For Fark's Sake!
I appreciate that exams and tests are important, both in terms of indicating a person's (adults as well as children take exams) ability/understanding and as a motivational tool for study.
However, there is such a thing as overdoing them and also a danger of the results being misused.
I am therefore far from gemused to read that Professor Rescorla from the USA has come up with a language test for parents to administer on their kids, in order to check the speaking skills of children under the age of two.
The professor has a checklist of 310 basic words (eg "daddy", "mummy" and "bye bye"), which parents could use to determine whether they are at risk of language-related difficulties.
Identifying "late talkers" early could allow parents (or Nanny) to intervene at an early age with language coaching and other methods.
This is all very nice in theory. However, a sensible parent will already be cognisant of their child's speaking skills (or lack thereof); idiotic parents won't care, and won't be arsed to check anyway.
So where does that leave this idea?
I suspect that the next step will Nanny (USA or UK Nanny) taking it up, and using it for "family interventions".
It makes one wonder how for the last 100,000 years or so the human race has ever managed to talk to each other.
This will all end in tears, mark my words.
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Sorry Ken but you're way behind on this one. There has been assessment (by health visitors, GPs and social workers, nursery workers, teachers, traffic wardens.. Oh OK, I made that last one up, but just you wait!) of the Child Developmental Milestones (including verbal and linguistic development) for years.
ReplyDeleteOf course if they fail to match those they expect, ie. those judged to be reached at a specific age by a standardised, homogenised 'age inexperienced person' - (hey, child is such a derogatory term innit?),this leads to... further intervention of course! (which usually means a father, if they have one, is vilified, and a mother is given some more cash SSDD).
So, yet more 'research' which does no more than repeat and rehash known facts as a justification, no doubt, for 'Professor' Rescorla's munificent salary. Still, since it is aimed at Guardian readers and their US equivalent, it will give the 'parents' something to print off for the nanny to check, document, and email them about.
(yes, I know, I really should get a life! I saw one in the supermarket the other day, but they didn't have it in my size :-( Any pointers?)
Do they check 2 year olds for speech now?
DeleteI assumed, because this was a "news" item in the media, that this was something new?
Ken, are you suggesting that kids nowadays already know how to communicate?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that most want to mumble in some sort of weird ‘Ali G’ type of quasi Jamaican. Perhaps that is the only ‘foreign’ language that they will ever master!
When will these morons realise that Ali G is a comedian, he spoke like that to make people laugh. They also seem to want to emulate Harry Enfield’s ‘Stavros’ as well, adding the word ‘innit’ to every sentence.
I don’t hear many of them wanting to talk like Joe Pasquale though…………….
I had s stroke three months ago during which I lost speech. I've found that dumb insolence is a fantastic weapon to use against official arseholes and jobsworths. All Nanny's penalty-charge Gualiters' and so on are confounded by someone who can't speak and won't communicate otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI seem to be having a memory problem here. We abandoned the 11 plus because it was 'unfair' to stream children at such a young age - we are now doing at 2 years old? The world has gone completely bonkers.
ReplyDeleteThe 11 plus was good fun:
Delete"5 on 'E', 20 on 'T' and 13 on 'M'"
Remember that anyone?:)
Dear Professor Rescorla,
ReplyDeleteAlbert Einstein didn't speak till the age of 5. He managed somehow.
Chew on that,
Black Sea
It makes worried parents even more worried......Nanny's health visitors use graphs and charts to check progress of babies/toddlers. I remember my own daughter getting worked up because one of my grandchildren was just off the graph.....Of course, all kids develop at their own speed and should be left to be children instead of hot housing them.
ReplyDeleteWe have some babies born weighing little more than a pound or so and others only a pound shy of a stone,(now that would have to chafe) but they all tend to even up by the time they start school.
Perhaps they should stop worrying about natural development and look at why some parents think it is OK to send their kids to school with dummies or in nappies.
Off topic, but please humour me; I see Mr Clegg lauched his latest wizzard wheeze for getting youngsters into work today.....He was at a scheme where a few teens were working INSIDE a house, painting and decorating....They had on the normal painter's white boiler suits but, they also were wearing hi-viz vests....Yes inside a living room......Has the hi-viz jacket/vest become the state's standard symbol that you are in work?
Given Clegger's predisposition for interns, I am surprised he didn't have them painting his house (or maybe it was?)
DeleteNew? Since when has anything in the news actually been new? (well other than the bits they fabricate or omit crucial information about anyway).
ReplyDeleteNo, it's been around for donkeys years, as an example:
http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/simplepage.cfm?ID=-456130519
As you'll see there is a wide variation (eg. between 2 an 4 years of age to use two words together) but this won't be stressed to those worried parents, will it?
As Tonk says "It makes worried parents even more worried" and gives more excuse for intervention.
Me, I'm just wondering how the good professor managed to present decades old knowledge as 'new research' and get paid and lauded for it. Good job if you can get away with it, I suppose.
TWO years old before they are assessed? Sheer slovenliness. By that age the racists, sex offenders and potential bankers will already have their socio-pathetic tendencies deeply ingrained.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm reminded of the children's book 'The Wind Singer' by William Nicholson. The meritocratic city in the book judges everything - especially the size and state of one's house and social rank, colour-coded for one's convenience - on loads and loads of exams, notably a big one every year taken by the head of the household. The protagonists' little sister scores an 0 on her two-year test (by pissing on the examiner!!) and this is enough to demote the family to the lowest level and a tiny one-room flat. Luckily the end of the book introduces anarchy to the city instead... ^^
ReplyDelete