Tuesday 26 October 2010

Learning to write autonomously

We were treated the day before yesterday to a splendid example of the truly extraordinary mental contortions which are necessary if one wishes to be an 'autonomous' home educator. Just like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, the dedicated autonomous educator is required to believe six impossible things each day before breakfast!

A couple of days ago somebody whose child still cannot write even though he is in his teens commented here. The fact that he can barely write his own name was attributed by some others who commented, to the fact that he evidently had special educational needs. The mother herself is more inclined to suppose that not being taught systematically and drilled in handwriting practice has something to do with the case. Now most people would agree with the mother about this. When we have a large group of children who are taught a skill which almost all manage to acquire with varying degrees of facility and another group who are not taught and a number of whom simply fail to acquire the skill, most would assume that the teaching has had at least some bearing on the matter. It is so wholly typical of autonomous home educators that they should instead lay the blame on brain damage.

The first thing which occurs to me here is that I have never encountered this phenomenon with any child at school. Some have learning difficulties so severe that they are unable to learn to read and write, but that is not the case here; the mother says that her son is reading. Children at school who are capable of learning to write usually do so. They may have poor handwriting which is virtually illegible, but write they do. I have never seen a teenager of average intelligence at school able to write only in capitals and then hardly anything but his own name. The second thing which strikes one is that rare as this is with school children, it does not seem to be particularly uncommon among autonomously educated children. Without racking my brains, I can remember Fiona Nicholson of Education Otherwise saying that her son was writing laboriously in capital letters when he was a teenager and Janet Ford's son Chris also had a lot of difficulty with writing. I have seen several examples of this myself with older children and all were autonomously educated; that is to say they were not drilled in pre-writing skills and made to draw little circles and up and down strokes repeatedly. Other home educating parents talk about this openly; it is not rare. In other words, although some children may learn to write of their own accord, there do seem to be some who do not and of these, a number end up as teenagers who can only write capital letters and just about spell their own name. Since we do not see this in children of average intelligence who attend school, it is reasonable to assume that it is the type of education which is being provided which causes this, rather than some form of brain damage.

It has been suggested by some that because adults can learn to draw easily, the same should be true of writing. It is not; these are two very different things. When drawing, one can make the line go where one pleases. It can be straight or curved, short or long; the choice is yours. in writing, one is compelled to make lots of fiddly little anti-clockwise circles and loops, quick up and down movements, dots and horizontal bars. This must be second nature to one, it must be done smoothly and automatically. The way that we acquire this ability, which is known as motor learning or muscle memory, is by repeating the same fine motor movements over and over again. After a time, they become transferred to the cerebellum and from then on, this sub-routine can be called up without conscious effort. Riding a bicycle, teeth brushing, playing the piano and various other sub-routines of this sort are also stored in the cerebellum. It would be no use when playing the piano if one searched for C and then E and then G and then formed the hand in such a way as to play the three notes simultaneously. It would be impossible to play the piano like this. In the same way when writing, it would not do if one first tried to remember how to write the letter C and then after that started to think about how to do an A and so on.

The only way that these routines get fixed in the cerebellum is by plenty of practice. Those who were telling this mother that general practice in fine motor control would be helpful for a child were not really right. One can be able to do the most fiddly and exacting work with the fingers, but until those writing movements have become fluent, one will not be able to write properly. The younger one is when this is done, the better. Just as a young person can learn to drive a car more easily and faster than an older person learning, so too with handwriting. One might be able to persuade a four year old to sit at a desk drawing loads of little circles; I doubt that you will manage to get many fourteen year olds to do so! If it is not done when the child is young, then you might be heading for problems later.

23 comments:

  1. Again, an interesting and well thought out post. What you say is based in a lot of truth I feel. However(and you knew there had to be one), my daughter is 10 and has only just learnt to write in the last two years. She was a reluctant colourer and writer and couldnt (wouldn't?) do it for love nor money, believe me I tried both!
    So I took the pressure off, got her reading, did loads of big paintings, and did a lot of hand exercises to strengthen her fingers, played with lots of clay and playdough. When she was eight and picking up a pencil herself we introduced writing. But as you said they DO need practice, so two years of intensive practice later and she is writing in beautiful cursive, mostly legible and reasonably well thought out.
    So what I am saying is, I dont think youth is always so much the key as practice, lots and lots of practice.

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  2. I'd call myself a "dedicated autonomous educator" and I'm not very interested in attempting to believe impossible things. I'm just interested in supporting my children and providing what they need as they grow up.

    Just as I did do a lot to support my children's reading skills (but didn't impose any teaching), I also supported their efforts in writing. In the case of my son (who has never been to school) this consisted of lots of appreciation and (when he was eight) teaching him a joined script using a book. He was already writing a great deal by that age but wanted a more orthodox handwriting style - partly for aesthetic reasons and partly because a schooled cousin made a comment. He thanked me for my help and has stuck with that script ever since.

    I can't prove - but I do suspect - that his ownership of the process is part of the reason why he has never regarded writing as anything other than a pleasure. He likes everything from dipping pens and ink to typing. Had he been sat down with tedious practice books at four years old then perhaps it would be a different story.

    If I felt that my children weren't acquiring essential basic skills (that doesn't necessarily mean mirroring everything they would be doing in school)then I would change my approach. As autonomous home education is working fine for us then I see no problem. I'm not religious and I don't stick with things because of 'faith'. I go with evidence - the evidence of my own happy children. I think many home educators - autonomous or not - base their approach on that same consideration.

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  3. 'So what I am saying is, I dont think youth is always so much the key as practice, lots and lots of practice.'

    I think you are quite right C. I didn't mean to suggest that it was impossible to learn when a little oder, only that it gre more difficult as one gets older.

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  4. Simon, I think that you have possibly misunderstood what the mum with the agraphic son was saying.

    Her son does have a SEN, which I believe she described as a neurological problem. See what she says below:

    'His writing problems are a result of not addressing his SEN when he was younger due to the mistaken believe that all children when left to learn autonomously will do so when they are ready.'

    My interpretation of what she said was that it was the *interaction* of the SEN with the lack of appropriate practice at the right time that has created the problem, in the Mum's opinion.

    However, because it IS an article of faith for certain AE'ers that AE can never, in any circumstances, EVER result in a less than perfect learning outcome, then various Anonymouses (or perhaps only one Anonymous) attempted to tell the mother that her close observation of her own child, her knowledge of him and research and background in neurology must all be wrong. It must have all been the result of his SEN.

    Unfortunately, some children with SENs are not in a position to say, 'Mum, I know that you are waiting for me to show signs of wanting to learn reading/writing/whatever, but I am not like most other people and I possibly never will ask you to teach me, so you are going to have to take the initiative here.'

    The big problem with any ideology such as AE is that it risks (doesn't often happen, but the risk is there) stripping the HEing parent of any confidence in themselves as the expert on their own children. Parents of children with SEN's have fought for DECADES to be recognised as the experts on their child, not schools, not consultants, not hospitals, not the people who wrote an academic paper 30 years ago. These 'experts' sometimes know nothing about how the condition manifests in individual children. The parents however do.

    The same movement has also occurred within breastfeeding support. Drs gave advice about '4 hourly feeds' which often led to the end of b'feeding for individual babies. B'feeding counsellors, said, 'No, *you* are the expert on your baby. Follow your own instincts about when he is hungry and feed him then.'

    AE, it seems to me, hAS set itself up as an alternative external expert. 'Don't listen to what other educational theory says, what schools say, listen to what AE says.' AE has become the expert, not the parent. And so parents' instincts about what is right for their child are in danger of being drowned out. This may not be important for most children. But for children with SEN, it's vital.

    Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not against AE. I'm not arguing against it. Most people that I know who have educated this way have children who are doing exceptionally well. I know that it can 'work'. But those for whom it works don't seem to want genuine dialogue with those for whom it has failed. They want only to find excuses like 'you did it wrong' or 'your child must have Dyslexia then' etc

    Isn't it time to allow people to say, 'AE didn't work for me' and simply afford them respect, instead of telling them they are wrong?

    Mrs Anon

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  5. 'My interpretation of what she said was that it was the *interaction* of the SEN with the lack of appropriate practice at the right time that has created the problem, in the Mum's opinion.'

    That was also my interpretation of what she was saying. Later on, somebody talked about brain damage. The mother herself seems to feel that explicit teaching would have changed the outcome. She felt betrayed by the autonomous ideology to which she had fallen prey.

    Tell me as a matter of interest, Mrs Anon. You are or were a teacher. Did you ever know or hear of a child of aveage intelligence who spent nine years in full-time education and could only at the end of this write his own name? The point I was making is that although one not infrequently hears of such things in home education, I do not recollect encountering this with any teenager who has been at school since the age of four or five. This includes dyslectice and those suffering from dysgraphia, dyspraxia and so on. I can only conclude that the educational style is the deciding facotr in the acquision of handwriting.

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  6. People did (and presumably still do) sometimes emerge from compulsory schooling illiterate, but there are usually a number of social/emotional factors at work.

    Mrs Anon

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  7. "A couple of days ago somebody whose child still cannot write even though he is in his teens commented here......

    The first thing which occurs to me here is that I have never encountered this phenomenon with any child at school."

    Well, you might not have done Simon, but it didn't seem to be a novelty to the teachers, occupational therapists, and educational psychologist who assessed my son. As I pointed out the other day, my son received more or less daily, intensive practice in writing and pre-writing skills from the age of 4 until he came out of school just before his 9th birthday. He could still make only a few wobbly shapes on the page that on a good day you could read as two or three words.

    The Ed Psych was more than happy with the support his infant school gave him, and the OT was despairing because schools wouldn't generally take any notice of the pre-writing motor skills exercises they recommended. Learning support advisory teachers were saying "This child should be taught keyboard skills ASAP" - not that it made any difference.

    No one said "I've never seen anything like this before."

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  8. "One might be able to persuade a four year old to sit at a desk drawing loads of little circles; I doubt that you will manage to get many fourteen year olds to do so! If it is not done when the child is young, then you might be heading for problems later."

    Simon, you have summed up exactly what has happened to us!

    If I had my time over I would still have autonomously home educated,but I would also have made sure that my child when much younger had at least learned to form letters so that he didn't get to his teen years and find life so impossibly difficult.

    I was going to post this with the other comments, but I will add it here. I am not feeling guilt ridden, nor being too hard on myself as others have speculated. I suspect they are thinking about how they would feel in that situation. I have had two years to get used to the idea, and to research into what went wrong. That research is still on going, and maybe one day he will be able to write more than just his name.

    My main reason for posting is that of a cautionary tale for those that embrace autonomous education without really understanding it or their children. Not all children will spontaneously educate themselves.

    "Isn't it time to allow people to say, 'AE didn't work for me' and simply afford them respect, instead of telling them they are wrong?"

    Thank you for that Mrs Anon. I think both those blindly against AE and those blindly for AE need to meet in the middle, and actually learn about AE. It is not about just leaving a child to learn on their own when they are ready. It is about consensual learning and taking responsibility for our families.

    I have had the courage to step out and say in public that just leaving my son hoping that he would learn when ready didn't work, as I had been lead to believe it would by some AE families. I made a wrong decision, but it was the best one I could make under the circumstances. I just hope that others in particular with SEN children don't make the same mistake I did and take some time to find out more about AE, and listen to their own children rather than other well meaning parents.

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  9. I think Anonymous makes a reasonable point - *however*, since I have a son who is almost a teenager but who did state-of-the-art writing practice for five years and who has had ongoing handwriting practice for the last three, and who *still* can't write functionally, Anonymous cannot assume that it was lack of rehearsal at an early age that has stopped his/her son learning to write.

    I also cited, the other day, my friend who educated all her four children at home and whose third child, having been taught how to write but having failed to do be able to do so - so they gave up trying because it was causing more problems than it was solving, suddenly started writing at the age of 12.

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  10. "then various Anonymouses (or perhaps only one Anonymous) attempted to tell the mother that her close observation of her own child, her knowledge of him and research and background in neurology must all be wrong. It must have all been the result of his SEN."

    I think that was probably me and I apologise for giving that impression because it's not what I think. Suzyg made the point I was trying to make via my questions far better than I did when she said:

    "I think Anonymous makes a reasonable point - *however*, since I have a son who is almost a teenager but who did state-of-the-art writing practice for five years and who has had ongoing handwriting practice for the last three, and who *still* can't write functionally, Anonymous cannot assume that it was lack of rehearsal at an early age that has stopped his/her son learning to write."

    Unless you have tried both ways with a child (obviously impossible) we cannot say for sure that the alternative approach would have been better. I could even have been worse. But I do respect anonymous' knowledge of her son and am glad to hear that she is not too hard on herself. I meant my comments as suggestions and queries, not corrections and facts.

    My questions about neurology and sensitive periods were just that - questions because I lack knowledge and was interested to learn more. I still cannot see how it is possible for a 'sensitive period' specific to writing that would result in an inability for older people to learn the skill, could have developed in humans over the last 100-150 years. It just doesn't seem possible from my understanding of evolution.

    This view of learning seems to suggest that we might as well forget learning new skills and education once we are through puberty when the bulk of brain development ends. Yet millions of people learn new physical skills such as arts and crafts that involve small, precise, repetitive motions all the time. I cannot see what is so special, in this context, about learning to write. Yes, it is easier to 'make' a young child practice, but this doesn't mean an older child will not choose to practice if they want the skill enough, Maybe it just seems easier for young children to learn because it's easier for the adult to make them? I find it hard to imagine a teenager, who desperately wants to be able to write well, not sitting down and practising. This has been my experience of teenagers. One, for example, learnt to write at 12 using a cursive handwriting book aimed at 6 year olds. He put in about 5 minutes a night for about 6 months (sometimes only filling in one line) and now has reasonable hand writing though still slow because he hasn't practised for speed and amount so far.

    Maybe, if I had seen my children having problems with learning something a bit later than usual, I wouldn't have remained an autonomous educator? I would certainly never claim that everyone should be autonomous as there is no way on this Earth that 'one way' is going to suit all families and all children.

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  11. "I have had the courage to step out and say in public that just leaving my son hoping that he would learn when ready didn't work, as I had been lead to believe it would by some AE families."

    You do know that AE doesn't rule out parents making suggestions to their children? You don't just have to wait until he discovers the idea of writing by himself? This probably seems a silly question, but it's a mistake Simon has made in the past so please forgive me if this seems a stupid question to you.

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  12. "and Janet Ford's son Chris also had a lot of difficulty with writing."

    May be remembering incorrectly but I thought he caught up quickly once he had to write regularly. But either way, it hasn't stopped him gaining a PhD.

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  13. 'No one said "I've never seen anything like this before."'

    Well, you too are a teacher, suzyg. I take it that you have encountered fourteen year-olds who have spent nine or ten years in full-time education and can only write painfully slowly in capital letters and barely spell their own names? The point which I was making was that although such cases are rare as rocking-horse shit at school, they are not at all uncommon among some home educated children. I have a large collection of parents' references to this; so many that it almost seems like a definite syndrome. Am I really to believe that nobody else has noticed this?

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  14. '"I have had the courage to step out and say in public that just leaving my son hoping that he would learn when ready didn't work, as I had been lead to believe it would by some AE families."'

    Mind you Anonymous, as I have remarked before, we all manage to screw up on some aspect of childrearing and education! I know I did and so I rather suspect did everybody else who has commented here.

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  15. 'My questions about neurology and sensitive periods were just that - questions because I lack knowledge and was interested to learn more. I still cannot see how it is possible for a 'sensitive period' specific to writing that would result in an inability for older people to learn the skill, could have developed in humans over the last 100-150 years. It just doesn't seem possible from my understanding of evolution.'

    I think that this might be less about a sensitive period and more about the fact that you need a certain amount of regular practice to get the hang of the thing and for making those fine motor movements part of the repetoire in the cerebellum. I can think of few adults who would be prepared to spend a couple of years doing all the pre-writing routines which usually lead to success in handwriting in children.

    In addition to this, it is easier to learn when one is young and takes less time. A seventeen year olf can often learn to drive in seventeen hours. A man of fifty one will, on average, need three times as long. If the same applied to learning to write, then an adult might need to spend several years mastering all the little movements necessary. It is just easier in general if done when the child is young.

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  16. 'I would certainly never claim that everyone should be autonomous as there is no way on this Earth that 'one way' is going to suit all families and all children.'

    That is a very important point, Anonymous and I am glad that you made it. It is a point which is, unfortunately, hardly ever heard in HE online groups.

    Mrs Anon

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  17. "I think that this might be less about a sensitive period and more about the fact that you need a certain amount of regular practice to get the hang of the thing and for making those fine motor movements part of the repetoire in the cerebellum. I can think of few adults who would be prepared to spend a couple of years doing all the pre-writing routines which usually lead to success in handwriting in children."

    Then how can a 12 year old learn over 3 months spending on average about 5 minutes a night on it?

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  18. "Then how can a 12 year old learn over 3 months spending on average about 5 minutes a night on it?"

    Sorry, make that 6 months!

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  19. Many autonomous educators remark on how quickly a late learner will pick something up compared to the years younger children spend on learning the same thing at school. My son caught up with and gained GCSE maths within two years going from no written maths at all. He didn't even spend that much time on it - probably averaging less than an hour or so a week. However, he had good mental arithmetic skills and a sound understanding of concepts such as fractions, percentages, powers, etc as a result of earlier informal learning (discussions, spending money, cookery, weighing and monitoring pets, etc).

    This apparent speed also applied to reading and writing but the point is, the groundwork is already there. For writing, they had fine motor control from a variety of sources (including arts and crafts, model building, computers, etc) so it was just a case of making use of those motor control skills along with some practice to learn to write with a slow but legible cursive script. More practice will obviously be needed to speed writing up, but my daughter gained this from college quite quickly.

    I think people do tend to forget the groundwork that enable these apparently rapid gains in skills and there are obviously dangers in minimizing or ignoring the need for them when talking about learning to new home educators. It sounds like this may be happening on some lists - I don't read many so I can't really say. Either that or some children really don't need the groundwork, but I find that hard to believe.

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  20. As there seems to be a desire to understand more about sensitive periods in the brain, here is a powerpoint presentation from the Centre for Educational Neuroscience that might help:

    http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/files/AERA/Thomas%20AERA%202010.pdf

    Current knowledge
    • Sensitive periods close gradually
    • Reductions in plasticity are in part driven by learning – not at a fixed age
    • Plasticity rarely disappears completely – adults can still learn
    • Plasticity reduces after brain regions adopt their adult function
    • Reductions in plasticity are not uniform across systems / abilities


    And this is explains one possible way of looking at agraphia:

    http://brainmind.com/Agraphia.html

    My research into this is not confined to just these two papers or even just these two people, I have only linked to them here as examples in case anyone is interested in how the brain works.

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  21. Thanks for the links - I must research further. Obviously I'm reading from a bias towards AE but much in your first link seems to support AE. They stress the importance of self regulation for instance, and also make the points that early exposure to relevant perceptual stimuli/motor skills are most important and High-level systems show little evidence of sensitive periods so the timing of literacy/numeracy is flexible. Order is more important than timing - concrete understanding needs to precede abstract understanding. They even suggest that dyslexia could be caused by attempting to learn to read before phonology has developed correctly, something that seems likely to happen to at least some children in classes of 30.

    I'll take another look tomorrow when I'm not as tired and attempt to reduce my biases when reading it!

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  22. Just seen this phrase: Middle childhood meta-cognitive skills accelerate learning

    Which may explain why older HE children learn some skills more quickly than younger children at school as described earlier in this thread (and why children who start to read later in other countries are not disadvantaged by the later start)? As long as the groundwork has been laid by a variety of informal learning (perceptual stimuli/motor skills), an older child will be able to progress more quickly than a younger child with the same groundwork but hopefully with the added advantage that a more time spent developing the groundwork gives - less chance that something vital has been missed causing problems (such as dyslexia if phonology is not fully developed).

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