Children are intrinsically creative. From the moment they become aware of the world around them they carry their own unique representations of it in their heads, right alongside the other imaginary worlds they build there. Albert Einstein once said that his schooling almost destroyed his interest in Mathematics and Physics, but that it recovered upon … Continued
There has been a serious issue highlighted recently by Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, regarding children of primary school age with profound language deficits. Typically a child of four or five will have a vocabulary of approximately 1500 to 2000 words. Some children are arriving at their first school with as little as 30-50 … Continued
The last blog entry regarding the effects of maltreatment on brain development reminded me of a documentary I’d watched as a teen. It was ostensibly about a wild or feral child (i.e. those recognised as living with little or no human contact) and the impact that this had upon language acquisition. The term wild … Continued