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donnalynn
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The conversation you cite was a very painful one to all involved - I will not revisit it.
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Helen
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Dear Donna,
I don’t think Eleanor meant in anyway to remind you of past pain. I think she has been kindly redirecting the conversation back to the original intention of the thread, that is, the Moore philosophy.
Eleanor sounds like she has had some experience with many different aspects of the Waldorf philosophy and is trying to point out the negatives (or cautions)without having a similar thread begin here. In some ways, Eleanor’s hands are tied when looking for another thread because there are few discussions concerning the other issues.
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Willa
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donnalynn wrote:
I simply did not want folks to think that Waldorf educators think that children do not have souls until the age of seven.
Growth and development is a process - and I think Willa hit on a very interesting note - that there are educators who come to the same conclusions from various directions. I find that fascinating too.
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The Church tends to notice a certain transition at about the age of seven, as well -- "the age of reason". For the purposes of this discussion it's probably a good idea to accept that many educators notice a transition period at about this age, and leave it at that.
My oldest son's teacher in the Catholic school he went to told me that whether a child learned to read at age 5 or 6 or 7, the playing field had largely leveled out by about age 8. I have found that in my house too.
I agree with Donnalynn and Eleanor that we don't need to divert this thread towards a Waldorf discussion, while it was fine to clarify a possible mis-impression about Waldorf teachings.
While I'm typing this my kindergartener is trying to pick out and name the letters I'm typing (with the possible associated eye strain  ) so I'm hoping this doesn't sound scattered. I still think it would be interesting to find out if there were physical visual reasons to avoid early reading. I have noticed that childrens' memory operations tend to change after they start reading -- they lose some of the wonderful oral and visual retentiveness of the pre-reading years.
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Erin
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Willa wrote:
Has anyone read about the Moore's research being duplicated or given weight elsewhere? This was one difficulty I had with reading their books. I did believe in the Integrated Maturity Level because I saw my boys in particular "click" at a certain age. But I have never really come across the early reading/eye damage theory anywhere but in the Moore's book. |
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Willa
This is a very thought provoking comment. You know I've never made this connection, but you're right I've never read it elsewhere either.
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Eleanor
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donnalynn wrote:
| Eleanor - in the post of yours that I quoted - *you* said that "the child's soul doesn't incarnate until age 7" according to Waldorf. If the soul is not incarnated - where is it? |
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Hi, Donna --
"Incarnated" means "embodied in flesh," i.e. in a physical body. It's not the same thing as "existence," which simply means that something is. (For instance, we as Catholics believe that Jesus always existed, as John's Gospel makes so beautifully clear, but He was only incarnated after Mary's fiat.)
So anyway, Anthroposophists believe that the young child's soul is not yet in his physical body, but rather in the "soul world," which is in the ether or some such thing (I'm a little vague on the exact location  ). As I understand it, they don't see this as a reason for devaluing the child. In fact, they believe that the child's soul is most active at this stage. They also believe that the same sort of thing happens to the rest of us whenever we're asleep. Little children are just thought to be in this "dream state" all the time, unless they're prematurely awakened by the wrong type of stimulation (which is thought to be a very bad thing indeed -- hence all the rules governing the selection of early childhood activities).
I hope that clarifies things somewhat, and doesn't cause offense. As far as I know, standard Waldorf sources would concur with the above, but if you find otherwise, I would appreciate if you'd pass along a link or citation. The last thing I'd want to do is misrepresent someone else's beliefs, so I try to be careful and precise when addressing these kinds of issues. Sorry if I didn't give enough background in my previous post.
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Helen
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Eleanor wrote:
"Incarnated" means "embodied in flesh," i.e. in a physical body. It's not the same thing as "existence," which simply means that something is. (For instance, we as Catholics believe that Jesus always existed, as John's Gospel makes so beautifully clear, but He was only incarnated after Mary's fiat.)
So anyway, Anthroposophists believe that the young child's soul is not yet in his physical body, but rather in the "soul world," which is in the ether or some such thing (I'm a little vague on the exact location ). |
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Thanks Eleanor
We are delving into one of the problem areas associated with Waldorf. One of the cautions with using Waldorf materials is the tie moderndism (among other things.) This terminology in particular, the use of the word Incarnation as something other than The Word of God (Jesus Christ) taking flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin sounds modernistic to my ears.
The errors of Modernism are detailed ini Pope Pius X's encyclical on Modernism.
Catholic Encyclopedia on Modernism
Here's the Pope's writings
Encyclical on Modernism
If we would like to discuss this in further detail, we should begin another thread in this forum. It is an interesting discussion.
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Willa
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Helen wrote:
| If we would like to discuss this in further detail, we should begin another thread in this forum. It is an interesting discussion. |
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Thanks Helen! Yes, I think we ought to keep this thread as a "Better Late Than Early" one. For anyone who would like to keep pursuing the Waldorf topic, we should start a separate thread.
I imagine that we are all agreed that the Waldorf philosophy has some problematic parts for a Catholic. But for this thread, that is not quite the topic since we are discussing reasons for delaying reading until a later age.
So if there seems to be continuing interest in the Waldorf details, I'll move the relevant posts over to a new thread.
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Eleanor
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Erin wrote:
Has anyone read about the Moore's research being duplicated or given weight elsewhere? This was one difficulty I had with reading their books. I did believe in the Integrated Maturity Level because I saw my boys in particular "click" at a certain age. But I have never really come across the early reading/eye damage theory anywhere but in the Moore's book. |
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Besides the Moores, and the Singapore government (who admit that it's not certain), the only other groups I've found who would support this theory are proponents of "alternative vision care techniques" such as the Bates Method or the use of plus lenses for close work. These methods are seen by some groups as quackery, but they're very inexpensive, and at least offer some hope besides locking up the bookcase. We might give them a try if this becomes an ongoing concern for our family.
There's also a great deal of mainstream research going on right now on this subject:
Google search for "near work" OR nearwork myopia children
Some of it does seem to be suggestive of a link, but in general the picture is pretty fuzzy (if you'll pardon the expression ). It's very difficult to control for all the various factors, especially since reading is only one type of near work that children engage in, along with TV, computer games, model building, drawing, sewing, etc.
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Willa
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Eleanor wrote:
Some of it does seem to be suggestive of a link, but in general the picture is pretty fuzzy (if you'll pardon the expression ). It's very difficult to control for all the various factors, especially since reading is only one type of near work that children engage in, along with TV, computer games, model building, drawing, sewing, etc.
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That's true -- it would be difficult to isolate one thing and probably most small children in the US don't do a whole lot of reading, as opposed to TV-watching, arts and crafts, and that kind of thing.
I suppose I believe in moderation in everything. Anything done to excess might well lead to physical strain. Personally, I am hoping to spend way more time outside with my little ones (I haven't been doing very well on this, but I want to) -- since I read somewhere that "far vision" developed by using one's eyes outdoors with natural light is a help to developing strong vision. I can't remember where I read it -- perhaps in a book about Nature Deficit Disorder in children.
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Eleanor
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Okay, the Moores' book still hasn't arrived (probably because I ordered from BookCloseouts and chose Media Mail ), but I just wanted to share this update from one week into our "experiment in discouraging early reading and writing."
4.5 year old DD has been reading all the food packages, as well as taking off her hair elastics and barrettes and making letters and numbers with them.
3 year old DS has been trying to bite his toast into letter shapes.
I give up.  This is reminding me of Maria Montessori's story about the severely deprived children who used to pick crumbs off the floor, just to give themselves some sort of challenge.
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Eleanor
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I'm now halfway through The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook, and give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.  I can see why the Moores' books are so popular. This one is full of interesting anecdotes from their decades of experience in many aspects of education. It's a very enjoyable read, unlike many books on education which are kind of slow-moving and long-winded. Of the multiple books I have on the go right now, this one is in the "most favored" spot. (This means I'm saving it to read as a special treat in the evenings, while I'm lying down outside the children's bedroom doorway so the 3-year-old doesn't try to sneak out and eat the toothpaste.  Such a glamorous life we lead around here! )
There's only a brief mention of the eye research, but I get the impression that they don't object to early reading per se, as long as there's no parental pressure. They mention that some children do learn to read on their own as early as 4 or 5, and that's okay. They just recommend limiting young children's reading to 1/2 hour at a time, which seems sensible (if not always easy in practice).
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ALmom
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Aah Eleanor, you got to a point that I wanted to make about Moore's book (I have the Better Late than Early and Homeschool Burnout). They speak very strongly about the Integrated Maturity Level and the age of 8 being the USUAL AGE at which this happens. They do emphasize that this maturity can occur earlier and later than average and the problem with classroom education is that children below the average age of maturity are forced to begin what their systems are not ready to handle. At that age, there would only be some small portion who have that integrated maturity and there is no need to rush reading. Those who begin to read late are not academically handicapped provided that they are not ridiculed and are allowed to jump in and proceed at their own pace (not do every page of every 1st grade workbook simply because they didn't do it before). I never got the sense that they would discourage early reading, if it occured by the child's choice and is child led. They are opposed to pushing children. The eye problems are associated with forcing close work BEFORE the integration occurs - not according to some arbitrary age. (Where folks tend to disagree is when this average age of integrated maturity takes place. Those in developmental/therapy fields tend to assume that whatever age the schools are requiring things is the "normal" age whereas the Moore's have some documented statistics that imply that this does occur naturally at a much later age for the majority of children - and schools are supposed to be about finding that average age). They (the Moores) then go on to argue that it is rather crazy (in much politer terms)to begin to force children into deskwork at K age since most children will not yet be at that integrated level - a few will be and will not be harmed by the program as long as it isn't too pushy - burnout being another issue). Since the schools keep pushing reading earlier and earlier without regard to reading readiness, it is safer to just keep your children out of the schools. I don't know about you guys, but when I was in kindergarten it was all about gross motor and very minimal fine motor. Now it is a lot about learning to read. Also in terms of eye development - children have to learn or develop the muscles for converging the eyes before reading. Typically you do not converge completely at 1" to start with. You also do not start converging with mini type. This is a huge bone of mine - all these texts for children today have gotten to be smaller and smaller print and this in itself can overstress the visual system while it is still immature and developing. (Does anyone else remember the nice large spaces that used to be there in all books for 1 - 3 grade. What I see now, is that K and maybe 1st grade have what used to be 2nd grade print size and by 3rd grade it is hardly different than adult print size. When overstress occurs over and over for long periods of time, children naturally develop coping techniques rather than integrating- one being nearsightedness (myopia) or astigmatism but others could be things like the brain shutting off an eye, tired eyes, simply avoiding the work or getting stressed and causing trouble, etc. and the visual system just seems to break down somewhere. I've seen it, learned to look for the early signs and back off a bunch even with a child who is older.
I would also say that neurodevelopmentalists deal a lot with integrated maturity level - they just have different names for it and treat the inability as a disability (which it may be if integration just isn't happening at all and there are some physical hints of muscle weakness) but may simply be variation of the normal for some. They have charts of developmental stages in gross motor, fine motor, visual processing, auditory processing and sensory/touch - beginning with response to light, the Babinski response, etc. and exercises that stimulate these integrations to occur. There are assumed average ages at which this is supposed to happen (but I've never seen a real study about what the curve is (except in Moore). As in other situations like this there are bound to be normally developing children who do these things significantly earlier and significantly later (the standard bell curve). The biggest disagreement between Moore and these neurodevelopmentalists, I would presume would be more in the application to specific children and whether the later development is normal or abnormal for this child and where the average falls.
This whole area is one near and dear to my heart because we have personal experience with this. Our children are far sighted to begin with which would make reading a later task from that factor alone - and had muscle weaknesses that prevented some of the integrated maturity from taking place. Several of my children did not really do well with seat work until 10 (and vision therapy) and we found Moore's book reassuring in that the children really have not been harmed by delaying most of the academics until then (well we have to do some minimal amount for legal purposes, but you kwim).
Now, I'd like to reflect a bit on my personal (not expert) opinion about how Montessori is not in conflict with this. Number 1, there is no forcing of seat work. A child will not choose an activity they are not ready for. My children avoided all close work like the plague. In Montessori, a child might choose something like walking the line, listening, the weight and touch mystery boxes, textures, etc. and may not touch the reading, math or other more sight intensive activities for quite some time and from what I have seen Montessori would argue that as long as the child is intensely developing something, they are doing what they should be doing and should not be disturbed. In a traditional classroom, every child is required to sit at a desk with pen and pencil in hand, coloring in the lines, making comparisons between pictures, cutting, etc. My children would never have chosen these kinds of things because they simply were not ready for them. Being obedient children and respectful of authority, they certainly would have done their darndest to comply no matter how miserable it made them, if we had insisted on close work (well to a point - because at some point, they simply would have been pushed too hard and depending on the particular child's temperment, you would have seen either tears or the houdini routine or outright meltdown or the child who develops a stomach ache every school day). We experienced very short examples of all of the above (no stomach aches) as we tried to discover why our children didn't fit the glowing homeschooling descriptions of early readers, "smart" kids who devoured books - and we were probably the only homeschooling family we knew who had children who wouldn't touch a book, cut, color or do anything with pen and paper at 10. The grace of God prevailed over any stereoptypical - this is normal type of thing and we simply researched and discovered what it was that we needed to do or stop doing with our children.
No. 2 - Most of Montessori's initial activities are all about integrating and developing those senses so the child has the best possible chance for all those differnt senses coming together in an integrated way - in my mind the same thing as encouraging the integrated maturity level to happen naturally by providing materials and allowing the child to work with these as long as they need and desire and are focused with the work. We have used many of Montessori's ideas, materials and some guidance to provide some of these early activities to our older children - amazingly our 6 - 8 yo did with concentration and intensity what she has available for children as young as 3 - but our children were neurodevelopmentally having gaps in this age range (not in academics persee but in particular developmental tasks that are supposed to form the foundation. We saw huge progress in our house. Granted we began with older children, had done vision therapy to remedy the muscle weakness and learn ways to encourage certain developmental stages that couldn't happen due to eye muscle weakness and so it could be reasonably argued that we have no way of knowing what really helped and this is very true. We don't know what helped. Personally, I don't really care.
I believe that Moore, Montessori and neurodevelopmentalists. vision therapists all complement each other and should not be viewed as opposing philosophies. In each you can find those who will take things in a direction never intended by the original proponent or philosopher. You will find Montessorians who will push children (that is not what Maria Montessori was about but in our culture you will always find those who have to find a way to give their children the competitive edge) and these are not every parent who has a child read at 4 (there really are some children whose eye skills come together that early). You will find proponents of Moore who say it is awful for children to read early (and they may come across as critical of the parent whose child happens to read at 4) - but that is not what Dr. Moore said. There are those who are coming at things from a classroom point of view - ie how do we help these kids cope in a school and some of this may be backwards when applied to K who simply may not be developed yet, but for a parent of a child in school who has no other option, these therapies are a special blessing. For those of us with greater flexibility, we simply recognize where they are coming from and the research in how the development occurs or what encourages it to happen is still useful information for us in helping our child. Our optometrist recommended waiting for therapy until a much older age because there are some things with focusing work that you simply cannot do with a young child (the development isn't there yet) but we knew our history of monocularity and how that affected other areas of development outside of eyes. We wanted monocularity even temporarily so some of those things could happen at a natural progression. We did have to come back again but we do not regret the decision. However, I am free to focus on eye muscle strengthening, recognizing that neurodevelopmentalists are coming to some of the same discoveries as these other folks but from an angle that isn't always relevant to us. My children are not in school being told over and over that they are dumb simply because they cannot read at 8. We can let that go and focus on the muscle tone that will eventually allow the integration to take place -with a little support from therapy and Montessori. When it comes together, then the children take off in reading, and cutting and coloring.
Take a look at exercises in any of the books supported by people who deal with integration issues - you will see things that you recognize from Montessori. Walking a balance beam isn't just about balance and coordination - it is also about vision. I have therapy books that discuss putting tape on the floor and walking on the line (doesn't this sound a bit like Montessori - and you are looking for the cross patterning). Doing things precisely, slowly and rythmically stimulates the brain with a certain intensity that encourages those neural pathways to form.
I, personally, am grateful for the work of all these people and very glad that I have access to the information.
As far as eyes, any optometrist will tell you certain things about eye health - and generally these rules are for any age.
Always do your work in a well lit area, natural or incandescent light is best.
Keep a balance of close work and distance work as much as possible (good old fashioned get plenty of fresh air and exercise).
Periodically alternate focusing. After about 20 minutes of close work, train yourself to look up and out the window and focus on something far away for a few seconds at least. The optometrist taught our children to look up every time they turned a page. Some of our children developed the habit more naturally than others. Some of us are real gluttons for punishing our eyes.
Have computer screens at good height and take frequent breaks to avoid eyestrain. My optometrist fil would not spend any significant time on the computer and he refused to read anything of length on the computer but printed it out. If you experience eyestrain at the computer, you can get glasses that are not reading glasses or distance glasses but designed to reduce the strain. This is more relevant to those of us who really must spend lots of time on the computer.
It is best to work at a slanted desk. Our optometrist provided us with a plan to build a slanted workboard for use on a table top. (This is one of those that we still break on a regular basis  and others we are still working at undoing bad habits). There was a reason why elementary schools had those slanted desktops!
Make sure the childs desk / work area is appropriately sized. You don't want the child looking up from the underside of the table. I think Montessori would concur here - it isn't just about making a child feel comfortable in their environment, it is about proper eye development.
Do not read in the car or in bed - especially not in bed under the covers with a flashlight. It is better on the eyes to sit up straight when reading. (I know, we almost never do this and are notorious for being sprawled everywhere while we munch and read. We break lots of rules here).
At one point I did ask the optometrist - Ok, our 5 children have this problem and while I believe it is at least part hereditary (optometrists in vision development argue that it is all developmental)what things do you suggest I do with this baby to try and prevent this child from failing to develop these skills. I was amazed at one of the answers - move the crib around so that the child is always in a different position with respect to the light. (Now we never have had a crib but we did alternate our bed position or our sleeping position with the baby. Couldn't hurt and therapy was expensive so we felt it was worth a try). Of course I also got the more typical responses of allowing the infant to have plenty of floor time (something our children always had). I was pregnant with # 6 at the time and followed the advice. Now he may just have inherited a better set of genes than the rest of the folks here, but he has no vision issues.
Okay, that is my longwinded 2 cents worth. Anyone who has born with me this far is either a glutton for punishment or really, really interested in these theories! Hopefully, I haven't bored everyone silly. Hope it helps someone in any case.
Janet
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: Moores & "Better Late than Early"
