It was my sister-in-law's birthday today and after work we met them on a local lake beach for some cinnamon donuts. While it was close to 30 degrees Celsius, it was windy AF and the water is still pretty cold, so there weren't many people swimming, but Smallsteps was in her bathers anyway.
Om the way there, Smallsteps also read her first sign. We have been teaching her to read using letter tiles, where we give her a word and she spells out each sound, placing the tiles as she goes or, we make a word and have her read it sound by sound. She is learning much faster than I thought and she is very good at splitting the syllables of the word to group the letters.
We are doing this in Finnish first (a little English occasionally), because it is a phonetic language, meaning it is said the way it is spelt. This makes it far easier for spelling and most of my friends are better spellers than I, because when they learn words, the say it in a "Finnish way", giving them the spelling - but not necessarily the pronunciation.
The first sign she read was when we were at the stoplights - VAASA, a city on the coast the sign was pointing toward. Since that, she has been looking for signs on the road to read, but with her limited height and view from the back, combined with the length of many Finnish words, she gets a bit frustrated that they pass by so quickly. Still, she is like a language sponge, just as she has always been in her less than five years.
I started reading around the same age as her and I remember parts of the process, but I don't remember being it anywhere near as easy for me. Back then, I learned on "Dick and Dora" books. I can still see some of the pictures and think I can piece together some of the sentences.
One of the challenges of reading early was that for the first couple years at school, I didn't have much to do in class, as I could read and write before the others. This meant that a lot of the time, I was reading books while the others were studying and for me, the "tests" were easy. I think this set me up for a bit of failure, as I didn't learn the foundational skills of learning in the classroom, which probably haunted my results later.
Yet, I still don't put much faith in the education systems, as I deal with the results of it near daily. So few teens or pre-teens like my daughter's cousins, have practical skills in math or language, even though they do well in the classroom. I feel that while the test results are good at the age of fifteen in the Pisa studies, what they really need to evaluate is life much further down the road.
What would be interesting is that alongside the Pisa testing that compares fifteen year old's results across countries, they should also look at the outcomes of the children down the track. If an educational system really is working well, the results of the average 30 year old and forty five year old should also inform part of the story. If adults are struggling, the education they have has failed them. The education system isn't the only factor of course, but it can be quite a big influence on future results of children.
If there is a lot of unemployment, underemployment, crime, loneliness, depression, financial hardship, emotional instability, relationship instability and a general sense of victimhood in what is one of the wealthiest and most highly educated countries in the world - what does that say about what is learned here?
For example, in Finland, math skills are needed for pretty much every job that requires a degree, even if nothing more than rudimentary math is required on the job at all. This sets a higher than necessary bar on admissions, which will often leave out some of the best people for the job, based on a skill in a domain unnecessary for the position. People would find a strenuous physical test to be able to get into an engineering degree ridiculous, but don't mind doing the equivalent to physical disciplines.
I don't know if it will be possible, but I am hoping that Smallsteps will find something she loves and can focus on, but also understand that she will likely require adequate skills in a lot of different areas. Just because she may be talented in a particular domain, it doesn't mean she will be able or want to work in that field. Also, in general having a wider variety of skills helps compound on core talents, by bringing more to the table together.
At the end of the day, her career through life is up to her, but I do think she will benefit more from being able to explore her world through words, than have to rely solely on others to feed her information through pictures. The sother thing is, I have tens of millions of words waiting for her to read on Hive also, and I really look forward to the times that she can read these posts and start asking questions on a childhood she lived, but seen through the eyes of a parent.
If she reads a post a day, up until this point, she has homework material for the next 12+ years. There will likely be something of interest in there somewhere for her and perhaps she will read it all and find a sign that points to her first spoken word too - Daddy.
After all, she likes words.
And I am pretty wordy.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
it took me ages to learn to read, once learned though it was and is a continuing joy of life. I can see how things look through pictures, I can put words to pictures and build a story around the picture, (not great stories), but reading, that is different. People talk about how "A picture is worth a thousand words", but that is only one picture, sometimes a thousand words can paint a heck of a lot of pictures.
You have three pictures in your post, but I can see smallsteps trying to see those signs, the frustration on her little face, and the see the pure joy at her first sign reading in your wife and in your face. I am not there, in 20 years when she finds this post I am sure she will be able to see the pictures more clearly from this day, and re-feel the joy at her first sign reading.
Reading is such a big part of life, whether for work, learning or most importantly joy. It is good she is learning so well and will be able to not only speak, but likely read in two languages. I keep thinking about learning Russian, just so I could read some untranslated books and stories, and to find the more obscure books that have not been translated, or new books that might never see translation.
Precisely! The flow of words creates movies out of all the pictures - interactive movies at that.
I hope she can see all that we tried for her and all that we did wrong - but did in earnest.
That would be an interesting project - what is stopping you?
Eye sight, and laziness, and a lot of other higher priority things, although I have been getting bored lately, but age is no reason not to learn something new, so I basically just need to take a stab at it.
I am American, and I barely speak, read and write American English, so I am always impressed with multi-language people. I currently only know the one language - bastardized American English.
Ahhhh clever girl XD
Only some people have the type of learning style that thrives in classrooms. And it's not even most of us x_x so there's every chance you might not have done that well anyway.
I don't know if that's any consolation or not, just kind of saying I feel you I guess as I hated school all the way through, even the one back home which was and still is a very good school.
I think the problems you're noticing are not limited to Finland, people have been noticing over here as well and the "fix" for that was to keep introducing things earlier and earlier. That doesn't always work either (and in some cases can make things worse), but I guess they need to be seen to be doing something.
Especially with my "love" of authority :D
Yeah, I know that it is designed to sort for some people and I think that I "could have done it if I wanted" to, but I don't have the study personality - I am more of a wing-it kind of person and since my memory sucks, there wasn't much hope.
Though, I really liked high school a lot. I used to plan my days on which classes had pretty girls in them to talk to :D
I suspect that the education system "as we know it" is going to largely collapse, as it is designed for training average workers and when those jobs are automated, there is no need to train everyone. It will be more exclusive and the bars higher.
This is amazing. Like you have written atleast 4380 posts.
This made me smile. I guess the feeling of seeing how she grew up from your head will be so interesting to any wordy person.
The frustration that comes with learning might be a general thing. I see this in my nephew. He doesn't bother to try when it is more than 7 letters
Happy belated birthday to your sister
4635 :)
It takes patience all round. With the right approach, pretty much all kids enjoy it, but it isn't the same approach for all kids. Most parents don't discover what motivates their children's learning.
Dear @tarazkp , How is summer in Finland? Is it hot right now?
From point of my view, The Finnish lake shown in the photo is not very beautiful.
https://blog.southofseoul.net/index.php/2021/05/12/summer-lakes-south-korea/
South korean lakes are more beautiful!😄
Yeah, Finnish lakes are known to be very ugly places.
When I look at your beautiful photos, the lakes in Finland feel beautiful!😄
Dick must get around. When I grew up in the US, it was Dick and Jane books.
Were they friends or siblings? Damned if I can remember. One or both of them had a dog named Spot.
See Spot run. Run, Spot, run!
I read to my son incessantly when he was young. When he was four or so, he asked "What if I never learn to read?" But a year later in kindergarten he was reading just fine at a time when other kids didn't even know the alphabet.
There are Dicks everywhere.
!! hahahah. This is one of the lines I was talking about.
I actually think there was some localization of the books, because there are both Dick and Dora and Dick and Jane books, that look similar.
This is what we see too. Smallsteps has skills most other kids have no idea about. She can also add, subtract and starting on very simple multiplication. Who knows what the future holds, but I am guessing basic skills will still be foundational for advanced skills.
She could be a subcontractor, doing that overdue translation work for you.
I could likely read a lot of it to her now and she will be better than Google Translate, other than for the technical jargon.
Give her six months and she'll be writing his posts in full; At least the quality should get better.
I can walk around the room with a pipe and say things like, "take this down" - and then have her write something completely different.
Lol...That'll be good; Sort of like Winston Churchill but if his assistant got it wrong there was hell to pay!
You are talking about Finland?
I see it in Finland -but I see the signs of it all over the place too. I don't think it is unique to here.
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STOPGlad to see that smallsteps is up and about again and she is such a little cutie.
I struggled to read out loud until standard 4 in primary school. Make no mistake, I could read, but only one word at a time. The kids in class used to tease me and it was always a bad situation when a teacher called upon me to read in class.
Then something amazing happened overnight, as I was called upon to read the next morning and all of a sudden the words flowed like songbird. The teacher almost fainted and in a stunned silence in the class room, she led me out to the the principle's office to read for him.
Of course she claimed all of the glory that was never hers, as she had no hand in my conversion. Since then to this day I have never stopped reading.
So many are employed today in careers that they hate and we can only hope that smallsteps will follow her heart with her given talents.