Evgenia Belonoshchenko

Part 1. Potential opportunities of the child 1. Important period
Kindergarten is too late
Probably, each of you remembers from your school years that there was a particularly gifted student in the class who, without visible effort, became the leader of the class, while the other was trailing behind, no matter how hard he tried.
At my age, teachers encouraged us something like this: “Smart or not, this is not heredity. It all depends on your own efforts." And yet, personal experience clearly showed that an excellent student is always an excellent student, and a loser is always a loser. It seemed that the intellect was predetermined from the very beginning. What was to be done about this discrepancy?
I came to the conclusion that the abilities and character of a person are not predetermined from birth, but for the most part are formed at a certain period of his life. There have been disputes for a long time: whether a person is shaped by heredity or the education and upbringing that he receives. But until now, no more or less convincing theory has put an end to these disputes.
Finally, studies of brain physiology, on the one hand, and child psychology, on the other, have shown that the key to the development of a child's mental abilities is his personal experience of learning in the first three years of life, i.e., during the development of brain cells. No child is born a genius, and no one is born a fool. It all depends on the stimulation and development of the brain during the crucial years of a child's life. These are the years from birth to three years of age. It's too late to educate in kindergarten.
Every child can learn well - it all depends on the teaching method
The reader may wonder why I, an engineer by profession and currently the president of a company, got involved in early human development. The reasons are partly “public”: I am not at all indifferent to today's youth riots and I ask myself how modern education is to blame for the dissatisfaction with the lives of these young people. There is also a personal reason - my own child lagged behind in mental development.
While he was very young, it never occurred to me that a child born with such deviations could develop into a normal educated person, even if he was properly trained from birth. Dr. Shinichi Suzuki opened my eyes, stating that "there are no retarded children - it all depends on the teaching method." When I first saw the amazing results of Dr. Suzuki's Talent Education method, the method of teaching kids to play the violin, I was very sorry that as a parent I could not do anything for my own child at one time.
When I first took up the problem of student unrest, I thought deeply about the meaning of education and tried to understand why our system generates so much aggressiveness and dissatisfaction. At first it seemed to me that the roots of this aggressiveness in the system of university education. However, delving into the problem, I realized that it is already characteristic of high school. Then I studied the system of middle and junior school and eventually came to the conclusion that it is already too late to influence the child in kindergarten. And suddenly this thought coincided with what Dr. Suzuki and his colleagues were doing.
Dr. Suzuki has been practicing his unique method for 30 years. Prior to that, he taught junior and senior classes using traditional teaching methods. He found that the difference between capable and incapable children was very large in the upper grades, and so he decided to try teaching the younger children, and then the smallest ones, gradually continuing to reduce the age of the children he taught. Dr. Suzuki teaches the violin because he is a violinist. When I realized that this method could be successfully applied in any field of education, I decided to seriously study the problem of "early development".
Early development does not aim to educate geniuses
I am often asked if early development helps to produce geniuses. I answer: "No." The only purpose of early development is to give the child such an education that he has a deep mind and a healthy body, to make him intelligent and kind.
All people, if they do not have physical defects, are born approximately the same. The responsibility for dividing children into smart and stupid, downtrodden and aggressive lies with education. Any child, given what he needs and when he needs it, should grow up to be smart and strong-willed.
From my point of view, the main goal of early development is to prevent unhappy children. A child is not allowed to listen to good music and taught to play the violin in order to grow an outstanding musician out of him. He is taught a foreign language not in order to bring up a brilliant linguist, and not even in order to prepare him for a “good” kindergarten and elementary school. The main thing is to develop in the child his limitless potentialities, so that there will be more joy in his life and in the world.
The very underdevelopment of the human cub speaks of its enormous potential.
I believe that early development is associated with the huge potential of the newborn.
Of course, the newborn is absolutely helpless, but precisely because he is so helpless, his potentialities are so great. A human child is born much less developed than animal babies: he can only scream and suck milk. And baby animals, such as dogs, monkeys or horses, can crawl, cling, or even immediately get up and go. Zoologists say that a newborn baby is 10-11 months behind a newborn baby animal, and one of the reasons for this is the human posture when walking. As soon as a person took a vertical position, the fetus could no longer be in the womb until its full development, and therefore the child is born still completely helpless. He has to learn to use his body after birth. In the same way, he learns to use his brain. And if the brain of any animal cub is practically formed by the time of birth, then the brain of a newborn child is like a blank sheet of paper. From what will be written on this sheet, it depends how gifted the child will become.
Brain structures are formed by the age of three
The human brain is said to have about 1.4 billion cells, but in a newborn, most of them are not yet used.
A comparison of the brain cells of a newborn and an adult shows that during the development of the brain, special bridges-outgrowths are formed between its cells. The cells of the brain, as it were, stretch out their hands to each other so that, holding tightly to each other, they respond to information from the outside, which they receive through the senses. This process is very similar to the operation of transistors in an electronic computer. Each individual transistor cannot work on its own, only connected into a single system, they function like a computer.
The period when connections between cells are most actively formed is the period from the birth of a child to three years. Approximately 70-80% of such compounds are generated at this time. And as they develop, the capabilities of the brain increase. Already in the first six months after birth, the brain reaches 50% of its adult potential, and by the age of three - 80%. Of course, this does not mean that the child's brain stops developing after the age of three. By the age of three, the back part of the brain mainly matures, and by the age of four, that part of it called the “frontal lobes” is included in this complex process.
The fundamental ability of the brain to receive a signal from the outside, create its image and remember it is the basis, the very computer on which all the further intellectual development of the child rests. Such mature abilities as thinking, needs, creativity, feelings develop after the age of three, but they use the base formed by this age.
Thus, if a solid base has not been formed in the first three years, it is useless to teach how to use it. It's like trying to achieve good results on a bad computer.
The baby's shyness in the presence of strangers is evidence of the development of the ability to recognize patterns.
I would like to explain the special use of the word "image" in my book.
The word "image" is most often used in the meaning of "scheme", "sample device", "model". I propose to use this word in a broader but more specific sense to refer to the process of thinking by which the child's brain recognizes and perceives information. Where an adult grasps information, mainly using the ability to think logically, the child uses intuition, his unique ability to create an instant image: the adult's way of thinking is not available to the child and will come to him later.
The clearest evidence of this early cognitive activity is the infant's ability to distinguish between human faces. I especially remember one baby whom I saw in the children's hospital. It was said that he was able to distinguish between 50 people at the age when he was only a little over a year old. Moreover, he not only recognized them, but also gave each his own nickname.
"50 people" - the figure may not be very impressive, but even for an adult it is difficult to remember 50 different faces in one year. Try to write down exactly the facial features of all your acquaintances and see if you can distinguish one face from another analytically.
The cognitive abilities of the child become apparent by about six months, when shyness appears. His little head can already tell familiar faces, like mom or dad, from unfamiliar ones, and he makes that clear.
Modern upbringing makes the mistake of swapping the period of "strictness" and the period of "everything is possible"
Even today, many psychologists and educators, especially those who are considered "progressive", consider it wrong to consciously teach a small child. They believe that the excess of information negatively affects the nervous system of the child, and it is more natural to leave him to himself and allow him to do whatever he wants. Some are even convinced that at this age the child is selfish and does everything just for his own pleasure. Therefore, parents all over the world, under the influence of such ideas, consciously follow the principle of "leave it alone."
And the same parents, when their children go to kindergarten or school, immediately abandon this principle and suddenly become strict, trying to educate and teach their children something. For no reason, for no reason, "affectionate" mothers turn into "terrible."
Meanwhile, from the above it is clear that everything should be the other way around. It is in the first years of a child’s life that it is necessary to be strict and affectionate with him, and when he begins to develop on his own, you need to gradually learn to respect his will, his “I”. More precisely, parental influence must end before kindergarten. Non-intervention at an early age, and then pressure on the child at a later age, can only destroy his talent and cause resistance.

2. What can a small child do

Adult concepts of "difficult" and "easy" are not suitable for children
We adults take it upon ourselves to say, for example, that this book is too difficult for a child, or that a child cannot appreciate classical music. But on what basis do we draw such conclusions?
For a child who does not have clear, well-established ideas about what is "difficult" or "easy" - English or Japanese, Bach's music or children's songs, monotonous, monotonous music or harmony of sounds - everything should start at the same time, for him it is the same everything is new.
The conclusion drawn from the senses does not depend on knowledge, on the contrary, knowledge can become an obstacle to the senses. Probably, many, looking at the famous painting, said to themselves: “She is beautiful!”, Although in fact she did not touch you at all, her value for you is only in the name of the artist and in her price. A child, on the contrary, is always honest. Any subject or occupation completely absorbs his attention, if he is interested in it.
It’s easier for a child to remember “dove” than “nine”
I remember one case when my 2-year-old grandson, whom I had not seen for a long time, was visiting me. He looked out the window, showed me the neon signs, and proudly said, "This is the Hitachi, and this is the Toshiba." Trying to hide my delight, I decided that my grandson at 2 years old could already read the Chinese characters for "Hitachi" and "Toshiba". I asked his mom when he learned the Chinese alphabet, and it turned out that he didn't read "Hitachi" and "Toshiba" in Chinese, but simply remembered the trademarks as images and distinguished them that way. Everyone laughed at me like I was a “stupid, loving grandfather,” but I am sure that this happens to many.
I recently received a letter from a 28-year-old mom in Fujisawa who read my weekly series on early development. From her letter, I learned that her eldest 2.5-year-old son began to memorize car brands when he was about 2 years old. In just a few months, he could easily name about 40 cars, both Japanese and foreign brands, sometimes he could even name the brand of the car that was under the cover. And a little earlier, probably under the influence of the EXPO-70 TV program, he began to memorize the flags of different countries and now he could recognize and correctly name the flags of 30 countries, including such as the flag of Mongolia, Panama, Lebanon - flags that even an adult will remember with difficulty . This example suggests that children have one quality that adults have not had for a long time. The child is endowed with a remarkable ability to recognize objects by images, which has nothing to do with analysis, the child will learn this much later. A perfect example of this hypothesis is the ability of an infant to recognize the face of his mother. Many babies begin to cry if they are picked up by strangers, and calm down and smile in their mother's arms.
As an experiment, Mr. Isao Ishii gave Chinese writing lessons at our Early Development Association. Three-year-olds easily memorized complex Chinese characters such as "pigeon" or "giraffe". The fact is that for a child who effortlessly remembers even the slightest changes in facial expressions, difficult Chinese characters are not a problem. Unlike abstract words like "nine", he can easily remember words for concrete objects like "giraffe", "raccoon", "fox", no matter how difficult they are. Therefore, it is not surprising that a child can beat an adult in cards. If an adult consciously has to memorize a place, a number and a picture, then the child has a wonderful figurative memory.
It is easier for a child to understand algebra than arithmetic
One of the fundamental ideas of mathematics is the theory of series. It is quite difficult for an adult who first studied the concept of number, and then geometry and algebra, to understand it. And for a child, the logic of series theory or set theory is easy to understand. Madame Risheni Felix, a recognized authority on the teaching of mathematics, argues that a child can be taught mathematics at any age.
A "row" or "set" is simply a collection of things with common qualities. The child gets acquainted with them when he starts playing with blocks. He takes them one by one, distinguishing them by shape: square, triangular, etc. Already at this age, he understands well that each cube is an element of a “row”, and that a bunch of cubes is one row, and triangles is another . This simple idea that objects can be sorted into groups according to certain characteristics is the main principle that underlies series theory. It is natural for a child that he understands the simple and logical set theory more easily than the complex and intricate logic of arithmetic.
So, I am convinced that the traditional notion that arithmetic is easy and algebra is difficult is another adult misconception about the capabilities of children. The brain of a child can easily perceive the logic of set theory, which is the beginning for understanding the basics of algebra.
Here is an example of an arithmetic problem: “There are only 8 animals in the zoo, turtles and cranes. They have 20 legs. How many turtles and cranes live in the zoo?
Let's first solve this problem algebraically. Let's denote the number of cranes as X and the number of turtles as Y, then X+Y=8 and 2X+4Y=20. We consider X+2Y=10, i.e. X=8-Y=10-2Y; so Y=2. It turned out 2 turtles and 6 cranes.
Now let's solve this problem with turtle and crane arithmetic. If we assume that all animals are turtles, then it turns out that they have 32 legs. But according to the problem, 20 are given, which means 12 extra legs. And they are superfluous because we assumed that all animals are turtles, which have 4 legs, but in fact some of them are cranes, which have 2 legs. Therefore, the extra 12 legs is the number of cranes multiplied by the difference in the number of legs of both animals; 12 divided by 2 will be 6, i.e. 6 cranes, and if you subtract from 8, the total number of animals, 6, the number of cranes, you get the number of turtles.
Masaru Ibuka
After three it's too late
Introduction to the English edition
If, behind the kindness and benevolence with which this book is written, you feel the importance of what it tells about, then perhaps, together with other similar books, it will make in your mind one of the greatest and kindest revolutions in the world. And I sincerely wish that this goal will be achieved.
Imagine a revolution that will bring the most wonderful change, but without bloodshed and torment, without hatred and hunger, without death and destruction.
This kindest of revolutions has only two enemies. The first is inveterate traditions, the second is the status quo. It is not necessary that entrenched traditions be shattered and ancient prejudices disappear from the face of the Earth. No need to destroy something that can still bring at least some benefit. But what seems terrible today, let it gradually disappear as unnecessary.
Masaru Ibuka's theory makes possible the destruction of such realities as ignorance, illiteracy, self-doubt, and, who knows, maybe, in turn, will bring a reduction in poverty, hatred and crime.
Masaru Ibuka's book does not make these promises, but the astute reader will always have this perspective before their eyes. At least such thoughts were born in me while I was reading this book.
This wonderfully kind book makes no startling claims. The author simply assumes that young children have the ability to learn anything. He believes that what they learn without any effort at 2.3 or 4 years, in the future is given to them with difficulty or not at all. In his opinion, what adults learn with difficulty, children learn with play. What adults learn at a snail's pace, children are given almost instantly. He says that adults are sometimes lazy to learn, while children are always ready to learn. And he says it unobtrusively and tactfully. His book is simple, straightforward and crystal clear.
According to the author, one of the most difficult activities for a person is learning foreign languages, learning to read and play the violin or piano. Adults master such skills with difficulty, and for children it is an almost unconscious effort. And my life is a vivid confirmation of this. Although I have tried to learn as many as a dozen foreign languages, having worked as a teacher on all continents, teaching children from the most privileged sections of society and from the very bottom, I really know only my native language. I love music, but I can't play any musical instrument, I can't even memorize the melody properly.
In order for our kids, growing up, to speak several languages ​​fluently, to be able to swim, ride a horse, paint in oils, play the violin - and all this at a high professional level - they need to be loved (which we do), respected (which we do rarely) and put at their disposal everything that we would like to teach them.
It is not difficult to imagine how much richer, healthier, safer the world would be if all children knew languages, arts, basic sciences before they reached adolescence, so that later years could be used to study philosophy, ethics, linguistics, religion, and also art, science and so on at a more advanced level.
It is not difficult to imagine what the world would be like if children's great desire to learn was not blunted by toys and entertainment, but encouraged and developed. It is easy to imagine how much better the world would be if the hunger for knowledge of a three-year-old child was satisfied not only by Mickey Mouse and the circus, but also by the works of Michelangelo, Manet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Leonardo da Vinci. After all, a small child has an infinite desire to know everything that he does not know, and he does not have the slightest idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat is bad and what is good.
What reason do we have to trust Masaru Ibuka's advice? What speaks in his favor?
1. He is not an expert in the theory of education, therefore, does not know what is possible and what is not: a necessary condition for making a significant breakthrough in an established field.
2. He is definitely a genius. Starting in 1947, when his country was devastated, he founded a company with three young partners and $700 in his pocket, which he called Sony. He was one of those pioneers who raised Japan from ruins and despair to the level of a world leader.
3. He not only talks, he does. As Acting Director of the Early Development Association and Director of Talent Education at Matsumoto, he is currently enabling thousands of Japanese children to learn through the program described in this book.
Masaru Ibuka proposes to change not the content, but the way a child learns.
Is it all doable or is it a rosy dream? Both. And I am a witness to that.
I saw the newborn children of the Timmermans swimming in Australia. I heard four-year-old Japanese kids talking in English with Dr. Honda. I've seen very young kids do complex gymnastics under Jenkins in the USA. I saw three-year-olds playing violin and piano with Dr. Suzuki in Matsumoto. I saw a three year old child reading in three languages ​​under Dr. Versa in Brazil. I saw 2 year olds from Sioux ride adult horses in the Dakotas. I have received thousands of letters from mothers all over the world asking them to explain to them the miracles that happen to their children when they are taught to read from my book.
I think this book is one of the most important books ever written. And I think that all parents living on Earth should read it.
Glen Doman, Director, Human Potential Development Institute, Philadelphia, USA.
Foreword
Since ancient times, it has been believed that outstanding talent is primarily heredity, a whim of nature. When we are told that Mozart gave his first concert at the age of three, or that John Stuart Mill read classical literature in Latin at the same age, most people simply respond: “Of course, they are geniuses.”
However, a detailed analysis of the early life of both Mozart and Mill suggests that they were strictly raised by fathers who wanted to make their children outstanding. I assume that neither Mozart nor Mill were born geniuses, their talent developed to the maximum due to the fact that they were created favorable conditions from early childhood and were given an excellent education.
Conversely, if a newborn is brought up in an environment that is initially alien to his nature, he has no chance of developing fully in the future. The most striking example is the story of the “wolf girls”, Amala and Kamala, found in the 1920s in a cave southwest of Calcutta (India) by a missionary and his wife. They made every effort to return the children raised by wolves to human form, but all efforts were in vain. It is taken for granted that a child born of a man is a man, and a wolf cub is a wolf. However, these girls continued to show wolf habits even in human conditions. It turns out that education and the environment in which the baby enters immediately after birth, most likely determines who he will become - a man or a wolf!
As I reflect on these examples, I think more and more about the enormous impact education and environment have on a newborn. This problem has become of the greatest importance, not only for individual children, but for the health and happiness of all mankind. So in 1969, I set about founding the Japan Association for Early Development. Our and foreign scientists gathered to study, analyze and expand the application of Dr. Shinichi Suzuki's method of teaching kids to play the violin in experimental classes, which then attracted the attention of the whole world.
As we progressed in our work, it became quite clear to us how flawed the traditional approach to children was. We habitually believe that we know everything about children, while we know very little about their real capabilities. We pay a lot of attention to the question of what to teach children over three years of age. But according to modern research, by this age, the development of brain cells has already been completed by 70-80%. Doesn't this mean that we should focus our efforts on the early development of the child's brain before the age of three?
Early Development does not offer force feeding of infants with facts and figures. The main thing is the introduction of new experience "on time". But only the one who cares for the child day in and day out, usually the mother, can recognize this “on time”. I wrote this book to help these moms.
Masaru Ibuka.
Part 1. Potential opportunities of the child