Children's minds

Morseo than most of my fellow Americans, I find myself being aware of children's innate mental faculties - and I seek constantly to engage these, whenever I spend time with young people. Characteristic childlike behavior is not something that I attribute to "an undeveloped mind." Instead, I see that kids develop behavior that helps them in their social niche... and which reflects their slightly different body type (for example, I've noticed that babies and small kids have much better hearing than adults do - and they might hear and respond to things that we don't).

Even babies can understand body language and facial expressions, and I believe one should start reasoning with kids very early on. I don't think that kids should do what teachers or parents say just because they say it. Instead, I will explain reasons for why they need to behave more responsibly. There are natural consequences one will encounter if one is mean to one's friends, or when one is acting unsafely.

Sometimes for the sake of their own personal dignity, young children will pretend not to listen when one is speaking in this way... but then they will go away and think about it, and later integrate what you taught them into their ways of doing things.

One important thing that adults often seem to miss about young children is that they have plans. When a two year old has a melt-down, it's often because he didn't get a chance to do something he was planning earnestly on, all day. I remember that's why I melted down at that age (yes, I do have a few memories from a very young point in my life).

Pedagogy

From a pedagogic perspective, I believe in the Montesorri tradition (at least as it is expressed in schools which utilise that philosophy here in the USA). I am fond of what American teachers call a "progressive" style of teaching, rather than an "essentialist" one. In other words, I believe that teachers ought to focus broadly on whole child - and his social and emotional development - rather than narrowly on core academic subjects.

Furthermore, I believe that play is the most effective way in which children learn. Play puts your mind into a certain intuitive space where you are very receptive to all kinds of ideas and impressions - and you can make connections that would be hard to make in a more structured environment.

Yet and still, I believe that structure is very important when working with a group of kids. One needs robust lesson plans; one needs to develop an almost choreographed rapport with the children. I'm very skeptical of schools such as AS Neill's Summerhill Academy in the UK.

On discipline and mentoring

I disapprove strongly of any form of physical punishment of children - including spanking (or as they say elsewhere in Anglophone countries: "smacking"). The star professor of my early childhood ed program used the first day of our child guidance course to contrast the meanings of the word "discipline" and "punishment." She brought out dictionary definitions and talked about etymology - how discipline comes from the root "disciple" - a person who is led on by a mentor's caring example. Punishment, on the other hand - she pointed out - is by definition aggrieving someone by inflicting emotional or physical pain.

In my years of working with groups of children in various environments, I've seen the effects of how children who are routinely spanked behave in relation to their peers. I've developed a detailed personal theory about that, which I'll touch on, here.

Young and inexperienced parents will sometimes believe that hitting their kids keeps them behaving properly... and they may see a short-term effect that validates this opinion of theirs. However, the longer term effects are very bad. Much in the same way that a trellis can shape a grape vine, children's social development is shaped by their family environment. Children's patterns of behavior will reflect how they are accomodating the social situation which they deal with in their homes, every day.

Young children who are regularly hit can often develop a form of "tunnel vision" where they forget about the natural consequences of their actions, and focus their energy entirely on evading the parent's slap. Such kids will become wild. They will make light of the spanking and run away from the parent when called - in the hope that the parent will calm down.

Kids in middle-childhood who are smacked frequently might be more quiet and reserved - however I've seen these kids develop patterns of lying, and I've witnessed them become bullies of their peers at school and in the neighborhood. They have learned to try to assert morality in this harsh physical way.

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My approach to discipline is like this: I believe in setting and enforcing limits with kids. Rules are there to make sure that property is safe, that people are safe, and the sanity of adults remains intact. If a child is acting in an unsafe or inappropriate manner, then that means that he or she has lost the right to participate in the environment where he is engaged with his project. Often, I've discovered that it's possible to peg exactly what a child wants to experience or do, and provide a way for him to do that (either now or later in the day) in a safe context. This falls under the scope of techniques that early childhood educators in the USA call "redirection."

As a child myself, my favorite books were written by British authors who wrote in the early 1900s - folks like E. Nesbit and Frances Hodgson Burnett. I really admired that way of thinking about how children ought to be taught. The other day, I began listening to an audio book - Hard Times - by Charles Dickens... and I found myself intrigued with amount of work and effort that the Victorians believed was important in raising healthy, happy children. Sadly, I think that Britain seems to have largely abandoned those ethics of child rearing. Parents are often too busy these days to spend much time with their kids - and they seem to want them to grow up by themselves without the considerable amount of support that kids need in their lives.

Today, I greatly admire Norwegian parents' sensibilities about raising kids, and I'm happy to report that early childhood education programs for nannies and preschool workers in the USA seem to have become heavily infused over the last thirty years with Scandinavian ideologies and their unique methods of social science research.

One of my core ethics when I spend time with children is that it's an adult's main job with a child to facilitate that child in the pursuit of his or her own aspirations, interests, and personal growth - including his or her social and emotional development. It's important to peg a child's personal passions from an early age, and groom him in that direction - seeking to pave the road forward for him in his life.

Hello,

I'm Christopher vanDyck. I'm a very young-looking 41 year old man who has lived almost all of his life in the USA. I spent my early childhood in Missoula Montana - then six months in Nova Scotia, Canada - and the rest of my childhood through high school in Seattle, Washington.

I come from a family with lots of international background. My father grew up as a missionary's son in Anhui province in China. Before I was born, my mom and dad spent time as Christian missionaries themselves in Japan - in Hokkaido, and later in Hiroshima. My mother grew up the daughter of a college president, and herself co-founded an international school for youngsters in Hiroshima which is still in operation, to this day. I have two adopted Japanese-American sisters who have - in their marriage and careers - created lots of ties, themselves, with the Far East.

I spent my senior year of high school in what was then West Berlin, in 1987-1988. Today, my German language skills are decent for general conversation; the dialect I speak is from the northern part of that country.

I have always loved working with children. I camp counseled a couple of sessions at a science camp and a religious camp in high school. I was a lifeguard, swim teacher, and alpine ski instructor as a young adult.

I've since lived what by American standards is a fairly un-traditional lifestyle. I've taken about four years of various eclectic university courses (including two years focused heavily on early childhood coursework and labs). I never finished a bachelor's degree, however. I am currently eyeing the possibility of doing a degree in Germany, and maybe later going up to Norway for a masters. My sense is that the standard of education in Europe is much higher than here in the USA, and that's important to me.

For just over ten years now, I have lived in a tourist/university/ski town in the southern Rocky Mountains of North America called Durango. This town attracts lots of outdoor-recreation fanatics, artists, and people wanting to escape the rat race in California. To me, quality of life is more important than the amount of money I earn. This is why I've chosen to live in this picturesque mountain town, rather than in a big city - such as the one where I grew up. I do whatever work I can pick up - including computer service work - in order to get by; I also receive money from my family to help offset living expenses.

I spend as much time as I can volunteering with kids in my community. Working with children is where I find the most meaning in life. I am on the board of a local community theater company, and we often do children's plays where I assistant direct, or stage manage. This last autumn I coached a "Lego League" team for eight weeks, and I often spend time in the class of a good friend of mine who is a fourth grade teacher at a local elementary school (fourth grade in the USA is generally ten year old kids).

I enjoy visiting my four year old nephew in Seattle. He's lucky that his mother is a trained elementary school teacher.

You'll notice that my blog (http://www.christophervandyck.com) might not give a very complete picture of me, because it's narrowly geared toward other inductive thinkers like myself, and I try to avoid writing there about people and events in my daily life.

My hobbies are many and varied. They include photography, web design, graphic design of pamphlets/brochures, computer programming in the TCL/TK language, Linux/XP/Win7, building computers, skiing, stage-acting, singing, watching BBC history and science shows over the web, and musing about deep philosophical/anthropological ideas.

My readers may have noticed that I've recently been posting a few links about the current battle around SOPA and PIPA - or how the old 1900s media organisations are trying to hamfistedly preserve their business models in a new technological age.

I'd like to briefly write about my personal thoughts on the matter, today.

It seems to me that the advent of the internet marks something of a change in the "laws of physics" in regards to how the world works. The internet functions through copying. The only way in which your computer at home is able to read a blog post, or see a picture, is that it was copied from a computer somewhere else in the world. You have an exact duplicate of that item on your machine.

Copyright laws were created hundreds of years ago and were applicable to a world in which the printing press was the only way to quickly distribute copies of text and images. In that era, there wasn't even a way of distributing music except via a new performance of a score, and movies hadn't yet been invented.

If you go back a few hundred years further, the very act of copying required so much time and effort that there was no point in most people learning to read. Books commissioned by the first king of England - king Athelstan - cost him and his court $150,000 each in today's money. They were printed on animal hide (vellum) rather than paper, and they were hand lettered and illustrated.

As we move forward into the 21st century, the technology is iterating faster and faster. Not only do we have Gutenberg's printing press to contend with, but also mp3s and CDs and the structure of the internet, itself. There's no way to take laws written in the 1600s and make them apply to the lay of the land as we know it, today.

If people who spend time and effort and money creating artistic and literary works, they will need to develop a new business model for getting a return on their investment. They're going to need to start from scratch. The RIAA and MPAA and other behemoths of the 1900s aren't showing us that they have the wit or the skill to adapt to the modern age. Their business model, just like Kodak's is doomed to failure - and like dinosaurs, they will become extinct. Filmmakers and musicians, however, will remain with us - and they will scramble to innovate.

SOPA and PIPA are examples of these old media companies trying to change the physics of the world they live in, instead of building business models around the new physics. They can't use standard digital containers like the mp3 format and the compact disc and the DVD - and expect to avoid the inevitable wholesale copying and file sharing of their product. It's like expecting gravity not to be in effect when you leap off the top of a building.

There probably are effective ways to create digital rights management systems. Computer programmers show us one way forward that ought to be explored. Individual hobbyist developers routinely create executable computer programs which each have unique kinds of copyright protections in them. I'm not sure how you'd apply this on a large scale. One problem is that your music or film might be constrained to one platform, and it might be difficult to make it available across a wide range of consumer electronics (although, given how Linux computers are becoming cheaper and smaller, these days, perhaps that's not a hurdle, after all). Another problem is scaling up; I don't see how it would be possible to standardise this kind of system - because once the same system is used for every piece of music and every film out there, it will immediately be circumvented by some diligent hobbyist technician who decides to burn the midnight oil for a few days.

Another way forward would be to cease making the sale of copies of music and films your main business model. Hollywood could work to embellish and improve the experience of theater-goers, so that people overwhelmingly want to see things on the silver screen rather than in their lonely bedroom or living room. Music and film creators could add some embellishments to the purchased product that could never be available to the product that is copied and shared online. Subscription websites for fans could be set up in a way that turns a profit for musicians or filmmakers. Musicians could become more skilled at drawing in revenue from live performances (apparently, this is already the main source of income for big-name acts).

Just a note, before I get started, here. I have made a promise to myself to avoid a confrontational style of writing on this blog. For the most part, I've adhered to that standard. I'm going to make an exception today, however. I've found that setting the cat among the pigeons is actually quite a good way to get people to rethink the way they see the world. Being meek and humble doesn't accomplish that as quickly.

Furthermore, I see that the nature of British debate these days is fairly brusque, and so I don't feel too bad about entering the fray with the same sort of approach.

If you've been following the news in the UK in recent months, you'll know that that a secessionist political party - the Scottish National Party - has gotten itself a majority in the Scottish parliament. It's interesting to see the machinations in another country when there is a movement afoot to split it up into its component regions. At the same time that the UK seems to be considering pulling up stakes and leaving the European Union, Scotland is considering splitting from England and Wales and becoming it's own independent nation again for the first time in 300 years. I find it fascinating to see how British people identify themselves as English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish first and as Britons only secondarily. It's inspirational to me to see the renaissance of the ancient languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales - and to even see television and radio programming produced by the BBC in those tongues.

However, I don't wish to talk today about the possible political breakup of this European island nation today, but instead about a loss of social cohesion and personal contentment and the generous spirit over the last century in this once-great nation.

I have devoted a lot of time over the past couple of years, to watching BBC television programming through the internet at their Iplayer website. The BBC focuses quite heavily on history. The UK, much like other nations like Italy, sees itself as having an identity rooted in the past.

After watching several programs about how children were raised in the UK in the early 1900s, and many more programs about how children are raised today, it strikes me that the UK is dying from within. Even though the UK suffered through two wars in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century (and a season where children were sent out into the countryside to live with strangers so they wouldn't suffer from the bombings of the cities) - it seems to me that the country had a very sound pedagogy - and a set of good ethics about how parenting ought to be done. Children received a lot of guidance and nurture.

In contrast to that, I remember seeing a series of films (the "Seven Up series" by Michael Apted) which started off by following prepubescent children in school in the 1960s... I was shocked by the how childcare and education seemed to have fallen apart. All of a sudden, you see authoritarian patterns emerging - which draw on the idea from earlier years of children conforming to common standards, but where nurture is suddenly missing, and where in its place we see only unreasonable demands. The poorer London schools in the early 1960s were simply zoos. The children had mass brawls on the playgrounds, and the teachers did not think it meet to step in at all to protect the children from each other. The wealthier schools were run like military academies with lots of corporal punishment (in many cases, administered by appointed fellow students).

Then, we see the anti-establishment movements led by university students in the 1960s which spread like wildfire all over the world - even to the Far East and places like Japan. This was a culture war, where people ostensibly fought for individual freedoms and campaigned against the structures of social mores and customs which their parents had adhered to. It's not surprising that those children raised in the dysfunctional schools of the 1960s, and who heard the anti-establishment cries of their older siblings who were at the university should get a very jaded view of traditional values. Every generation of parents since, seems to have resolved to raise their children in quite a hands-off manner.

Interestingly enough, the USA, across the Atlantic from Europe, has really benefitted from a society which values individualism more. The 1960s movements - the Civil Rights movement, the anti-establishment sentiment, and the peace movement - were boons for us. It really is in our cultural genetic makeup in this country to think and live that way. It suits us a lot better to be glib and casual and carefree, than to be buttoned up and living in a "Leave it to Beaver" kind of society.

Unfortunately, I think the UK has a very different genetic makeup - and consequently the culture war which started in the 1960s ended up making it a very ill society, today. The intellectual passion of those wonderful bright-eyed children of the early 1900s has served the country well for a long time. The BBC is a tribute to their sensibilities about the world. The tradition of critical thought, and analysis is very much alive in Britain - but, for how much longer? It's interesting how shocked Britons were at the attitudes of the young London rioters this last year. Those are the kind of human beings that British families are churning out of their homes in their late teens. It's not like Edwardian times anymore, now is it? Kids are neglected in the UK. Their parents work too hard and have no time for them. There isn't a sense that parents need to be in charge, and set boundaries, and guide the children. Instead, the children are left to puzzle things out for themselves, in a crazy world.

British culture has developed a decidedly selfish streak. Comedy in the UK is marked by derisiveness and raucousness. Debate about the topics of the day tends to be biting and cold, rather than genteel and elegant.

So, what does the future hold? Well, I think that the light of the torch of the intellectual tradition of the UK is going to burn ever dimmer as it is carried on the road further into future decades. I don't think that today's youth, or even today's middle aged Britons have much of an appetite for the kinds of high-brow things that the BBC produces. The "most popular shows" queue on the Iplayer shows you what mainstream Britain values. I think the UK will soon become a hollow shell of what it once was. It will need to go through "a dark night of the soul" and will need to do some very earnest soul-searching.

Meanwhile, what does it mean for the rest of us in the anglophone world? Well, it represents a sea change. The UK has been a shining tower - a light on a hill - for all English-speakers for a long time. Other Commonwealth countries like the Australia, Canada, and New Zealand fawn over the UK, and the deep-thinking nature of Britons has been a perfect compliment to the more down-to-earth everyday reasoning which is prominent in those nations. British accents are still associated here in the USA with intelligence. Geographically, Washington DC is fairly close to London. I think a lot of British frames of reference about the world rub off on our politicians on Capitol Hill.

There will be a niche for a new brand of intellectuals which opens up. We'll have to see who they are.

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As kind of a postscript, I want to deal briefly with one thing that I see as common misconceptions that people have about social cohesion. It's common for people to believe that homogeneity of ethnicity helps to create an even keel for society. The Japanese, for example, believe earnestly in this notion. I think Edwardian Britain would have been prone to think this way, as well. The EDL in the UK, and the KKK in the USA still cling desperately to this idea. However, I believe we in the USA have disproved that theory. We have become a truly multicultural society which is easygoing, friendly, and happy. It's kind of odd, because the flashpoints of heated debate in a country are amplified in a nation's mass media and soon seen to characterize that nation, overseas. A nation may have worked through 90% of its problems in regards to an issue, and still be unsatisfied with its own progress. Consequently, abroad, foreigners still think that the country is characterized by the problem.

As I see it, there's a lot less similarity between the American black person, and the British black person than there is between people of various ethnic backgrounds within either of those countries. Skin color does not make us who we are. What we believe, and how we see the world, and how we relate to the world define our character. There are commonalities of mindsets and approaches to life that are prevalent from border to border within a country, because of the nature of its mass media, and because of the social expectations people have of each other in school, in the workplace, and out in public.

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I also want to point you to a case study of a modern education system in a very unique society - Japan. I just finished reading a book written by a guy from the US state of Georgia who went to Japan and taught for a year in a rural school there, north of Tokyo. I think there are a lot of similarities between Japan's school system today and the nature of the fabled "grammar schools" of the UK in the early twentieth century. We in English-speaking countries today are liable to look at both things as strict, uncompromising, and overbearing. We are likely to heap scorn on it. However, looking closely at Japanese schools, I don't believe anyone can help but see that in actual fact, it's not an authoritarian system. Japanese students may be the best of the best when it comes to math and science - however, teachers focus much more on how to be happy and how to be a caring person of good character than they do on academic subjects. From what I've seen, it's not a hard-nosed system, at all - in the way it's reputed to be. Nor were the grammar schools of the early 1900s in the UK.

I have had many conversations over the past few years on the internet, with people who don't understand that there are fundamental differences in the character of each Western nation (even when comparing anglophone ones). Certainly, we each have our pick of where we want to live - the environment which will nurture us, and validate us the best. The assumption that people have, is that Western countries are homogenous... the idea is that it's pretty much the same living as a middle class person in the UK, as it would be in Australia or in the USA. That would be both true and false. There's something that people call "culture shock" - which is a phenomenon which happens when you live for an extended period of time in a foreign country or region. People in various regions and nations have slightly different social values, and expectations, and even facade habits. The way people expect others to respond to certain situations is different nation by nation. All of these various subtle ways in which people respond to various situations on a daily basis become, in aggregate, a rhythm that people live their lives within. There's a saying that a professor shared with me a few years ago about how difficult it is to "teach a fish to see water." When people are immersed in a situation, and have become accustomed to it, they often won't be able to think critically about what their environment consists of, the same way someone who is brand new to the situation can.

Of all the apps I've downloaded for my new Android Nexus S phone, this is the one that I value the most. This allows you to fully manipulate the sound quality from your headphone jack, your speaker, and your bluetooth audio connection. I find it quite odd that Google itself hasn't put these tools into the system natively.

Make your Android sound come alive!

Now, I just wish that there was a similar app for adjusting screen color and gamma!

I've taken an interest in learning foreign languages, recently. I was an exchange student in Germany in high school, and I have found a few hours of weekly children's programming in German, which is a good way to collect vocabulary words. One great thing they're doing right now is reading the German translation of Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book." I can get the public domain German text of that novel, and then listen to the audio, and make long vocabulary lists. One thing I'm seeing is that in any one book, the author (or translator) will tend to use the same vocabulary over and over - so reading a novel is a good way to see words in all kinds of different contexts.

I've chosen Norwegian as a next language to study, because I really admire the Scandinavian way of thinking about the world. Also, Norwegians seem to me to be the people who master the American English accent with the most finesse. This must say something about the society's pedagogy when it comes to language instruction.

I bought this great introductory audio course for learning Norwegian by Margaretha Danbolt-Simons. It's only for absolute beginners like myself. It's very well designed to help you to perfect a good Norwegian accent. Grammar issues are introduced in a very easy to digest way - but things are told to you as soon as you need them. Again, this certainly is NOT something that people will want to buy if they have any background at all in the language already.

It seems to me that Norwegian is probably one of the closest languages to English. The northern parts of the British Isles were heavily influenced by the Scandinavians, before the Normans (French) took over in 1066. It's quite refreshing to gaze deeply into the roots of one's own language.

I just finished an eight-week session of coaching a group of fourth and fifth graders in a Lego robotics competition.

This is the article in our local newspaper talking about the tournament which we had today. Pictured here, is the other team from the same elementary school I was working with.

Lego League in southwest Colorado

This is my sister's internet wine business. She's asked me to astroturf for her, but I just can't bring myself to do that sort of thing. Furthermore, I'm a teetotaller - but I realize that some of you like to find a store where you can get exotic brands of wine in half bottles.

Half Wit Wines

Cheers!