916: How to Invest in Your Children at a Very Young Age, Part 7: Don't Let Your Children Study Math Formally until Age 10
Radical Personal Finance
Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP
4.2 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2023
⏱️ 67 minutes
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Summary
The article that I am using as a resource comes from the appendix of this excellent book by Harvey and Laure Bluedorn called "Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. The audio you are about to hear is an appendix from the book |
| 0:06.2 | teaching the Trivium Christian homeschooling and a classical style. It's article 11 in the appendix |
| 0:11.6 | and titled History and Research on the Teaching of Math. This is one of the more well-researched |
| 0:20.4 | articles have ever found on this subject. And the authors of this book have brought together their |
| 0:27.7 | sources and the research here and formed the opinion that formalized workbook-based instruction |
| 0:35.2 | in mathematics should not begin for children until about the age of 10. While I myself do not |
| 0:42.5 | strictly follow this practice, it is something that I think should be widely debated and should be |
| 0:49.3 | widely discussed and understood. Because while we are working hard to develop our children's brains |
| 0:55.6 | by catalyzing a very high level of numeracy in them, it's important that we do that at the proper |
| 1:01.9 | time. And mathematics is something that I'm not sure that it should be learned early for most |
| 1:10.6 | people. As parents, we need to exercise a great deal of discretion and good judgment as to what is |
| 1:18.1 | working well with our children and what is not working well with our children. That's the goal. |
| 1:24.0 | And if your child is not succeeding with math at the age of five, then you should supplement |
| 1:31.6 | something that will be better for this child's age of study. And simply push off the study of math |
| 1:38.0 | to a time when the child's brain is more prepared to accept it. But in today's world, where we |
| 1:44.8 | understand the importance of mathematics and science and technology, et cetera, to our generalized |
| 1:50.7 | culture and success in academia, parents often feel this intense pressure to make sure |
| 1:56.3 | that a child is succeeding at a very young age. And I fear that that can many times cause us to |
| 2:02.3 | pressure our children in a wrong way, a counterproductive way, a way that destroys their confidence and |
| 2:08.5 | their ability to be excellent at mathematics. And it would be helpful and useful if we had a |
| 2:14.0 | little bit of context to inform our opinions. And so while my wife and I in our homeschool have |
| 2:21.6 | indeed been using some workbooks and doing some workbook math prior to the age of 10, |
... |
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