Summary of Post

• Kids go through predictable stages as they develop the ability to think and learn
• You wouldn’t skip from words to essays without first teaching sentences and paragraphs
• Kids need to go through similar stages while learning science
• Vlog entry from Dr. Robin

Typical Science Education is Failing Our Kids

UNDERSTANDING COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Anyone studying education or child development will learn Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.  As a parent, they will be very familiar to you from personal experience.  They are:

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years old): Learning through sensory experiences, exploring cause and effect, effort is focused on goals (such as removing a shoe or reaching a toy)
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years old): Egocentrism (younger children struggle to see something from another person’s point of view),  lack of logic, centration (focusing on one aspect of an object or situation such thinking that two big cookies provide more cookie than one small cookie)
• Concrete operational stage (7-11 years): Logical thought and the ability to reason through concrete, tangible situations (understand their physical experiences)
• Formal operational stage (12+ years): Reasoning about abstract concepts (such as justice, freedom and love), think through hypothetical situations logically, and able to perform complex problem-solving

 

IT’S LIKE SKIPPING SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS TO GO DIRECTLY TO ESSAY WRITING

Most science education completely skips the concrete operational stage and jumps directly into the formal operational stage. 

In other words, rather than starting science education with helping students understand their own physical experiences, the vast majority of science education skips directly to abstract concepts. This is like expecting students to skip letters, words,  sentences, and paragraphs to go directly into writing essays.

No matter the age of the student, if they haven’t learned to write sentences or paragraphs, it’s ludicrous to expect them to create high quality essays.  In the same way, by skipping the student’s own personal experiences of science, we stunt their ability to understand higher level subjects.  No wonder so many adults believe that studying science is hard and boring!  Writing essays would be hard If you skipped sentences and paragraphs!

 

WHAT KIDS ACTUALLY NEED

Do you want your kids to memorize facts? Or learn science? By skipping directly to theoretical science, we’re forcing kids to memorize information they don’t understand. No wonder the vast majority of adults in the United States are scientifically illiterate. Science is no longer a hobby for the elite…in today’s world it’s critical that everyone understand science.

The solution? Use a modern understanding of child development to teach science correctly. Start with what kids know best: themselves!

Every elementary age child:

• knows that if they run fast, they breathe harder and their heart beats fast.  But they don’t know why.
• has seen their urine in the toilet and probably noticed that it comes in different colors.  If anything, they know that drinking more water makes it lighter.  But why?
• knows that poop is dirty and is the “garbage” coming from their body…but what is it really?
• has learned about food groups and their five senses but never progressed beyond a preschool-level understanding.  In fact, most adults never get beyond a preschool-level understanding.

 

STARTING WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY FIXES THE PROBLEM

How is it we’ve normalized that an entire society starts learning about their bodies and then stops at age 4?  By stunting a child’s scientific understanding at the preschool level and then skipping to theoretical concepts, many generations have missed the opportunity to learn science.  This is why it’s critical to not fall for the usual methods that fail. 

It can feel scary to leave the herd and choose a better way, especially if you don’t know a lot of science yourself.  But we know that the status quo is failing our kids.

 

WHY YOU CAN TRUST DR. ROBIN’S SCHOOL

With so many people claiming to be “experts,” how do you know whom to believe?

 

You need someone with a deep knowledge of the brain, learning, child development, plus all branches of science…how else can you be confident in the advice you’re receiving?

Physicians are the only group of scientists who are guaranteed to have an expert level understanding of all aspects of science.  But it’s more than that.  Dr. Robin uses her knowledge of the human brain, learning, and child development to make sure that she is filling in the gap created by our current system.  This prepares students to excel in science for the rest of their lives.

 

Try it for yourself.

Dr. Robin has taught over 2000 students from around the world and knows that her methods work.  Kids who are serious about learning the material in Dr. Robin’s School are introduced to all of science (biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics) in a way that is developmentally appropriate and then go on to excel in high school science.