Just last week I sat my 3.16 year old daughter in front of the computer to type out *her letters*.
The next day, she asked, and was allowed to do so herself. By Friday, she was able to type them all out, independently, without any mistakes. The hardest aspect of this exercise is the kids finding the right keys on the old-fangled QWERTY. They can get tired and frustrated doing so; my son certainly did.
Given my son's rapid academic progress, I had been trying to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that his younger sister might be slower and more intractable. After all, there are wide spectra of human aptitude and work ethic - even within the same DNA pools!
But so far Princess C-Nut is on a faster pace in the sense that she can wield the pencil much better at this age than her brother ever could; and she's already mastered the alphabet. So this week I'm going to have her start typing rhyming words - cat, hat, rat, pat....it, sit, bit, kit.....all, ball, call, fall. In fact, I just now exhumed the lists of these words that the Prince did last year from atop my cluttered desk.
My wife isn't surprised at our daughter in the slightest. She's chauvinistically always asserted that girls are advanced in the toddler years - walking, potty training, and whatnot.
Just last week, in that book I read, I discovered that within government schools, 90% of the younger kids that get labeled *special ed* are in fact boys!
BTW, I have a strong hunch that *special ed* is one of the biggest, functional problems with Big Education. Not only are most of the diagnoses total BS, but even worse, I suspect this *special interest within a special interest*, on account of its political and emotional dynamics really aggravates the school system's cost structure AND its capacity for self-reform. Essentially, no one dares criticize it.
I'm trying to more fully research this matter, presently. Hopefully soon I'll have a provocative Marginalizing Special Education post ready to go!
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