What parent wouldn't want to help her children become their best? To give your child a well-trained mind, it is necessary to understand that true self-esteem comes from achievement, and that usually requires effort and practice. Almost any child can become more gifted or academically talented with the right guidance and training.
Are people born with talent? Most people think the only way to be great at something, from music to sports to math to chess, is to be born with a rare ability. Greatness isn't just born, it’s grown, which is important information about the learning process that every parent, teacher, and coach should know.
Recent research shows that even the most talented people have to devote a huge amount- a minimum of 10,000 hours- of dedicated, focused practice before they can achieve the level of world-class performance. Besides talent and practice, there is a third element necessary for success: inner determination (the child's own attitude and self-motivation).
Giving your child a well-trained mind requires a classical education. The classical curriculum is very demanding, as it should be. For example, 9th grade students are expected to read 25 books, among them Homer's Iliad, Plato's Republic, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. There is a blueprint for parents to use at home. Children’s minds need to be challenged and stretched. It is tragic when the public school standards are lowered for the convenience of the parents and teachers. A well-trained mind requires as much time and practice as any other talent.
Is teaching traditional grammar a waste of time? No! A professor of classics disagrees with the establishment’s war against grammar. He shows that a solid grounding in the grammatical analysis of sentences is necessary for good writing and speaking skills. It not only helps with one's native tongue, but also in learning foreign languages. He attributes a student's inability to write in complete sentences, as well as logical paragraphs, to a lack of foundation in basic grammar.
The education people try to blame it on phone texting, but it really started with the whole language fiasco. In trying to make things easier for the few stragglers, we lost the rest of the students with our easing of criteria and requirements. When we make no demands, excellence does not happen. “No children left behind” has become all children left behind. And now Common Core is making it even worse!
Well-meaning parents and educators believe that praise, encouragement, and advantages ("self-esteem-first" method) translate directly into happiness in childhood and success in adulthood. But did you know that the reverse is true? Misplaced indulgence only produces young adults who are stymied by the ordinary challenges of life, lack basic skills of empathy, and fear humiliation above all else. Yes, be positive, but lovingly require achievement and higher standards.
Children need to learn to cope and can’t do so when adults remove all obstacles. So, in summary, to give your children a well-trained mind, give them a classical education with emphasis on traditional grammar, lovingly expect them to study and accomplish milestones, require them to practice or put in time and effort, and don’t do everything for them. More and more of our college students are finding it hard to cope on their own without mom and dad. Cases of anxiety are on the increase because of the misguided self-esteem push, which method was one of the many Project Follow Through failures. More to come from Common Core.
As Linda Kreger Silverman said, “A bright child who is capable of scoring in the high ninety percentiles on group achievement testing may not be gifted.” Regardless, being academically talented is a worthy pursuit. The technology jobs of the future need intelligent, successful students.
Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.
The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle.
The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer.
The War against Grammar, by David Mulroy.
The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance, by Polly Young-Eisendrath.
http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBrightHowtohelpyourchildrenreachtheirhighestpotential
