Early Start Can Inhibit Learning: Towards A New Explanation

The age at which we teach different topics change. If it turns out that students do not learn, say, reading by the time they should, a natural idea is to start teaching them earlier. Several decades ago, reading and writing started in the first grade, now they start at kindergarten and even earlier. At first glance, the earlier we start, the better the students will learn. Yes, they may play less, their childhood may be not as careless as it used to be, but at least they will learn better. In practice, however, this does not always work this way: early start often inhibits learning. In this paper, we propose a simple model that explains why this can happen, and how we can avoid such situations and enhance the student learning. In particular, we explain why, contrary to the traconcrete-first way of teaching abstracts concepts of school cs, abstract-first approach is often beneficial. Keywords-- Abstract-first, early start, education, optimal education, uncertainty 1 Formulation of the P...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: EUSFLAT
• Authors: Olga Kosheleva
• Keywords: Early Start, EUSFLAT 2009, Fuzzy Logic, Natural Idea, Several Decades