I own Better Late Thank Early and I’d be happy to type up anything from it you are looking for or I can call you to help determine the exact topic you are looking for? Just email me if you need more help with this.

Here are a few different quotes:

“Analysis of a recent Stanford-based study (111) suggests that state legislature that have voted schooling for all 4-,5-, or 6-year olds may have based their legislation on incomplete or misinterpretedc research. Yet the detrminations of these lawmakers often have been absolute. The parents must enroll their children in school at 5 or 6 or else face the threat of arrest.” —-Better Late than Early, page 22

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“The question is not only, “Is the child ready for school?” but even more important, “Will the early starter be as well or better motivated and less frustrated and anxiety ridden as the one who starts later?”

We do not blame earnest parents for being concerned about the mental alertness of their children in their early years. The child must not be reared in an environment barren of intellectual stimulation. But he must be free and feel warmth and security, and the home most often can satisfy these needs if the suggestions in the previous chapter are reasonably followed.

Nor should parents be greatly concerned about Benjamin Bloom’s assertion that half the child’s intellectual capacity is attained by age 4 and an additional 30% by his eighth year. As David Elkind points out, this does not mean that if he does not learn certain things early, he will not learn them later. The fact is, he will probably learn better later.—from Better Late Than Early, page 210

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“Educators, psychologists, sociologists, pediatricians, politicians, neurologists, publishers, toy makers, and teachers associations not to mention parents, have a stake in the young child. Some are fighting one another, others are trying to cooperate with one another. When the researcher enters the picture, he cannot possibly please all. They may not even allow him to explain. And sometimes, he has not explained clearly when he has had the chance. Or, he has not bothered to relate his findings to fellow researchers. So there is confusion and verbal cannibalism about ECE.

Meanwhile, those who hold the purse strings–or hope to — move on in what seems to be the expedient way, sometimes right, sometimes very wrong. Sometimes, they have little concern for the voice of research even when there is remarkable agreement among researchers. The result is planning and legislation for ECE based more on tradition and intuition, than on documented findings.

In industry, when planners engore researchers, the result fen is an unacceptable product. Yet too many ECE planners and legislators ignore research when they plan projects. Only they are experimenting with your youngsters. They often find sound research findings to be unpalatable, to interfere with their private ideas: as a result, they risk the welfare of children at gross costs to the family, not to mention the taxpayer. Even more unfortunately, the possible effects of their errors are not so clearly measurable or subject to control as the manufacturer of drugs or aircraft brakes, for example.” —from Better Late Than Early, Pgs. 205-206

Praying all goes well today. My dh is looking at getting a job in NE.

Anyway, I will post sometime tomorrow on what happened.

The material which we have read indicates that the formally teaching of arithmetic to young children was not practiced by the ancients, the medievals, nor up to modern times. In fact, it was common to withhold formal instruction in arithmetic until somewhere between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.

It was not until the sixteenth century that arithmetic began to be taught to children as young as age twelve, or even ten.

“It was Pestalozzi, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, who began to teach arithmetic to children as young as age six or seven, though the practice of waiting until age ten persisted well into the twentieth century.

So to wait until age ten to teach arithmetic is actually, from an historical perspective, to advocate an “early start.” It is only from a decidedly modern perspective – a provincial perspective – that waiting until age ten would appear to be a ‘late start.’ We have not discovered any material which might indicate the contrary.

The full article is here:

http://www.triviumpursuit.com/articles/research_on_teaching_math.php

http://www.moorefoundation.com/article.php?id=53

Scroll down to the article:
When Education Becomes Abuse

David Elkind’s article here:
Much Too Early
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/david_elkind.html

Lillian Jones’ site (best..homeschooling) has some good articles in it.

Good thoughts for you folks in Nebraska.

This is some relatively recent research in the UK:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKELK83660520080208?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0