People learn an incredible amount of material in the first 6 years of schooling. Granted, no legitimate application will ask you anything you learned specifically in those years, but those basics that you learn are incredibly valuable in high school, college, and beyond. If you don't know how to add or subtract, how can you possibly hope to take the derivative of anything? If you don't know that an adjective comes before the noun, how do you expect to get a job when people look at your resume? The point is, so much of what you learn derives from the first things you ever learned -- not just academically, but for nearly any activity you do.
It's no wonder why so many professionals at any craft stress the basics. They allow you to "focus on mastering one aspect...in isolation." (Noa Kageyama, Ph.D "Why I'd spend a lot more time practicing scales if I could do it all over again") These fundamentals are so important to having complete mastery over anything later in your career. To truly be a professional at any single thing, you have to master the basics and have complete control over every aspect that composes that thing.Those fundamentals are covered in elementary school and I strongly believe that incomplete mastery is why people struggle in higher classes. They had teachers in elementary school who didn't ensure that the students completely mastered the subject before moving on, then when a harder topic was introduced, some students didn't get the fundamentals that made up that topic and then didn't understand it, which led to a downward spiral until that student is so frustrated and failing in high school. I've tutored quite a few students in chemistry, calculus, music theory, and I've even helped some friends on how to play tuba, and one thing I've always found myself explaining is the fundamental components of what makes that subject work.
The moral of the story is working out the kinks of anything early on will help you in the long run. When you start working on something, make sure something is absolutely correct before moving on. This is why tutoring elementary aged kids is so important: If they don't learn the fundamentals down to a T, they will struggle later on in high school and college.
(If you want to read that article I pulled the quote from, here is the link to it)
http://www.creativitypost.com/arts/why_id_spend_a_lot_more_time_practicing_scales_if_i_could_do_it_all_over_ag
Cool post, Daniel! What has been your favorite experience at the Lexington Public Library thus far?
ReplyDeleteProbably the funniest thing that's happened is that there was this one kid in second grade who asked how old I was (I think he was wondering what kind of math I was doing). I said I was a freshman in college, and he looked a little confused. I said it was kind of like thirteenth grade and his jaw just dropped. Like, mouth open, tongue almost falling out. I still laugh every time I remember it and was one of the best laughs I had at the library.
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