Bogus Self-Esteem

Our gifted-education advocates group for our school district had a national speaker in today to speak about inspiring creative and critical thinking in our children. I did not necessarily agree with everything, but there were a quite a few take-aways from the presentation.

The one that resonated with me the most was his view that there seems to be this movement lately to establish a "bogus self-esteem." According to our speaker, the teachers are afraid to tell the students they are wrong because that might damage a student's self-esteem. He believed this to be wrong because it does not prepare a child for the challenges to come later in life, and that such an invalid view does little to challenge a child to reach his or her potential. He also stated that he believed this lead to sloppiness and bad habits.

I posed "invented spelling" (which I sometimes mistakenly call "creative spelling) as an example of the fear of telling a child he or she is wrong. I mentioned how my daughter actually, to my surprise, did not realize that when she knew how to spell a word correctly she should do so, rather than write however she wanted.

The response I got was that my question involved two issues. The first was about the extent to which I should be taking over some or all of my daughter's education for any area that I felt was not being adequately addressed, and the answer to that was yes - every time. The other issue was that there had been a problem with transitioning for my daughter between invented spelling and starting to use correct spelling.

As to the first part of the answer, it only reaffirmed what I am coming to believe; that I will be teaching my children quite extensively through out their school years. As to the second, the transition issue was that either no one had told my daughter that when she knew how to spell a word correctly that she should do so or she did not hear or did not listen.

Another take away was his view that children need to be trained to pay attention and to focus. I wish I had raised the question of how not telling the children they are wrong; and the use of invented spelling, and whole language/balanced literacy affects a child's focus and attention to detail. As you know from reading my blog, I believe these methods do create such problems, and do instill bad habits.

And yet another take away was the speakers view that the "drill and kill" theory that keeps some teachers from having their kids memorize math facts so that these are known by rote is a fallacy. I agree with this and will be doing my drill and learn with my daughter over the summer. To me this is the same fallacy that keeps teachers from teaching phonics - because the kids might get bored.

One last thing of note --- when I asked my invented spelling question, I heard a gasp from the other side of the room. I did not see the source, but it came from the direction of a person who I suspected to be a teacher, based upon a question she had asked. I could be wrong on both counts, though.

Vocabulary Issue

My daughter is doing well with her sounding out. Sometimes, she does try to guess still, but when I ask her to figure out the sounds she does sound out the words. I have discovered though that with the harder level books, there are expressions and vocabulary with which she is not familiar. The vocabulary issues become evident to me when I can see that she is saying the right sounds but still can't seem to piece the word together. I have been wondering as a result if I should get some books for vocabulary building, to catch her vocabulary up with her reading level. The other option is to let this happen more naturally and keep explaining the words, helping her to build her vocabulary as we read. It is only the occasional word, though. One example that I recall was "parental" as in "parental permission." Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I don't want to push her too hard, but I do want to help her grow by appropriately challenging her.

Btw, the expressions to which I referred above are actually "idioms." I did a search on idioms and went through a few with my daughter, such as letting the cat of the bag, and in the doghouse. She knew the one about something smelling fishy, so that was a good example for her.

Also, it is ironic to me that the school is sending my daughter home with books like Biscuit Goes to School, which are so incredibly easy for my daughter that they seem hardly worth it. I wonder how much of it is teacher assigned, though, versus the teacher letting her pick her own books. At home we have been working on the Diary of Wimpy Kids, which is a 5th grade level. We also read, Pinkalicious, Purplelicious, Silverlicious, and some other books, which are 2nd grade level and higher.