Notional, flawed education

From time to time I get to have a theoretical discussion about critical learning windows regarding education. I usually find myself in a minority when such a discussion happens. I recently read a book about the brain that also addressed this idea although the authors called it sensitive learning windows (time-sensitive, that is). The authors of the book hesitated to completely agree with the idea, but they did give a couple of instances where the best explanation was the disappearance of the window. A critical learning window is the time period that exists during which learning takes place or some programmed events happens, such as puberty. Before the window, proper cognition is not in place to understand a concept fully, and after the window, the optimal conditions for learning a concept no longer exist and learning that concept becomes virtually impossible to enhance but more than a little.

The American school system ignores the idea of a critical learning window altogether. In second language acquisition, for example, nearly all offerings for language learning appear in high school a good 5-8 years after the critical window has closed. I guess it's no wonder that America remains mostly a monolingual country. Reading by teaching it phonetically also rejects the idea of a critical learning window. The child of 2-4 years of age learns that way, but not afterward much (only about 25% of children learn phonetically after that point). It's no wonder that many children grow into adulthood reading slowly and painfully. They were forced to "learn" reading through a method that yields limited results. And, horrendously, math from the time of kindergarten through 2nd grade gets roughly half the time dedicated to it that reading does. Mistakenly, the educational establishment thinks reading improves math skills. It's no wonder at all that children come away from the critical learning window during which math logic can best be instilled with only half or less of the time they need to do well. That certainly shows up in older children and young adults.

Surely, at some point, science will prevail and educating by notion will give way. When that happens, education will take a great leap forward. Learning will take place in more natural ways, according to natural rhythms, yielding naturally higher results. Knowledge will take a quantum leap. And, performance of individuals will correspondingly increase.