epic poems.
For example, every school child in Ancient Greece would learn The Iliad and The Odyssey by heart.
When children learn things by heart, it also helps to form their characters and their world views, which is precisely why the Greeks had their children learn epic poems about their heroes by heart.
“Learning by heart’, which speaks to the soul, has been replaced by ‘rote-learning’ and ‘learning by rote’, which are disparaging and off-putting terms that have the effect of making memorizing into a matter of using the brain as a piece of machinery.”
Today, we don't have children learn anything by heart in school anymore. Not only this, but we use the term “rote” memorization and speak condescendingly of it.
Did you learn anything by heart? I never did.
The Memory Disadvantage
Yet, the memory is a crucial component of our intelligence. People who have weaker memories are at an intellectual disadvantage over those who have strong memories.
Why would we raise our children to be at a disadvantage when they're natural inclination is to develop their memories?
It's like preventing a child from learning to walk. Why would we physically handicap them? We wouldn’t, nor should we handicap them intellectually by failing to train their memories.
It's our job as parents and teachers to provide our children with memory work, yet, we overlook this vital element to education because "rote" memorizing is not an effective way to teach.
Rote memory work, as Mr. Gwynne points out, is not the proper term anyway. Learning by heart is a much more humane way to look at an easy method of training your child's mind to do great things.
In our misguided efforts to spare our children the boredom of memory work, are we not dumbing them down?
Have you got your free copy of How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader? It comes with an 80+ book list of carefully chosen books to support your child’s intellectual development.
Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.
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We all try to do what's best for our kids but, in doing so, are we considering their total well-being? Are we making decisions based on sound strategies or just because something sounds good and everyone seems to be doing it?
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Read MoreThe Degrading System of Grading
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While grading students on a bell curve may make some sense in a college setting, it's a harmful system for measuring the comprehension and knowledge of younger students. The Bell curve was designed to determine where each student ranked in relation to the rest of the group, but each child has a unique mind that is developing at its own rate and understands things in its own time, and, therefore, to compare a child's ability to those of his peers defies common sense.
Read MoreHow to Teach Children to Love Books
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I learned to read in the first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Gilman, was tall and dressed in a blouse and skirt--down to the knees--wearing black pumps and bright red lipstick. She was stern, but she had a friendly face. Mrs. Gilman taught me to read when I was six, and it unlocked the door to another world for me; a world of interesting characters where anything was possible.
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