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Category “Good books”: “Myths of education. Science versus intuition" - review

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Poe Bronson, Ashley Merriman
Myths of education. Science vs. Intuition

New Thinking About Children

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

Preface
Cary Grant as Doorman

This was in the late 60s. Visitors to the private nightclub "Magic Castle" in Hollywood, whose owners were professional magicians, were delighted to see a doorman on the threshold of the establishment, exactly like two peas in a pod. Hollywood star that time Cary Grant. “Welcome to the Castle!” - said the impeccably dressed handsome man, obviously enjoying his resemblance to famous actor. Visitors walked inside, discussing the double's striking resemblance to the original, a wonderful proof of the magic of Hollywood in all its forms. In addition, the “Magic Castle” was located a stone’s throw from the Chinese Theater and the Cinema Walk of Fame.

However, this doorman was not a double at all. This was Cary Grant himself.

The actor, who adored magic tricks since childhood, was one of the founders of this club. Grant and many other celebrities liked the “Magic Castle” also because it followed several ironclad rules - no photographs and no journalists. The stars could rest easy without worrying about what the tabloids would write the next morning.

Grant would sit for hours in the club's lobby with administrator Joan Lawton, discussing the magic that excited him much more than the magic of the stage. Namely children. Lawton worked as a club administrator at night, and during the day she studied to become a specialist in child development. Grant's son was very young, and the actor was interested in everything Laughton knew about babies. Hearing that a car was stopping in front of the entrance, the actor jumped up and rushed to the doors. He did not deliberately try to deceive visitors, but no one mistook him for the real Cary Grant and, contrary to the usual, did not ask for an autograph. Why?

Everyone was confused by the context of the meeting. No one expected that Cary Grant himself could act as a banal doorman. The club hosted the most famous magicians of the time, and the public came to the "Magic Castle" to see illusions, magic tricks and tricks. Everyone sincerely believed that the handsome doorman was just the first illusion before the start of the performance.

And now the moral. If everything that happens is presented as entertainment and it is assumed that everything will be magical, amazing and amazing, something real can be perceived as just more fun.

This is how we perceive modern science news.

Now the flow of information does not stop for a second. News is constantly shown on TV, written on blogs, reported in press releases and by e-mail. You might think that in such an environment it would be impossible to miss a message about something important. scientific discovery. However, now they have begun to resemble second-tier stars - they fill the airwaves when there is no “big” news in the feed. Each of them gets their ten minutes of fame, and the task of the news is to entertain us rather than make us think about something. The next day, no one needs this news, they are completely forgotten, and the media dumps a new portion of the “scientific business lunch” on us. They speak quickly in these reports, the topic is touched upon superficially, so it is difficult to understand how valuable this news is.

It is very difficult to make scientific news bright and attractive to the media. At least in the field of child development research, there was no discovery that could be called a scientific breakthrough. Often the situation is complicated by the fact that the discoveries do not belong to a specific scientist, but to dozens of researchers scattered around the world. Individual experiments do not lead to insights and breakthroughs. Conclusions crystallize gradually, based on many years of work, and experiments and studies are repeated many times to clarify the results.

As a result, many important ideas have been in the public eye for a long time, but we fail to recognize and recognize their importance.

Introduction
Why you shouldn't trust your intuition when raising children

My wife's great taste. With one exception. In the guest room of our house hangs a still life painted with acrylic paints - a pot of red geraniums and an ocher watering can against the backdrop of a brown board fence. Not only is this an absolutely ugly picture, it’s also a “paint the picture by numbers” craft.

Every time I see her, my hands itch to throw her away. trash can. But the wife categorically objects, because the picture was painted by her great-grandmother in 1961. I'm not at all opposed to storing things for sentimental reasons. Our house is filled with a variety of items that belonged to my wife's relatives. But in this In my opinion, there is and cannot be anything sentimental in the picture. Perhaps on the day her great-grandmother bought this set in the store, she was warmed by the thought that there was a place for creativity and flights of fancy in life, but the finished product, in my opinion, kills this hope in the bud. This coloring leaves no reason for descendants to remember their relative with a kind word.

Paint by number books were super popular in the early 1950s. You could say they were the iPod of those days. Marketers decided that vacuum cleaners, washing and dishwashers will free up so much time for housewives that they will have nothing to do except paint by numbers. In three years, Palmer Paint sold more than twelve million sets. However, despite their popularity, coloring books have always caused conflicting feelings. Critics talked about the contradiction between the democratization of art (after all, now everyone could feel like a creator) and the absolutely mechanical implementation of this idea.

Recently I was trying to remember how I felt about the science of child development and parenting before Ashley Merriman and I started this book several years ago, and suddenly an image of this picture popped into my head. At home I spent the whole evening looking at this terrible job to understand why on earth I remembered her. And that's what I finally realized.

The range of feelings that coloring by numbers evokes is similar to the one that appears after reading a book about parenting. Science has always stated that you can become a good parent only “by the book.” You are told to do so and so, if you please do so. Everything is like in a paint-by-numbers book, in which they suggested using “burnt umber” for the watering can and nothing else.

So here it is. If a few years ago they told me: “Be sure to read this new book about education! - I would politely thank you for helpful advice and immediately forgot about it. Like many parents, my wife and I bought several baby books immediately after our son was born. On his first birthday, we put these books away and brought them back into the light of day three years later, when our daughter was born. History repeated itself: when my daughter turned one, the books about children disappeared.

Most of our friends behaved the same way. We all agreed that we do not want and will not be parents “by the book.” We relied on our own parental instincts. We adored our children and closely monitored their development and needs. And this, it seemed, was quite enough.

At the same time, Ashley and I were writing for Time magazine. While living in Los Angeles, Ashley taught classes for children from poor families for several years. For forty children she was something like good fairy and followed their development from kindergarten before high school. When developing her program, Ashley relied solely on her own instincts. She never suffered from a lack of ideas. Working with children has always inspired her. All she needed were teachers and more school supplies. Neither Ashley nor I had any idea what we were missing and what we didn't know. We didn't wake up thinking we needed to read scientific literature about child development, because we can’t do something. Everything was going just perfect. And then we started writing this book.

We were working on issues of motivation in adults and one day we started thinking about why children are so confident in themselves. We began to look at and explore the issue we specialized in from a new angle. The results both confused and surprised us. Previously, our instincts told us that in order for young children to believe in themselves more, they should be constantly praised and called smart. We were firmly convinced of this. However scientific works very convincingly proved that praise for intelligence leads to negative consequences. This will only undermine your children's self-confidence.

After this story, we tried to change some things in our communication with our children. But the question remains: why did our instincts deceive us so much?

It is believed that maternal instinct is innate. Women are told not to worry if they are not at all attracted to children in their 20s or 30s. Women may believe that they completely lack maternal qualities. But immediately after birth, when the baby is handed over to the mother, instinct appears like in a fairy tale, along with the necessary hormones. The mother instantly understands what she needs to do now and in the next eighteen years. Mother's wisdom begins to flow magically. Motherhood is guaranteed to please a woman as much as refined underwear And high heels. It's so natural, isn't it?

Because of this myth, we use the word “instinct” to refer to the collective wisdom that grows out of our experiences raising children. However, this is far from the most correct meaning of the word. Biological instinct really exists - it is an impulse aimed at protecting and caring for the child. Neuroscientists have pinpointed part of the brain and nervous system, in which this impulse appears. Parents expecting the birth of a child can be sure that this impulse will appear. But how better It's up to them to care for and raise their child.

It turns out that "instincts" can be confusing because they aren't really instincts. Now, three years into our research, Ashley and I can see that what we called “instincts” were simply a set of reactions that emerged from the information we received and how we analyzed it. “Instincts” turned out to be everything that we decided for ourselves. In addition, we realized that our reactions are an explosive mixture of wishful thinking, some hypocrisy, the whims of fashion, personal experience and ideas as old as the world, already repeatedly refuted by psychological science. In general, we realized that “instincts” contain everything except common sense.

“Educational shock” is the term we use to describe the typical panic among young parents that the “magic fountain of knowledge” does not turn on.

We hope this book will shock you. Based on the latest research, we have tried to show that many of our seemingly unshakable ideas about children are completely false.

Many parenting techniques used in our society do not produce any positive results because they do not take into account the most important scientific discoveries.

The resulting misconceptions about child development negatively affect parental behavior, school curriculum And social policy. How we understand the child’s behavior and how we communicate with him largely depends on them. We are by no means going to sound the alarm bell, we are simply inviting parents to perceive their children more meaningfully, to try to understand them more deeply and in a new way. Small changes in our own behavior today can lead to lasting changes throughout society tomorrow. Gradually, one by one, the future citizens of our country will change for the better.

In this book, dedicated to raising children from infants to teenagers, we will consider a wide range of issues from mental activity to the moral principles of society. We tried to write a book that would be as far away from the paint-by-numbers principle as possible. You'll find chapters on self-confidence, sleep, lying, attitudes toward different nationalities and races, intelligence, conflict between siblings, teenage maximalism, self-control, aggression, gratitude, and language proficiency.

While reading, you will have to rethink many things that seem beyond doubt. Without listing them all, let's mention self-esteem, driving school curriculum, the belief that children are blind to racial differences, emotional intelligence 1
– Emotional intelligence – the ability to recognize emotions, achieve and generate them in a way that promotes thinking, and manage them in a way that promotes emotional and intellectual growth. Read more about this in the book: Daniel Goleman. Emotional intellect. M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2013. Note lane.

Educational cartoons and the idea that a child should be able to say “no” to his peers.

We chose these questions because the results of scientific research on them not only surprised us greatly, but also turned out to be diametrically opposed to popular ideas.

After a thorough analysis of the scientific discoveries and evidence presented, the new understanding of children seemed to us not only logical, but also obvious. We realized that it is not at all necessary to raise our offspring “according to the textbook”, and returned to the good old common sense. Everything fell into place, and the old ideas turned out to be wishful thinking. After surviving the initial shock, we began to truly understand our children.

Chapter first
Retroactive Praise

Of course he is special.

However Scientific research prove that if you tell him about this, you will only do harm. Proven by neuroscientists.

Well, how are you supposed to understand a boy like Thomas?

In fact, Thomas is his middle name. He is a fifth-grader at the privileged but nevertheless public high school No. 334, or, as it is called, the Anderson School, in New York. Thomas is very thin. Recently its long blonde hair cut to resemble Daniel Craig's hair as James Bond. Unlike Bond, Thomas prefers to wear baggy pants and a T-shirt with the image of one of his heroes, Frank Zappa. He befriends five other boys from Anderson High who are considered "the smartest". Thomas is one of them, and he likes this company.

Ever since Thomas learned to walk, everyone always told him that he was smart. And not only parents, but all adults who communicated with this beyond their years developed child. When Thomas's parents applied to Anderson School for kindergarten, it was proven authoritatively that Thomas was indeed intelligent. The fact is that only the top 1% of applicants are accepted into the school, so an IQ test is required. Thomas didn't just end up in the top 1%. He was in the top 1% from this number.

However, during his studies, the understanding that he was smart did not lead him to confidence in his own abilities when doing homework. Moreover, the prodigy’s father noticed that the situation was exactly the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try to do something that he might not succeed in,” says his dad. “A lot of things came easy to him, but if the slightest problem arose, he gave up almost immediately: “I can’t do this.” Thus, Thomas divided all tasks into two categories - those that he could do naturally, and those that did not work out.

For example, in elementary school, Thomas had difficulty spelling, so he flatly refused to spell words. The first time he saw fractions, Thomas simply went into denial. The most a big problem arose in third grade. It was time to learn how to write beautifully by hand, but Thomas refused to even look at it for weeks. ballpoint pen. It got to the point that the teacher began to demand that Thomas homework I did it by hand. His father tried to talk to his son: “Listen, of course, you’re smart, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to make any effort at all.” (Eventually, after much persuasion, the boy “won” the capital letters.)

Why does this child, who is rightfully at the top of all ratings, not have enough self-confidence to cope with the most standard school tasks?

Thomas is far from alone. For several decades now, scientists have noticed that high percent gifted students (those in the top decile of gifted test scores) seriously underestimate their own abilities. They begin to lower the bar and do not hope that they will succeed in the end. They underestimate the need for effort and overestimate the need for parental help.

Parents believe that this problem can be solved by praising the child for his intelligence. A Columbia University survey shows that 85% of American parents believe it is important to tell their children they are smart. According to my (completely unscientific) observations, the number of such parents in New York and its surrounding areas is 100%. This behavior has long become a habit. The phrase “Boy, you’re a smart guy” comes out of our mouths simply automatically.

When asked how often she praises her children, one mother proudly answered: “Since infancy and very often.” One dad praises his child “as often as possible.” I've heard of children putting notes about how wonderful they are in their lunch boxes. Boys receive sets of cards with photos of baseball players for throwing half-eaten food from their plate into the trash, and girls are rewarded with visits to the nail salon for completing homework. Children's lives are oversaturated with assurances that everything is going great for them, and that they themselves are wonderful to the core. They have everything they need in this life to succeed.

The reason for this behavior is simple. This is a belief: if a child believes that he is smart (after being told this a million times), he will not be intimidated by any tasks at school. Praise is your pocket's guardian angel. They praise so that the child does not forget about his talents.

However, a growing body of research and even new data from the New York City secondary education system itself suggests just the opposite. Calling a child “smart” does not guarantee that he will do well in school. Moreover, excessive praise can cause poor academic performance.

Dr. Carol Dweck 2
– Professor Dweck’s book “Flexible Consciousness. A New Look at the Developmental Psychology of Adults and Children” was published by Mann, Ivanov and Ferber in 2013. Note ed.

I recently started working at Stanford University. She spent most of her life in New York - grew up in Brooklyn, studied at Barnard College, and taught at Columbia University for several decades. For the past ten years, Dweck and her team have been studying the effects of praise on students in twenty New York City schools. Her major work, a series of experiments on 400 fifth-grade students, paints a very clear picture. Before these experiments, it was believed that praising students for their intelligence would make them more confident in their abilities. However, Dweck suspected that such tactics would stop working as soon as the child encountered difficulties or failed.

Dweck sent four research assistants to study New York fifth-graders. The assistants took one student from the class at a time to administer a nonverbal IQ test. It was necessary to collect several very easy puzzles that any child could cope with. After finishing the test, the assistants informed each student of his results and briefly, in one sentence, praised him. Some schoolchildren are praised for their intelligence: “You are probably very smart.” Others - for diligence and effort: “You did a great job.”

Why did you use only one phrase? “We wanted to understand how sensitive children are,” explains Dweck, “and we were confident that one sentence was enough.”

After this, the students were asked to continue the test by choosing one of the options. First option: make the test more difficult. At the same time, the researchers told the children that they could learn a lot by solving complex problems. Second option: take a test of the same difficulty as the first. 90% of children who were praised for trying and working solved a difficult problem. Most of those praised for their intelligence chose the easy test. The “smart guys” got cold feet and decided to avoid unnecessary complications.

Why did it happen? “By praising children for being smart,” Dweck wrote, “we let them know that the most important thing is to look smart and not take risks to avoid making mistakes.” This is exactly the path that many fifth graders chose. They decided that it was necessary to look like smart and avoid situations where you can embarrass yourself.

At the next stage, the fifth graders had no choice. The test was difficult and intended for seventh grade students. As expected, no one could pass this test. However, the reactions of the fifth graders varied. Those who were praised for their hard efforts felt that they had trouble concentrating during the test. Dweck recalls: “These kids really wanted to complete the task and tried all sorts of solutions,” Dweck recalls. “Many of them themselves, without leading questions, said that they liked this test the most.” With those who were praised for their intelligence, it turned out differently. They decided that failure to pass the test was proof that they were not smart at all. You could see how tense they were. They were sweating and puffing and feeling terrible."

After a difficult stage, the fifth graders were given the last task, which was just as easy as the first. Those who were praised for their effort improved their results by 30% compared to the results of the first task. Those who were praised for their intelligence decreased their scores by 20%.

Dweck suspected that praise could backfire, but even she didn't expect such impressive results. “If you praise effort and persistence, you convey a sense of control to your child,” she explains. “He will understand that success depends on himself.” If you praise a child for the intelligence he was born with, you are pushing the situation beyond his control. It will be very difficult for him to cope with failure.”

The results of interviews conducted with test participants showed that those who believe that the key to success is innate intelligence underestimate the importance of effort. Children think: “I’m smart, which means I can’t necessary try". To make an effort means to show everyone that you are not able to succeed by relying on natural gifts.

Dweck repeated the experiment several times and came to the following conclusion: praise for effort has the same effect on students from different social backgrounds and classes. This principle applied to girls and boys, especially to the most talented girls (who suffered more than others after failure). The principle of the reverse action of praise applies even to preschoolers.

Jill Abraham is a mother of three children. Her opinion matches typical responses to my personal informal survey questions public opinion. I told her about the results of Dweck's experiments on praise, but Jill replied that she was not interested in tests whose results had not been confirmed repeatedly over time. Jill, like 85% of Americans, believes that children should be praised for being smart. She explains that her area has a fiercely competitive atmosphere. Even one and a half year old babies must undergo an interview before entering the nursery. “Children who lack self-confidence begin to be bullied not only on the playground, but also in the classroom,” so Jill believes that she has a responsibility to make her offspring believe in their innate abilities. She doesn't skimp on praise. “I’m not interested in what experts think,” she says defiantly. “I have my own life and my own head.”

Jill is far from alone in disdaining the opinions of so-called experts. The logic of her reasoning is simple - short experiments in specially created conditions cannot compare with the wisdom of parents who raise and raise children day after day.

Even those who agree with research findings have great difficulty putting them into practice. Sue Needleman is a mother of two and a teacher. primary school with eleven years of experience. Last year she taught fourth grade at an elementary school. Sue had never heard the name Carol Dweck in her life, but the ideas she was working on had reached her school, so Sue began expressing her approval with the following phrase: “I like that you don’t give up.” Sue tries to praise not in general, but for something specific. Then the child understands what he did to deserve this praise, and is ready to work to be praised in the future. Sometimes Sue will tell a child that he is doing well in math, but she never states that the child's math achievements leave much to be desired.

But this is how she behaves at school. But at home, old habits are difficult to break. She has an eight-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, and they are really smart. Sometimes sometimes Sue still says: “You’re great! You did it all. You clever". And she herself admits: “When I read dialogues from textbooks on raising children, I catch myself thinking: “Oh God! How banal all this is!”

And teachers at Life Sciences High School in East Harlem have no doubts about the correctness of Dweck’s ideas, since they have tested them in practice. Dweck, along with Dr. Lisa Blackwell, reported in the scientific journal Child Development how these ideas were used to improve math grades in just one quarter.

The School of Life Sciences is a specialized educational institution. There are seven hundred children with learning difficulties (mostly from ethnic minorities) studying there. Blackwell divided the students into two groups and gave them a course of eight lectures. Students in the control group studied the skills necessary for learning, and in the second group, in addition to this, they studied a mini-course on the essence of intelligence. In particular, they were told that intelligence is not innate. One by one, the students read aloud an article about how if you force the brain to work, new neurons will appear in it. The second group was shown images of the human brain, and the students acted out several thematic humorous skits. After completing the mini-course, Blackwell tracked student progress to gauge its impact.

The teachers did not have to wait long for the results. Note that they did not know which students belonged to which group. However, teachers quickly noticed improvements in the grades of those students who took the course. In just one quarter, Blackwell was able to improve math scores, which had been low for quite some time.

The entire difference in the training program of the two groups came down to a pair of lessons with a total duration of 50 minutes. During this time, students did not study mathematics. The purpose of these two lessons was to show that the brain is a muscle. If you train your brain, you become smarter. This was enough for the situation with mathematics to improve significantly.

"The research is very compelling," says Dr. Geraldine Downey of Columbia University. She studies children's sensitivity to rejection. “They clearly show that it is possible to develop an effective school curriculum based on a certain theory.” Many of Downey's colleagues share the same opinion. Stereotyping expert and Harvard University social psychologist Dr. Mahzarin Banaji told me, “Carol Dweck is a genius. I really hope her work is taken seriously. The results of her research are simply shocking.”

In 1969, the book “The Psychology of Self-Esteem” was published, the author of which, psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden, argued: self-respect and self-esteem are the most important qualities of a person.

In 1984, California state legislators decided to create a special group to deal with the problem of developing these very feelings of self-worth and self-respect in citizens. This was supposed to solve a lot of problems: from reducing dependence on welfare benefits to reducing the number of teenage pregnancies. A crusade began to increase the self-esteem of citizens, mainly children. Anything that could even minimally harm a child’s self-esteem was ruthlessly eradicated. They began to treat competitions with caution. Coaches football teams They stopped keeping score and handed out cups left and right. Teachers stopped using red pencils. Criticism was replaced by total and undeserved praise. In one of the schools in Massachusetts, during physical education classes, people do jumping rope... without a rope, for fear that children might fall and be laughed at.

Dweck and Blackwell's research is the vanguard of the fight against the main tenet of the movement to increase self-esteem and self-esteem: that praise and achieved results are inextricably linked. From 1970 to 2000, more than 15,000 were published scientific articles about the connection of self-esteem with anything: from promotion to career ladder before sex. Research results often turned out to be contradictory and inconclusive, so in 2003 the American Association psychological sciences asked one of the most famous proponents of the idea of developing self-esteem, Dr. Roy Baumeister, to analyze all these scientific works. Baumeister's team found that there was almost no science on the subject. Most of the 15,000 studies asked people to evaluate their own intelligence, career success, relationship skills, etc. It is very difficult to draw any conclusions based on such self-assessment, since people tend to overestimate or underestimate themselves. Only 200 studies used scientifically valid measures to assess self-esteem and its impact on a person's life. The result of the work of Baumeister's team was the conclusion that self-esteem has nothing to do with improving academic performance and building a successful career. This feeling did not even affect the level of alcohol consumption. And it certainly did nothing to reduce any type of violence. (Aggressive, violent individuals often have a very high opinion of themselves, which debunks the theory that low self-esteem is a cause of aggression.)

Let's continue our acquaintance with interesting books in an already permanent section. Today new review from Maria Mirzoeva, author of the account @masha_sophie_days . Book“Myths of education. Science vs. Intuition" by Poe Bronson and Ashley Merriman reveals problems that plague many parents.

Do you trust your intuition when raising a child? Or look for answers in books or from specialists? It seems to me that the majority will vote for intuitive education. But why then are the books by Gippenreiter and Faber/Mazlish such a success?

About the book

The title of the book is quite catchy, intriguing, and contains a small challenge to the reader. The authors even promised to shock. In fact, behind this provocation are hidden very sensible thoughts:

there is intuition;
and there is a set of incorrect patterns and behavioral models that we inherited from our mothers and grandmothers. We have forgotten where their roots come from and mistook them for our inner voice.

1. We praise our children incorrectly.

Praising for results, and most often simply “to raise self-esteem”, has the opposite effect.

You need to celebrate the very fact of diligence and effort, that’s what you need to praise for! The authors describe this phenomenon in some detail, but the full study can be found in the book “Flexible Consciousness” by Carol Dweck.

2. Correct reaction to children's lies⠀

How do we usually react to this? We threaten punishment, ask questions that drive us into a corner (one of the most obvious: who did this? 🙂). And very often we lie in passing in front of the child. And research shows how important it is to shift focus:

do not lie to yourself, even about small things;
do not frighten with punishment, offer to tell the truth;
show how the child’s truthful answer will please you. Children want to please us adults. There are several very effective examples in the book⠀

3. Educational gadgets and videos are useless.

Especially if they are aimed at developing speech, because in this case they are also harmful.

Not a very pleasant discovery for companies that create cartoons like Tiny Love or Baby Einstein, right? And all because you need a living person and his speech.

And one more important point: You don't just need someone who chats endlessly. We need someone who will monitor the child’s reactions and provoke communication, exchange of sounds and gestures. Do so-called “educational” cartoons have these abilities? Of course not.

And many, many more interesting moments from scientific research, experiments, facts that simply do not fit into the review. About racism, about childhood aggression, about relationships between brothers and sisters...

Despite (or maybe thanks to) the many references to scientific research and experiments (on children), the book is easy to read - it is incredibly interesting. Much of what we are accustomed to and apply to our children is incorrect. And it seems to me that it is our parental duty to familiarize ourselves with this material.

The book can be read and purchased in the online stores Labirint.ru and Ozon.ru.

Poe Bronson, Ashley Merriman

Myths of education. Science vs. Intuition

New Thinking About Children

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

Preface

Cary Grant as Doorman

This was in the late 60s. Visitors to the private nightclub "Magic Castle" in Hollywood, whose owners were professional magicians, were delighted to see on the threshold of the establishment a doorman who looked exactly like the Hollywood star of that time, Cary Grant. “Welcome to the Castle!” - said the impeccably dressed handsome man, obviously enjoying his resemblance to the famous actor. Visitors walked inside, discussing the double's striking resemblance to the original, a wonderful proof of the magic of Hollywood in all its forms. In addition, the “Magic Castle” was located a stone’s throw from the Chinese Theater and the Cinema Walk of Fame.

However, this doorman was not a double at all. This was Cary Grant himself.

Grant would sit for hours in the club's lobby with administrator Joan Lawton, discussing the magic that excited him much more than the magic of the stage. Namely children. Lawton worked as a club administrator at night and studied to become a child development specialist during the day. Grant's son was very young, and the actor was interested in everything Laughton knew about babies. Hearing that a car was stopping in front of the entrance, the actor jumped up and rushed to the doors. He did not deliberately try to deceive visitors, but no one mistook him for the real Cary Grant and, contrary to the usual, did not ask for an autograph. Why?

And now the moral. If everything that happens is presented as entertainment and it is assumed that everything will be magical, amazing and amazing, something real can be perceived as just more fun.

This is how we perceive modern science news.

Now the flow of information does not stop for a second. News is constantly shown on TV, written on blogs, reported in press releases and by e-mail. You might think that in such an environment it would be impossible to miss a message about an important scientific discovery. However, now they have begun to resemble second-tier stars - they fill the airwaves when there is no “big” news in the feed. Each of them gets their ten minutes of fame, and the task of the news is to entertain us rather than make us think about something. The next day, no one needs this news, they are completely forgotten, and the media dumps a new portion of the “scientific business lunch” on us. They speak quickly in these reports, the topic is touched upon superficially, so it is difficult to understand how valuable this news is.

As a result, many important ideas have been in the public eye for a long time, but we fail to recognize and recognize their importance.

Introduction

Why you shouldn't trust your intuition when raising children

My wife has excellent taste. With one exception. In the guest room of our house hangs a still life painted with acrylic paints - a pot of red geraniums and an ocher watering can against the backdrop of a brown board fence. Not only is this an absolutely ugly picture, it’s also a “paint the picture by numbers” craft.

Every time I see it, I'm itching to throw it in the trash. But the wife categorically objects, because the picture was painted by her great-grandmother in 1961. I'm not at all opposed to storing things for sentimental reasons. Our house is filled with a variety of items that belonged to my wife's relatives. But in this In my opinion, there is and cannot be anything sentimental in the picture. Perhaps on the day her great-grandmother bought this set in the store, she was warmed by the thought that there was a place for creativity and flights of fancy in life, but the finished product, in my opinion, kills this hope in the bud. This coloring leaves no reason for descendants to remember their relative with a kind word.

Paint by number books were super popular in the early 1950s. You could say they were the iPod of those days. Marketers decided that vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dishwashers would free up so much time for housewives that they would have nothing to do except paint by numbers. In three years, Palmer Paint sold more than twelve million sets. However, despite their popularity, coloring books have always caused conflicting feelings. Critics talked about the contradiction between the democratization of art (after all, now everyone could feel like a creator) and the absolutely mechanical implementation of this idea.

Recently I was trying to remember how I felt about the science of child development and parenting before Ashley Merriman and I started this book several years ago, and suddenly an image of this picture popped into my head. At home I spent the whole evening looking at this terrible work to understand why on earth I remembered it. And that's what I finally realized.

So here it is. If a few years ago they told me: “Be sure to read this new book on parenting!” – I would politely thank you for the useful advice and immediately forget about it. Like many parents, my wife and I bought several baby books immediately after our son was born. On his first birthday, we put these books away and brought them back into the light of day three years later, when our daughter was born. History repeated itself: when my daughter turned one, the books about children disappeared.

At the same time, Ashley and I were writing for Time magazine. While living in Los Angeles, Ashley taught classes for children from poor families for several years. For forty children, she was something like a good fairy and monitored their development from kindergarten to high school. When developing her program, Ashley relied solely on her own instincts. She never suffered from a lack of ideas. Working with children has always inspired her. All she needed were teachers and more school supplies. Neither Ashley nor I had any idea what we were missing and what we didn't know. We didn't wake up thinking that we needed to read scientific literature about child development because we couldn't do something. Everything was going just perfect. And then we started writing this book.

We were working on issues of motivation in adults and one day we started thinking about why children are so confident in themselves. We began to look at and explore the issue we specialized in from a new angle. The results both confused and surprised us. Previously, our instincts told us that in order for young children to believe in themselves more, they should be constantly praised and called smart. We were firmly convinced of this. However, scientific works have very convincingly proven that praise for intelligence leads to negative consequences. This will only undermine your children's self-confidence.

NURTURESHOCK

New Thinking About Children

By Bronson

Ashley Merriman

MYTHS OF PARENTING

Science vs. Intuition

Translation from English by Alexey Andreev

Publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"

Moscow, 2014

Information from the publisher

Published with permission from Curtis Brown, Ltd. and Synopsis Literary Agency

Bronson, P.

Myths of education. Science vs. Intuition / By Bronson, Ashley Merriman; lane from English Alexey Andreev. - M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2014.

ISBN 978-5-91657-405-0

When raising children, we often focus only on our own ideas about what is useful and correct, guided personal experience and parental intuition. But does intuition always tell us the right decisions?

This book presents a completely new, common-sense approach to the problems of raising and teaching children. Analyzing basic scientific research recent years, the authors argue that many established ideas about parenting do more harm than good.

This book will surprise almost every parent and will help get rid of many existing prejudices about children and their development.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

Preface

Cary Grant as Doorman

This was in the late 60s. Visitors to the private nightclub "Magic Castle" in Hollywood, whose owners were professional magicians, were delighted to see a doorman on the threshold of the establishment, exactly like the Hollywood star of that time, Cary Grant. “Welcome to the Castle!” - said the impeccably dressed handsome man, obviously enjoying his resemblance to the famous actor. Visitors walked inside, discussing the double's striking resemblance to the original, a wonderful proof of the magic of Hollywood in all its forms. In addition, the “Magic Castle” was located a stone’s throw from the Chinese Theater and the Cinema Walk of Fame.

However, this doorman was not a double at all. This was Cary Grant himself.

Grant would sit for hours in the club's lobby with administrator Joan Lawton, discussing the magic that excited him much more than the magic of the stage. Namely children. Lawton worked as a club administrator at night and studied to become a child development specialist during the day. Grant's son was very young, and the actor was interested in everything Laughton knew about babies. Hearing that a car was stopping in front of the entrance, the actor jumped up and rushed to the doors. He did not deliberately try to deceive visitors, but no one mistook him for the real Cary Grant and, contrary to the usual, did not ask for an autograph. Why?

And now the moral. If everything that happens is presented as entertainment and it is assumed that everything will be magical, amazing and amazing, something real can be perceived as just more fun.

This is how we perceive modern science news.

Now the flow of information does not stop for a second. News is constantly shown on TV, written on blogs, reported in press releases and by e-mail. You might think that in such an environment it would be impossible to miss a message about an important scientific discovery. However, now they have begun to resemble second-tier stars - they fill the airwaves when there is no “big” news in the feed. Each of them gets their ten minutes of fame, and the task of the news is to entertain us rather than make us think about something. The next day, no one needs this news, they are completely forgotten, and the media dumps a new portion of the “scientific business lunch” on us. They speak quickly in these reports, the topic is touched upon superficially, so it is difficult to understand how valuable this news is.

New Thinking About Children

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

Preface

Cary Grant as Doorman

However, this doorman was not a double at all. This was Cary Grant himself.

Grant would sit for hours in the club's lobby with administrator Joan Lawton, discussing the magic that excited him much more than the magic of the stage. Namely children. Lawton worked as a club administrator at night and studied to become a child development specialist during the day. Grant's son was very young, and the actor was interested in everything Laughton knew about babies. Hearing that a car was stopping in front of the entrance, the actor jumped up and rushed to the doors. He did not deliberately try to deceive visitors, but no one mistook him for the real Cary Grant and, contrary to the usual, did not ask for an autograph. Why?

And now the moral. If everything that happens is presented as entertainment and it is assumed that everything will be magical, amazing and amazing, something real can be perceived as just more fun.

This is how we perceive modern science news.

Now the flow of information does not stop for a second. News is constantly shown on TV, written on blogs, reported in press releases and by e-mail. You might think that in such an environment it would be impossible to miss a message about an important scientific discovery. However, now they have begun to resemble second-tier stars - they fill the airwaves when there is no “big” news in the feed. Each of them gets their ten minutes of fame, and the task of the news is to entertain us rather than make us think about something. The next day, no one needs this news, they are completely forgotten, and the media dumps a new portion of the “scientific business lunch” on us. They speak quickly in these reports, the topic is touched upon superficially, so it is difficult to understand how valuable this news is.

As a result, many important ideas have been in the public eye for a long time, but we fail to recognize and recognize their importance.

Introduction

Why you shouldn't trust your intuition when raising children

Recently I was trying to remember how I felt about the science of child development and parenting before Ashley Merriman and I started this book several years ago, and suddenly an image of this picture popped into my head. At home I spent the whole evening looking at this terrible work to understand why on earth I remembered it. And that's what I finally realized.

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