Little kids can be smart too! | The Coffeehouse

sc00ter
Always in motion the future is..

I just found out my little niece, she's three years old and she knows how to click on stuff to get to web sites and play different games. She knows to turn on the speakers before playing, and after playing, she closes off the browser/games, turns off the speakers and goes to do other things. Wow. 3 years old! Anyone else here have things like this happening with their little ones? Smiley

EDIT: whoops, almost forgot, she's turning 4 in January!

jamie

Yes - you should see joby work the thomas the train engine website

he cant even read but has learned to understand Yes / no / etc

he's 2! Wink

jsampsonPC
SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

When I was teaching programming to students in Chicago, IL I was asked to go and teach a group of AP 5th graders Flash Actionscript. So a couple buddies and I decided to go for it.

I have never met kids that young, and that smart. These kids were listening closely to everything we said, and would put up commenst like, "Oh, that syntax is similar to C++"...which made me think, "How the heck do you know what c++ looks like, kid."

The kids were straight out mutants Smiley

I hope my son is using c-style languages when he's in 5th grade Smiley

sc00ter
Always in motion the future is..

jsampsonPC wrote:
I have never met kids that young, and that smart. These kids were listening closely to everything we said, and would put up commenst like, "Oh, that syntax is similar to C++"...which made me think, "How the heck do you know what c++ looks like, kid."

I don't even understand c++ that much. thats nuts. There are a few things c++ that confuse the heck outta me.

jsampsonPC
SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

sc00ter wrote:

jsampsonPC wrote:I have never met kids that young, and that smart. These kids were listening closely to everything we said, and would put up commenst like, "Oh, that syntax is similar to C++"...which made me think, "How the heck do you know what c++ looks like, kid."

I don't even understand c++ that much. thats nuts. There are a few things c++ that confuse the heck outta me.

I don't know if the kids were into address pointers, etc. But they were very knowledge about many advanced programming things. I'm impressed still to this date - and that was about 5 years ago!

sc00ter
Always in motion the future is..

Kids these days, makes ya wonder what they are going to be like in the future. What schools will be like too.. and what they will be teaching the parents who don't understand all this stuff. LOL.

I'm also hearing that my niece now knows how to "print" stuff! haha, oh boy. Its a good thing her mom knows not to put paper in the printer and hides the paper!

sc00ter
Always in motion the future is..

I guess they are getting so smart now cause they are "exposed" to computers at an earlier age than us. My first experience was maybe in grade 3 or 4 I donno it was a long time ago.

I know my first "home" experience with a computer was back in 1982-83 when I got a Commodore 64. That very first night I had it, I didn't sleep at all! I was so excited, played Oregon trail most of the night, then started digging into the manual and the programming examples etc etc.. it was fun! It wasn't long after that I got a 300 baud modem and was calling BBS's.. My mom really 'LOVED' that. Not! Hehe.

Angus
.

I wish I had been taught programming at school, as I have found it very hard to teach myself (one has to have a lot of self discipline).

I have experienced some things where small children have been intelligent. Once my friend's younger sister (I think she was 5) beat me at draughts, which I found very interesting, although I don't pride myslef on my draught-playing abilities. Tongue Out

I think younger children find it easier to learn things because their brains are at the right stage, and also, younger children can concentrate on a single subject a lot. I remember when I was a lot younger, I would spend hours on sums, and algebra; I had nothing else to worry about (such as exams), and I was interested in Mathematics.

I think that because young children (aged 2 - 6) have few worries (usually), and they have a mind developed enough to think "I like this, I want to do it more often", they will be able to concentrate on a single subject for longer.

Well, that's my opinion anyway. Tongue Out

Angus Higgins

Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last

sc00ter wrote:
I just found out my little niece, she's three years old and she knows how to click on stuff to get to web sites and play different games. She knows to turn on the speakers before playing, and after playing, she closes off the browser/games, turns off the speakers and goes to do other things. Wow. 3 years old! Anyone else here have things like this happening with their little ones?

EDIT: whoops, almost forgot, she's turning 4 in January!

Yeah - kids are amazing.

Unlike adults, they don't sit around complaining about things not working (such as buggy apps or whatever). Instead, they just find a way around the problem - since they're too young to know that a problem is a problem, they don't make assumptions, and instead work with life on life's own terms.

At least that was my experience growing up.

When my parents were fighting and beating the **** out of each other, I didn't know anything was "wrong" with it, so I just adapted.

When an electronic device of some sort stopped working, I just opened it up and fiddled with its innards until it worked again or died on the operating table.

I still try to retain that plasticity of thought - the ability to handle situations without projecting and making assumptions - but it's more and more difficult each year as my brain becomes specialized in certain skills.

That's why it's good to expose yourself to as many new experiences in life as possible. If you want to be able to think on your feet and be able to learn efficiently, you need to constantly broaden your horizons and try new things.

(My opinion, anyway.)

JChung2006

Children have clever, spry minds, which is why I despise the way some adults treat them like mentally deficient people. It offends me more than I have any right to be, especially if it is parents raising their own children, but it offends me nonetheless.

Children are energetic. It is important to stimulate them mentally and physically and to encourage them to be creative and thoughtful. Children are impressionable too so you have to be mindful not only of what you teach them but how you teach. Initially, they may not be as likely to challenge your authority, but they will and it is inevitable that they will when they become teens.

Children can lose interest in an activity that has little or no immediate payoff. That is human nature to some degree, and patience varies from person to person. Programming can have slow payoff which is one reason why I don't think that it's the ideal sort of thing to teach very young children. It is however excellent and rigorous mental exercise for young minds so I wouldn't discourage them from learning it either.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Young children are not yet corrupted by assumptions we take for granted. They have not been brainwashed yet, and are still very eager to learn and explore. And their brain is still flexible, and sucks up knowledge like a sponge.

Kevin Daly
Of course it *looks* like my nick is just my name, but actually, well, it's just my name.

Something to bear in mind is that young children master the incredible complexities, complex rules and inconsistencies of human language (not to mention the sounds), and do most of it by observation and inference.

After that, programming is easy.
The human mind is actually a very powerful thing, but society does its best to teach us how to be stupid.

One thing troubles me slightly however: given that we tend to find that certain personality traits are often present in programmers (for fairly understandable reasons), is it possible that learning programming at a young age creates a feedback loop that strengthens and reinforces those traits, and is that a good thing?

If I were any more like me than I am already, I have a nasty feeling someone would've strangled me in frustration by now.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I think our personality traits are not caused by our interest in technology, but perhaps the opposite. But the interest children show in technology is not a geekish interest. When we grew up, computers and technology were not as omnipresent as today, and only geeks showed interest in it. Today, computers and technology are so widespread that children are automatically confronted with them at an early stage. I don't think this will cause a generation of geeks, but a generation of tech-savvy people that will still consist of geeks and non-geeks.

SpectateSwamp
Nobody shares knowledge better than this

I dam near burned the house down when I was 5

Haven't tried that lately.

jsampsonPC
SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

I have just about 10 years of experience using a computer. I didn't get my first computer until I was in High School. My family wasn't exactly wealthy. So my first experience came in Photoshop on a Mac. A crappy old mac at that.

When I got my first computer, I bought Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. That was the game that began everything for me. I began playing it, until somebody in the game started shooting doors into the air. I thought to myself "WTF!?, that isn't suppose to happen." That event started my spirial into game-modification with c-style languages. So eventually I was shooting doors into the air, walking on water, and creeping around invisible.

One year after I got my first computer is when I was approached with the opportunity to go and teach the AP class up in Chicago for a day. So I feel that I picked up things rather quickly too...but either way, those kids that I mentioned in my previous post were freaking geniuses! I can't imagine how much better I would be at programming had I started when I was just a few years old, or had a father that was into technology. My Dad was into beer, drugs, and beating women - not exactly a complimentary area to computer programming.

So in short, it's amazing what the human mind is capable of when you get it at just the right time. I know that young babies before they are able to learn to speak, can learn alot of sign-language. A friend of mind has taught 2 of his children sign-language before they were able to speak...and they used it really well, too. Asking for more food, or more water. Asking to be picked up, or sat down. Saying they are sad, or tired.

Kids are freakign amazing!

Kevin Daly
Of course it *looks* like my nick is just my name, but actually, well, it's just my name.

SpectateSwamp wrote:
I dam near burned the house down when I was 5

Haven't tried that lately.

I nearly burned the house down when I was 4.
It was perfectly logical: I used to suffer chronic (debilitating) hay fever as a child, and I was (and am) particularly allergic to roses. So deciding that it was better to "take arms against a sea of troubes/and by opposing, end them" I tried to burn down the rose bush outside the house.

My cunning plan was thwarted by my big cousin Diane who ran into the house screaming "Kevin's setting fire to the house!".

Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last

Kevin Daly wrote:
Something to bear in mind is that young children master the incredible complexities, complex rules and inconsistencies of human language (not to mention the sounds), and do most of it by observation and inference.

After that, programming is easy.
The human mind is actually a very powerful thing, but society does its best to teach us how to be stupid.

You can't really blame society.

I mean, you can, but it's overlooking quite a few other things, such as the selective neuronal cell death which takes place at several points throughout the road from birth to adulthood.

Children, up until puberty kicks in, have a neuronal density about twice that of adults. But, something happens during puberty that causes the brain to ditch those neurons - it trims what isn't being used.

Then, beginning at about age thirty, men will lose, on average, about 10% of their overall brain weight by the time they turn 80 (this can be slowed and offset by constantly challenging yourself and learning new things).

Women don't go through the same lifetime decrease in brain weight, but then, the average female brain is about 2/3 the size of the average male brain (although women have a higher ratio of gray:white matter, which probably means that this difference isn't as important as it first appears).

Point being, nature takes away some of our basic processing abilities as we age.

That said, as we age, our brains also become much more specialized tools, and tend to develop very interesting ways of processing data that give us an edge over kids.

Prior to the final touches being put on the prefontal cortices (around age 16), children don't have the capacity for abstract thought that adults do. That's one reason they seem like such information sponges - it's a monkey-see, monkey-do scenario.

After the age 16, and with fully developed prefrontal corices, they're suddenly burdened with the full ability to think abstractly.

In other words, they can finally really, truly think for themselves.

And it's harder than it looks. It can take a lifetime to either master or screw up.

It's up to you, though, how that goes.

bart7simpson7
0xCAFEBABE

Rory wrote:

the average female brain is about 2/3 the size of the average male

<joke> Is nice ! Great succes ! Finally someone from US and A that got it right [6] </joke>

Kevin Daly
Of course it *looks* like my nick is just my name, but actually, well, it's just my name.

Rory wrote:

Kevin Daly wrote: Something to bear in mind is that young children master the incredible complexities, complex rules and inconsistencies of human language (not to mention the sounds), and do most of it by observation and inference.

After that, programming is easy.
The human mind is actually a very powerful thing, but society does its best to teach us how to be stupid.

You can't really blame society.

Point taken...but I think the changes in the brain have a greater influence on the ability to learn a language, for instance, than the ability to learn something like programming - at an early age we're language learning machines (just like we're learning-to-walk machines, but more so) and a lot of pruning takes place afterwards that permanently affects that ability.
The capacity for abstract thought that kicks in as we near maturity is actually very useful for programming (although I suspect that we also remap some lower-level stuff that was evolved for something else...there's something strangely spatial about my internal representation of coding problems).

My point about society is that it doesn't encourage much actual, um, thinking: advertising (which increasingly dominates how many people speak and respond) and politics both depend on people being trained to think in clichés and respond automatically to stimuli like Pavlov's dogs.
I've recently also encountered people (a BA and a developer, not connected) whose thought processes seemed to owe something to quantum superposition: neither seemed to grasp that if two conditions are mutually exclusive they can't both be true at once...sigh.

Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last

Kevin Daly wrote:

Rory wrote:

Kevin Daly wrote: Something to bear in mind is that young children master the incredible complexities, complex rules and inconsistencies of human language (not to mention the sounds), and do most of it by observation and inference.

After that, programming is easy.
The human mind is actually a very powerful thing, but society does its best to teach us how to be stupid.

You can't really blame society.

Point taken...but I think the changes in the brain have a greater influence on the ability to learn a language, for instance, than the ability to learn something like programming - at an early age we're language learning machines (just like we're learning-to-walk machines, but more so) and a lot of pruning takes place afterwards that permanently affects that ability.

Right. That's the point of the selective neuronal cell death. If you haven't learned a language by the time you hit a certain age, it seems your brain behaves as though you'll never need to and just clearcuts the ability to make room for something else.

I also agree that it's different with coding. I did my first bit of coding when I was about five. I continued through my early teens, and then quit for several years (I was more interested in drinking and surfing than I was in computers at the time).

When I came back to it, my earlier experiences helped, but I must say that it was a completely different experience. What I had learned before, I had learned the way someone learns his native language. That is, I could speak it, but I couldn't tell you the rules of grammar.

The second time around, I learned coding as though I were learning a foriegn language, and that meant learning the "rules of grammar" - it was very, very different.

I'm sure I still have the same old programming-neurons that I had when I was a kid, but they weren't all that useful to me for adult projects where I actually had to think about problems holistically rather than in terms of wanted to peek or poke at a particular bit of memory just for the fun of it.

Kevin Daly wrote:

My point about society is that it doesn't encourage much actual, um, thinking: advertising (which increasingly dominates how many people speak and respond) and politics both depend on people being trained to think in clichés and respond automatically to stimuli like Pavlov's dogs.

Society is blamed so often, but society is also what people make of it, and the fact is, it's easy enough to be lazy nowadays that having to be able to think critically is no longer necessary.

People will survive in spite of themselves.

Learning critical thinking is more of a hobby. It's something you do because it's something you want.

And commercials don't change that. I grew up with commercials and advertising and silly politicians, but it didn't stop me from learning skepticism. Critical thinking and exposure to stupidity aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, ads can serve as great examples from which to learn when someone wants to learn critical thinking.

But, like I said, it's a choice now. People naturally want to conserve energy, and learning anything beyond what is absolutely necessary requires an expenditure of energy that is a luxury.

It's like the bumper sticker: "The Arts Are NOT a Luxury."

Wel... actually, they are.

Kevin Daly
Of course it *looks* like my nick is just my name, but actually, well, it's just my name.

[Struggling with sleepy brain]Rory,Your point about laziness is well made...but the result is pretty much the same.To clarify: I do not believe that "Society" or any part of it is engaged in a conspiracy to bring about the effects I mentioned: I firmly believe that apparent conspiracies are mostly the result of people independently acting according to their perceived self-interest, especially when they share a consensus about certain issues or perceived facts (this explains that whole capitalism thing...there are no shadowy masterminds condemning us all to corporate slavery, just selfish (["Eek! The nannyware got me!You can carry guns but you can't use naughty words?"])s who've all been reading the same books).Using your head is hard, just as being civilised in many ways requires an effort (if you look at the rise and fall of civilisations, it's striking how many "fell" because people effectively just couldn't be arsed any longer). As a species we have a short attention span.

Or Practical example: The native bird population here in New Zealand includes many (and previously included many more Embarassed

) flightless species, because when their ancestors arrived here they found a country devoid of mammals (other than bats and seals) or any large ground predators. Since flight, like civilisation etc., is an energy-intensive activity that requires lots of things to work just right, over time it provided insufficient benefit for the capability to be maintained.
Or to quote from that towering artistic work of the mid-eighties, Highlander ( Smiley

): "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if you don't take it out and use it it's going to rust".
Now unfortunately I've forgotten what my point was...Oh well, time to get some sleep.
Hold on, now I think I remember: I basically wanted to make the point that stupidity is for most people not something they're born with or that necessarily results from any unavoidable degeneration, but is a skill that takes years to acquire. Although I'm pretty sure you can speed up the process by watching Fox News...and when society is optimised for dealing with large numbers of people as interchangeable units (which again is the easiest approach and the way things tend to naturally evolve), stupidity can have survival value (as an extreme example witness the outcome of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England: Watt Tyler was not exactly rewarded for his willingness to "think outside the box").

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

jsampsonPC wrote:
I hope my son is using c-style languages when he's in 5th grade

Or daughter! C'mon!

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

Rory wrote:
It's like the bumper sticker: "The Arts Are NOT a Luxury."

Wel... actually, they are.

No they're not.

Once food, shelter, & security is taken care of, we need something else to occupy our minds.

We do care about arts, science, sports, etc... because we need to. I don't think it's a conscious deciscion to strive for things beyond minimal energy expenditures. We're probably hard-wired to do so.

The Arts Are NOT a Luxury. They are inevitable.

LaBomba
Summer

Minh wrote:

Rory wrote: It's like the bumper sticker: "The Arts Are NOT a Luxury."

Wel... actually, they are.

No they're not.

Once food, shelter, & security is taken care of, we need something else to occupy our minds.

We do care about arts, science, sports, etc... because we need to. I don't think it's a conscious deciscion to strive for things beyond minimal energy expenditures. We're probably hard-wired to do so.

The Arts Are NOT a Luxury. They are inevitable.

*Paging JasonOlson, paging JasonO* Tongue Out

Kevin Daly
Of course it *looks* like my nick is just my name, but actually, well, it's just my name.

Minh wrote:

Rory wrote: It's like the bumper sticker: "The Arts Are NOT a Luxury."

Wel... actually, they are.

No they're not.

Once food, shelter, & security is taken care of, we need something else to occupy our minds.

We do care about arts, science, sports, etc... because we need to. I don't think it's a conscious deciscion to strive for things beyond minimal energy expenditures. We're probably hard-wired to do so.

The Arts Are NOT a Luxury. They are inevitable.

Yes and no.
We don't need them merely to survive.
But I would agree that we need them (including all the arts of human culture) to make that survival have a point.