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Topic: Age related education (Read 19773 times)
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Zanthius
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We should investigate more about what to learn at different ages. I find it weird that kids don't start learning languages already in kindergarten, since we seem to be best at learning languages early in life. I also think we should have much more practical physics/chemistry/economy early, and rather start to learn mathematics from those disciplines.
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« Last Edit: April 23, 2017, 02:30:52 pm by Zanthius »
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Krulle
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*Hurghi*! Krulle is *spitting* again!
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You cannot do basic economy, basic physics, basic chamistry without the foundation mathematics lay.
And not all kids are able to learn a secondary language well. My threekids differ in their aptitude wildly...
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Zanthius
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You cannot do basic economy, basic physics, basic chamistry without the foundation mathematics lay.
I think you have it upside-down. Mathematics developed from measuring things in the real physical world (counting coins -> practical economics, counting days between cyclical phenomena, or measuring velocities/angles and so on -> practical physics). It is also much more easy for kids to understand non-abstract phenomena which they can relate to the real physical world. It took a long time to develop the concept of zero and negative numbers, since it didn't relate to anything in the physical world. More abstract mathematics came even later.
And not all kids are able to learn a secondary language well. My threekids differ in their aptitude wildly...
Sure, but lots of kids would be able to learn more languages if they were exposed to it as kids, and those kids that are a bit slow with learning languages can just be put into other groups where they focus more on learning fewer languages.
I found a few multilingual kindergartens:
http://www.infanterix.de/en/multilinguale-kindergarten/
https://dayschool.ch/en/multilingual-kindergarten/
But there are none here, so I am considering to maybe open one. Lots of parents would probably be interested in that, and they would probably be willing to pay more for such a kindergarten.
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« Last Edit: April 23, 2017, 09:44:01 pm by Zanthius »
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Scalare
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Learning extra languages will become unneccessary in 10 years, because then we will have the realtime universal translators like they have in star trek (and like the one that is apparently used by the precursor vessl in Star Control 2).
So people wanting to speak to a person that doesn't speak their language will wear some kind of necklace that translates realtime between languages.
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Scalare
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Google translate is getting less and less horrible, it is perfectly usable for translating between all kinds of western european languages, and realtime translation is already a possibility.
What matters is that you convey the message that is supposed to be communicated, then you're already doing better than not speaking the language at all, because I never see myself speaking chinese fluently but instead of using english as the lingua franca I would speakk dutch and out would come chinese, leading to better understanding between chinese and dutch people rather than us both having to learn dutch/chinese/english.
Noise cancelling headphones won't be really neccesary. You would wear an in ear headphone that translates what the other person is saying into your preferred language, and you would speak into a microphone which repeats your sentence in the language of your choice.
With technology like lyrebird.ai you can even have it speak your actual voice. And this also makes it possible to do realtime translation of skype calls and youtube videos or tv programs.
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Krulle
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Around here, multilingual kindergarten (or early childhood centres) are common.
(Officially, our kindergarten is not bilingual, but they do offer language courses for three languages. My kids are all bilingual (but closely related languages) (we live "abroad"), and even started to learn basic English there, which also isn't that remote fromt heir mother tongue. )
Even an AI will likely for quite some time not reach the level of intuitive language grasp a born speaker will have.
But Google translate got much better in EN<->FR. Read up somewhere how they did it. It's a fascinating topic the programmers have yet to understand fully.
Best is still immersion in the other languages for a few months.
And those who can and did will always have an advantage job-wise over those who are limited to their mother tongue (and English).
BTW: Math here is in the first 2 years basically learning to count and recognising the written numbers, drawing numbers, then going from simple text thingies (I have 1 apple, and you have three pears. How many pieces of fruit do we have together? *) to equations. So he is doing exactly as you're proposing anyway. But there is no "economics" involved, besides "I have four coins of value X, and want 3 apples for Y each. How much money will be left after I paid for the apples?".)
So, math lesson here IS economics as you proposed. Also distances are done in math lessons. So, simple physics is already present too, it's just called math.
BTW:
My oldest son loves math. It's so logical compared to languages, and there is either right or wrong. Not like language tasks, where results are often evaluated very subjectively.
I told him to wait until he solves different problems with multiple possible approaches to the solution. Then it won't be as unambiguous anymore, as the teacher will evaluate the solutions also by elegance, and not only by correctness. He was shocked. But he still loves math best.
*None, while you were counting, I ate your pears and my apple. Sorry.
For those interested, my languages in order of proficiency: DE/NL/EN/FR/C++/Pascal
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« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 05:14:27 pm by Krulle »
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Julie.chan
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Google translate is getting less and less horrible, it is perfectly usable for translating between all kinds of western european languages, and realtime translation is already a possibility.
I understand that, but it is no replacement for actually knowing the language. Not only that, it's a SaaSS engine controlled by Google, so any improvement made for it stays with it, taking advantage of it requires an Internet connection, and if Google ever stops offering the service for any reason, it's gone forever and we're pretty much back to square one, because libre translation software is still in its infancy. This isn't the type of thing you can base decisions about your future on.
You would wear an in ear headphone that translates what the other person is saying into your preferred language, and you would speak into a microphone which repeats your sentence in the language of your choice.
What exactly are the chances of people carrying around microphones all day so they can talk to everyone in broken German or French or whatever, by connecting to the Internet and querying Google for a translation one sentence at a time (because it does have to be no more than one sentence at a time to account for different sentence orderings and such)? No, that's not going to ever be preferable. Automated translation will always be less preferable to both people just speaking the same language. I will concede that video calls and phone calls may incorporate automated translation software at some point (not in 10 years, though), but that would still not make being bilingual obsolete. Knowing the languages spoken by all the people you talk to regularly is always going to be useful.
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Zanthius
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So, math lesson here IS economics as you proposed. Also distances are done in math lessons. So, simple physics is already present too, it's just called math.
Ok, but at that age it might be better to focus upon the economics/physics of it, rather than upon solving equations. Many students seem to think that bachelor math topics are easier than bachelor physics topics, because in the math topics they just use a formula they have memorized, while in physics topics they need to have a more in-depth understanding of what is going on in order to know which formula to apply where. It might actually be a problem today, that many students don't have a sufficiently good intuitive grasp of physics. I am thinking that doing practical physics/chemistry in early childhood, might increase that intuitive grasp later in life.
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« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 06:41:19 pm by Zanthius »
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Scalare
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Learning extra languages will become unneccessary in 10 years, because then we will have the realtime universal translators like they have in star trek (and like the one that is apparently used by the precursor vessl in Star Control 2).
So people wanting to speak to a person that doesn't speak their language will wear some kind of necklace that translates realtime between languages.
I doubt it will ever become as good as knowing a language yourself. I am more concerned with optimum development of the neural network in kids during the first 3 years, and they are "wired" to learn languages, so they should be exposed to as much as they can "take". Limiting the language exposure of a kid only serves to limit growth in the neural networks of their brains. As I have pointed out earlier, the meaning of life might very well be intellectual growth in the neural network of the brain. Why learn anything if computers and/or other people can do it? Because learning has inherent value for a neural network.
Sure, but will you learn every possible language there is to know on earth? No, but the universal translator device will allow you to communicate to everyone on earth. And that also generates an entire culture shift because then you can watch automatically translated video's in Chinese, Japanese, Russian without having to learn the language.
This will shift culture towards a more globally fair system since I can read and view news from the entire world without it being culturally biased because I only speak western languages  .
And a kid with a universal translator device will be able to study in whatever source language the study material is available, instead of just english, german or whatever. So that kid will be more informed.
So I don't see it as a bad idea.
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Scalare
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Google translate is getting less and less horrible, it is perfectly usable for translating between all kinds of western european languages, and realtime translation is already a possibility. I understand that, but it is no replacement for actually knowing the language. Not only that, it's a SaaSS engine controlled by Google, so any improvement made for it stays with it, taking advantage of it requires an Internet connection, and if Google ever stops offering the service for any reason, it's gone forever and we're pretty much back to square one, because libre translation software is still in its infancy. This isn't the type of thing you can base decisions about your future on. You would wear an in ear headphone that translates what the other person is saying into your preferred language, and you would speak into a microphone which repeats your sentence in the language of your choice. What exactly are the chances of people carrying around microphones all day so they can talk to everyone in broken German or French or whatever, by connecting to the Internet and querying Google for a translation one sentence at a time (because it does have to be no more than one sentence at a time to account for different sentence orderings and such)? No, that's not going to ever be preferable. Automated translation will always be less preferable to both people just speaking the same language. I will concede that video calls and phone calls may incorporate automated translation software at some point (not in 10 years, though), but that would still not make being bilingual obsolete. Knowing the languages spoken by all the people you talk to regularly is always going to be useful.  . Since you hear everything you say translated as well you can engage immediately in the universal translator usage and with every sentence you say you will learn how to say that sentence for yourself in the language of the person you're talking to. Because as we all know no teacher can be substitute for talking to someone in their own environment it enables you to travel to france and start speaking french without having to learn it in school first (and french education is normally very bad for actually going to france and living there).
And secondly about broken german. It's not a bad thing. Where I work the language we speak with clients is English (since most of my clients are in germany or the UK) and we also have a lot of expats working for us (since it's IT schooled personnel is hard to find in the Netherlands) so we also speak a lot of English at the work place, the common tongue and all communication is in English even. But some people want to stay in the Netherlands and then we don't mind it at all if they try to explain something in 'broken dutch' to us. Because that's the only way you will ever learn it. By speaking it 'broken' first and then moving on to actually learning it . And we even mix dutch and english sometimes because dutch (and german) have some more subtleties in some aspects that are hard to express in english.
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« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 07:21:54 pm by Scalare »
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Zanthius
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I understand that, but it is no replacement for actually knowing the language. Not only that, it's a SaaSS engine controlled by Google, so any improvement made for it stays with it, taking advantage of it requires an Internet connection, and if Google ever stops offering the service for any reason, it's gone forever and we're pretty much back to square one, because libre translation software is still in its infancy. This isn't the type of thing you can base decisions about your future on.
Exactly. We can never trust that things that are available&free today, will stay available&free in the future. So, f the translator-engines get better and more necessary for people in the future, they might want to charge more for people to use it. Internet itself might also be less available in the future. If there is ever a world war in the future, Internet is probably going to be the main battleground, and that could limit the availability of Internet. Countries might want to cut themselves off from Internet, due to cyberwarfare.
If you know things yourself, you can never lose it, unless you lose yourself. And that is a good reason to know things yourself.
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Scalare
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I understand that, but it is no replacement for actually knowing the language. Not only that, it's a SaaSS engine controlled by Google, so any improvement made for it stays with it, taking advantage of it requires an Internet connection, and if Google ever stops offering the service for any reason, it's gone forever and we're pretty much back to square one, because libre translation software is still in its infancy. This isn't the type of thing you can base decisions about your future on.
Exactly. We can never trust that things that are available&free today, will stay available&free in the future. So, f the translator-engines get better and more necessary for people in the future, they might want to charge more for people to use it. Internet itself might also be less available in the future. If there is ever a world war in the future, Internet is probably going to be the main battleground, and that could limit the availability of Internet. Countries might want to cut themselves off from Internet, due to cyberwarfare. If you know things yourself, you can never lose it, unless you lose yourself. And that is a good reason to know things yourself.
Do your research before posting such assumptions. The reason why I came up with this whole universal translator idea is because I recently started experimenting with cmu sphinx, an open source library that seeks to accomplish/accomplishes the same thing as google/amazon service does. And given that I can quite easily use it myself as just an average programmer it shouldn't be too hard for the open source community to pick it up as well.
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