What About Martial Arts for Children?

Modern children are typically pampered and sheltered from most of the harsher realities of life. This is a good thing for infants, toddlers, and most kindergartners. But as a child grows older and more independent, he will spend more and more of his time outside of direct adult supervision. If he does not learn to develop situational awareness and to protect himself as he gets older, he becomes a sitting duck for bullies, predators, and accidentally stumbling into bad situations.

What are the best martial arts to teach children in the beginning? In our opinion, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, and wrestling. Here are a few ideas for teaching martial arts to children:

Aikido:

I think if I were to teach a class of kids aikido, here's some of what I'd do to avoid chokes, joint locks, and etc...

Mobility games
Ukemi - lots and lots of ukemi [ed: the art of falling safely and smoothly]
Walking kata
Evasion drills with partners
Brush-off and escape
Wrist releases
... Cool ki tricks (mind games, concentration, etc…)
Talk about how to deal with interpersonal conflict
Situational self defense
... So, there's still a lot of aikido and pre-aikido that we could do. Much of the pre-aikido stuff is identical to the pre-judo stuff we do in kiddie judo. _Aikido for kids

Judo:

For a while, young kids should play a games-based judo approach. Fun preparations that build strength and coordination and familiarity with judo. But then at some point they have to move to "real judo." I'm not talking about adult judo - we start kids in regular adult classes at about age 13, depending on their physical size and maturity. I'm talking about an intermediate level between games-based judo and actual judo technique.

. One indicator that they are ready to step it up a level from games to real judo, is that they understand and can abide by the gentleman's agreement at the heart of judo. I've mentioned this Judo gentleman's rule before.

. The most central rule to judo practice is that if I am going to allow you to use my body to learn to throw hard and fast then you must save me at the end. You can throw with force, but you must support me and help me get into the proper landing position. .

Without people abiding by this rule, judo falls apart and cannot be practiced. When kids are progressively demonstrating that they can take better and better care of their ukes, they can be taught progressively more vigorous judo. _Judo for kids

Jiu Jitsu:

After teaching my own children and many others basic self-defense, I realized that children should first concentrate on a safe foundation system of self-defense based solely on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Only given solid aptitude of this system, at an intermediate level, would I then teach the striking techniques of Thai Boxing. The rationale for this is manifold:

Only a more advanced student will learn techniques that are inherently more dangerous (striking). This way, I will assure that only children who are mature enough to understand the safety issues will learn the technique.
In a fight, position is more important than pure striking ability. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gives a greater ability to control the position of your opponent than Thai Boxing. So, I want the student to know how to control their opponent long before they learn how to punch, elbow, or kick them. With positional control, punching and kicking can happen with relative leisure!
Beginners may get confused if they have too many techniques to focus on. After they have the fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu "wired in," they won't get their mind as cluttered with dramatically different techniques of Thai Boxing.

Core Concepts

Safety first.
Understand the difference between causing pain and causing harm. Never attempt to harm a fellow student.
Avoid physical conflict.
Work out conflict with words. If you can escape a situation without physical harm to you or a family member, don't fight.
Words are never a reason to fight. Children are rewarded for avoiding fights.
Because of legal and school disciplinary issues involved in fights, the children are taught that in a situation where a fight is unavoidable, the words spoken and attempts made to dispel and avoid the situation beforehand can make a great difference.
Challenge the student to work hard.
The only true rewards in life come from hard work, dedication, and consistent practice.
Fitness through aerobic conditioning
Self defense in realistic situations
Have fun, but be serious enough to make solid progress every class!
Share techniques and learning with fellow students only.
It is important that they understand that this is a fighting system that should not be casually shared or demonstrated anywhere but in class with the instructor, unless self-defense calls for it. In other words, it would be very bad if they demonstrated a choke on a friend at the playground or kicked the family dog!
Don't advertise yourself as a martial arts expert! Many children take a few classes and think they are Bruce Lee reincarnated. A bigger bully will go out of his way to pick a fight with someone like this. Sun Tsu said, "All warfare is based on deception." Don't let them know what you know. More importantly, as a beginner, you don't know much, so don't pretend to know more than you do! _Jiu Jitsu for kids

Wrestling:

Find a Team

Depending on your child’s age, there are several different options for the types of teams you want to sign him up with. The most popular choice for parents with children under the age of 10 is to start them in a freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling club. These clubs typically practice folkstyle, the same style of wrestling contested in high schools and colleges across the United States.

Wrestling clubs are typically not affiliated with any specific school or organization. Rather, they are private organizations geared towards teaching children the sport of wrestling. However, many clubs may practice at a school and have the same coaching staff as a school’s regular team — but the club will not be related to the school in any other way.

Essentially, you want to look for a team that focuses on fitness and technical development, rather than competition. This is especially important for younger wrestlers. For more information on what to look for when choosing a wrestling club, check out iSport’s guide, _Wrestling for kids

Wrestling has traditionally been a male sport, but it is becoming more popular among females. It can be extremely strenuous, so children should have good health and fitness levels before beginning training. Most of all, choose a coach who is skilled, patient, a good teacher, and emotionally mature.

Martial arts training for children can be useful for many reasons, but the training needs to be age appropriate, and geared to the individual child's needs and maturity level. Basic training to develop respect for instructors and classmates as well as disciplined habits of practise, should precede more difficult and complex skills training. Early training should focus on fitness, mobility, escape, releases, balance, situational awareness and response, and the mental aspects of physical training and confrontation.

Training in strikes, kicks, weapons, choke holds, joint locks, etc. should be withheld until the child is mature enough to learn and practise them with proper restraint and respect for classmates and instructors. This should usually only occur after significant time (years) in training, under close observation, and only with other students who are prepared for such training.

Every dangerous child should be able to sense potentially dangerous situations and avoid them when possible. But he should also be physically and mentally prepared to deal with situations which occur outside of his ability to predict or prevent.

Dangerous children are by definition not helpless. This should be true physically, mentally, emotionally, and in virtually every aspect of his life.

So ideally, martial arts training will be just one aspect of a dangerous child's training in not being helpless. This is a different attitude toward child raising than one typically finds, but it is necessary.

Native Differences in Ability and an Integrated Curriculum

The ideal curriculum for the young child would be both open and integrated. An integrated curriculum ties the various fields of learning together, acknowledging the related patterns of brain activity in areas such as music, math, and science.

Music, science, and math go hand in hand. This is a natural combination for children. As we think about the integrated curriculum, it is important to remember all of the educational possibilities of weaving music, science, and mathematics throughout children’s experiences and all parts of the classroom environment (Scholastic Early Childhood Today, 2003). Music and rhythm are a vital part of human culture. The integration of music into the general curriculum encourages students to become actively involved in their learning. For example, the rhythm, meter, measure, and pattern of familiar lyrics can help develop math and science skills while enhancing many other aspects of the curriculum (Rothenberg, 1996).

Music can be a real asset when it comes to teaching math. “Music is filled with patterns and that’s what math is really about. You’re not going to explain the intricacies of notes and scales to a three-year-old, but exposing a child to music now will help him learn these concepts later” (Gill, 1998, p. 40). _Education

Integrating different types of learning which exercise similar brain networks, within the curriculum, can provide complementary pre-verbal cognitive perspectives which may be difficult to achieve otherwise.

But the curriculum must also be open to integrating more and different skills and knowledge areas as windows for critical learning periods open and close. By a certain point in development, it should be clear whether the child possesses special interests or particular ability or skills potential. The curriculum is integrated, but open to special circumstances and motivations.

Different children possess varying innate potential for development in the diverse fields of study and over a wide range of skills and competencies. While it is true that smart practise is crucial for mastery of skills and knowledge, it is also true that starting with a higher innate potential allows for the possibility of a higher level of mastery, with well-directed practise.

In terms of music, for example, we find that males overwhelmingly dominate the list of the 100 greatest classical composers. This is also true for the list of 10 greatest violinists of all time. You will also find a powerful male dominance revealed in the list of the top 50 jazz musicians of all time. The handful of females who make it into the top 50 jazz musicians list, tend to be vocalists.

As far as mathematics is concerned, there has not been a female Fields medal winner. The Fields Medal is given to mathematicians who are considered to advance the field the most.

In science, the Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded almost exclusively to men, with Marie Curie sharing the award in 1903 with Antoine Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie.

This male - female comparison of historical elite achievement in music, mathematics, and science, is meant only to demonstrate the likelihood of a sex related difference in innate ability at the elite levels, in those areas. The differences of innate strengths in these areas are distributed normally in both the male and the female populations, with the elite tail of the male distribution extending further to the right than the elite tail of the female distribution.

Other than for the elite tails, there is considerable overlap in ability in music, math, and science for males and females. In other words, the way is relatively equally open to mastery in those fields for large numbers of males and females.

For most dangerous children, early training in a broad range of general competencies will lead to adolescents with multiple skills which can be put to use in several ways to both provide income, and to pursue further mastery in special areas which may most interest individual dangerous children.

Steps to Personal Development and Autonomy

Here is a quick look at Arthur Chickering's Seven Vectors approach to personal development in children and youth. It is a useful taking-off point for designing approaches to early life curricula for Dangerous Children.

Chickering's theory was based upon personal development during the college years, but if you want to raise a Dangerous Child, you had better not wait that long.

1. Developing competence. Three kinds of competence develop in college–intellectual competence, physical and manual skills, and interpersonal competence. Intellectual competence is skill in using one’s mind. It involves mastering content, gaining intellectual and aesthetic sophistication, and, most important, building a repertoire of skills to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize. It also entails developing new frames of reference that integrate more points of view and serve as “more adequate” structures for making sense out of our observations and experiences. Physical and manual competence can involve athletic and artistic achievement , designing and making tangible products, and gaining strength, fitness, and self-discipline. Competition and creation bring emotions to the surface since our performance and our projects are on display for others’ approval or criticism. Leisure activities can become lifelong pursuits and therefore part of identity...

Students’ overall sense of competence increases as they learn to trust their abilities, receive accurate feedback from others, and integrate their skills into a stable self-assurance.

2. Managing emotions. Whether new to college or returning after time away, few students escape anger, fear, hurt, longing, boredom, and tension. Anxiety, anger, depression, desire, guilt, and shame have the power to derail the educational process when they become excessive or overwhelming. Like unruly employees, these emotions need good management. The first task along this vector is not to eliminate them but to allow them into awareness and acknowledge them as signals, much like the oil light on the dashboard.

Development proceeds when students learn appropriate channels for releasing irritations before they explode, dealing with fears before they immobilize, and healing emotional wounds before they infect other relationships. It may be hard to accept that some amount of boredom and tension is normal, that some anxiety helps performance, and that impulse gratification must sometimes be squelched....

3. Moving through autonomy toward interdependence. A key developmental step for students is learning to function with relative self-sufficiency, to take responsibility for pursuing self-chosen goals, and to be less bound by others’ opinions. Movement requires both emotional and instrumental independence, and later recognition and acceptance of interdependence.

Emotional independence means freedom from continual and pressing needs for reassurance, affection, or approval. It begins with separation from parents and proceeds through reliance on peers, nonparental adults, and occupational or institutional reference groups. It culminates in diminishing need for such supports and increased willingness to risk loss of friends or status in order to pursue strong interests or stand on convictions....

4. Developing mature interpersonal relationships. Developing mature relationships involves (1) tolerance and appreciation of differences (2) capacity for intimacy. Tolerance can be seen in both an intercultural and an interpersonal context. At its heart is the ability to respond to people in their own right rather than as stereotypes or transference objects calling for particular conventions. Respecting differences in close friends can generalize to acquaintances from other continents and cultures. Awareness, breadth of experience, openness, curiosity, and objectivity help students refine first impressions, reduce bias and ethnocentrism, increase empathy an altruism, and enjoy diversity....

5. Establishing identity. Identity formation depends in part on the other vectors already mentioned: competence, emotional maturity, autonomy, and positive relationships. Developing identity is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, remodeling a house, or seeking one’s “human rhythms,” a term that Murphy (1958) illustrated by photic driving. A person watching an instrument that emits flashes at precise intervals eventually hits a breaking point–the point at which the rhythm induces a convulsion. If, for example, the number is sixteen, the observer may rapidly lose consciousness as this number is presented in the standard time interval. Seventeen and fifteen, however ,are safe numbers. It is not until thirty-two or some other multiple of sixteen is reached that a breakdown recurs. Like the piano wire that hums or like the glass that shatters, we all have our critical frequencies in a variety of areas. Development of identity is the process of discovering with what kinds of experience, at what levels of intensity and frequency, we resonate in satisfying, in safe, or in self-destructive fashion.

Development of identity involves: (1) comfort with body and appearance, (2) comfort with gender and sexual orientation, (3) sense of self in a social, historical, and cultural context, (4) clarification of self-concept through roles and life-style , (5) sense of self in response to feedback from valued others, (6) self-acceptance and self-esteem, an d (7) personal stability and integration. A solid sense of self emerges, and it becomes more apparent that there is an I who coordinates the facets of personality, who “owns” the house of self and is comfortable in all of its rooms....

6. Developing purpose. Many college students are all dressed up and do not know where they want to go. They have energy but no destination. While they may have clarified who they are and where they came from, they have only the vaguest notion of who they want to be. For large numbers of college students, the purpose of college is to qualify them for a good job, not to help them build skills applicable in the widest variety of life experiences; it is to ensure a comfortable life-style, not to broaden their knowledge base, find a philosophy of life, or become a lifelong learner.

Developing purpose entails an increasing ability to be intentional, to assess interests and options, to clarify goals, to make plans, and to persist despite obstacles. It requires formulating plans for action and a set of priorities that integrate three major elements: (1) vocational plans and aspirations, (2) personal interests, and (3) interpersonal and family commitments. It also involves a growing ability to unify one’s many different goals within the scope of a larger, more meaningful purpose, and to exercise intentionality on a daily basis....

7. Developing Integrity. Developing integrity is closely related to establishing identity and clarifying purposes. Our core values and beliefs provide the foundation for interpreting experience, guiding behavior, and maintaining self-respect. Developing integrity involves three sequential but overlapping stages: (1) humanizing values-shifting away from automatic application of uncompromising beliefs and using principled thinking in balancing one’s own self-interest with the interests of one’s fellow human beings, (2) personalizing values-consciously affirming core values and beliefs while respecting other points of view, and (3) developing congruence-matching personal values with socially responsible behavior. _Chickering's Seven Vectors

The ideas have to be adjusted as appropriate for different ages and stages of development, of course.

One of the most important strengths adolescents should develop -- as part of developing identity, purpose, and integrity -- is to build a healthy resistance to propaganda and ideology.

In modern life, schoolchildren are immersed in propaganda and ideology -- as is anyone who is in contact with popular or news media. If one cannot separate his own identity, goals, and purpose from the prevalent propaganda and ideology in which he happens to be immersed, he cannot develop an autonomous self.

What are some differences between ideology and philosophy?

1.Philosophy refers to a pragmatic approach of looking and analyzing life. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs and rules belonging to a particular group or set of people
2.Philosophy aims at understand the world as it exists whereas ideology is born out of a vision for the future and aims at changing the current state to that particular vision
3.Philosophy is objective whereas ideology is dogmatic and refuses to participate in any discussion that does not agree with that ideology
4.Philosophy does not have as much impact as an ideology would have on the world ‘“ for ideology aims at spreading the beliefs and imposing them on the rest of the society irrespective of its relevance
5.All ideologies have some underlying philosophy but it is not vice versa. _Difference Between

A broader look at differences between ideology and philosophy
(Note: The link above goes to a chapter in an online book on philosophy. The link to this chapter is not an unconditional endorsement of the entire online book. But several of the book's chapters are useful as general introductions to various topics in philosophy.)

PDF slideshow looking at different modern political ideologies

Dangerous children will learn to avoid propaganda and ideology, as a general rule. But they need to be exposed to the phenomena in order to recognise and become relatively impervious to them.

The above is in the way of background information, to prepare the way for a discussion of an important societal transition which is underway. This transition will serve as the springboard for a more important transition -- of which The Dangerous Child movement is but a part.

Who Will Educate the Dangerous Child?

The answer to the question, "Who will educate the Dangerous Child?" contains one of the reasons why the Dangerous Child is so dangerous: The Dangerous Child will educate himself.

Until the child becomes interested -- becomes motivated -- there is little likelihood that he will ever grow to become a Dangerous Child. And in the typical government school classroom environment which primarily utilises the teacher : student relationship as the pathway to learning, there is little likelihood that the student will grow motivated in the self-directed manner necessary for Dangerous Child development.

In a traditional teacher : student classroom, a dependency relationship between the student and the teacher tends to develop -- and is in fact encouraged to develop. The student is expected to approach learning via the teacher, and is encouraged to comply with the teacher's preferences in a wide variety of ways -- both explicit and implicit. This pathway leads to a greater dependency which makes the development of motivation and self-direction more difficult, the longer it goes on.

This implies that those who wish to raise a Dangerous Child need to find ways to fire the flame of motivation and self direction in the child from an early age. This is not generally difficult, given the normal hunger for learning exhibited by the typical child from infancy onward. In fact, it is often the artificial approach to learning and teaching forced onto young children which tends to destroy that natural early flame of motivation and self-directedness.

The field of Adult Education has developed quite differently from the field of childhood education, and understandably seeks to place more control over the student's learning in the hands of the student himself (PDF). More (PDF)

Most adults would not tolerate the dictatorial environment of the traditional classroom, nor the relatively low quality of education typically provided in K12 through university. They would particularly object to the indoctrinating nature of much of what passes for "education" in modern classrooms.

But many younger children and adolescents would also be more self-directed, motivated, and particular about the nature and quality of education, if they were given a choice. And suddenly, it seems that a number of choices are springing up.

A rapidly blooming area of learning at this time is online learning, which is coming to take on some of the self-directed and self-paced characteristics of adult learning.
Characteristics of Adult Learners with Implications of Online Learning Design (PDF)

Traditional educators are beginning to perceive a threat to their livelihood in the growing number of alternatives to traditional teacher : student dependency learning. And yet it is clear that the traditional pathways to education are leading modern societies to a dangerous impasse, where the quality of graduates has declined alarmingly. This leaves societies without the type of strong, independent, and objective sort of problem solvers which they so crucially require.

The way beyond this impasse is to grow ever larger crops of Dangerous Children, because independence and self-directedness, as well as problem-solving ability, are some of the key characteristics of the Dangerous Child.

It is not particularly helpful to directly import the techniques of Adult Learning wholesale into infant and early childhood learning. Rather, it is crucial for parents and those responsible for the child's education to aid in the development of the child's particular tendencies and competencies which grow the child's competencies and motivation to the point that he can pick up the self-directed learning methods developed in the field of Adult Learning on his own.

Make no mistake: The conflict between the advances in Adult Education and the regressive traditions of so-called "progressive childhood education" forms a deadly pivotal battleground which may determine the futures of several modern societies. The covert war is not so much between the political right/libertarian and the political left/socialist. Rather the war is between persons with a more expansive and dynamic view of the future, and those with a more static and "imposed" view of the future.

It is not my purpose here to convince readers of anything. My only purpose is to suggest that things might be done differently, should the reader see a need for that to happen.

Levitin: 10,000 Hours to Mastery

Academy/Beck: One of the many things I appreciated in the first book was your discussion of the "10,000-hour" rule. Can you please review that?

Levitin: Yes, of course. It's not a rule so much as it is an empirical finding. But in the final analysis, it comes down to that in order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor. We find this with music all the time. Some people may have a biological or genetic head-start in music. In fact, we know that people, and children in particular, may all start at different levels when they get interested in music, but without 10,000 hours of practice, they probably won't achieve world-class status, regardless of their innate ability. So on a pragmatic level, it takes about three hours a day over 10 years to acquire 10,000 hours. Of course, this is consistent with what we know about how brains learn new tasks and skills. In other words, learning requires the assimilation and consolidation of knowledge within neural tissue. As the experience is repeated and enriched through practice and skill development, the stronger the memory and learning of that experience becomes. _Daniel Levitin Interview

Fluency.org (PDF)
Daniel Levitin's "10,000 Hour Rule" is reminiscent of K. Anders Ericsson (PDF)'s maxim that 10 years of smart practise is required for world class mastery of a subject, or complex skill, by a top prodigy -- and between 15 and 25 years are required for those who are "mere elites."

Always keep in mind that practise alone is not enough -- one needs to indulge in "smart practise."

Practice is, of course, the crucial element to be a great performer. But smart practice will take you to the same place faster. It is important to distinguish practice from playing though. Playing in orchestra, chamber music and any other kind of rehearsal is not considered practice. You still perfect things as an ensemble but your technique as an individual musician is not being worked at is best potential.

Music performance is a preparation of many hours in the practice room for that one day, for the moment where everything comes alive through you and your talents- that is why having a plan beforehand is essential. You can repeat things for 8 hours and not come up with the greatest results- it happens especially when you are under pressure.

...You can practice as much as 4-5 hours a day but know that resting is extremely necessary and that there are other ways to grow as a musician and learn your music like: listening to a recording with the score in hand, make an analysis of the piece, find out some of the hit points or key places where music changes suddenly, etc. You can also read about the composer and the time the piece was created. All of the above will be reflected in you music making. _Tips for Classical Musicians

The musician's experience above provides a crucial lesson: Time is required to achieve mastery. You cannot fruitfully compress 15 years of training into 5 years. You must put in the time, but you must also pace yourself so as to allow your brain to create the proper circuitry.

This brings us to an important point: When should a child begin training toward mastery in music, chess, athletics, foreign language, or other complex skills?

The earlier a child starts on the road to mastery, the sooner he can arrive at his destiny. But it isn't quite that simple.

If you give the child a sufficiently stimulus-rich early environment, and pay close enough attention to the child, he or she is likely to tell you when they are ready for a trial beginning. Over a period of time, it should become clear whether the child is ready to embark on the voyage to mastery for this particular skill -- or whether this area of training is a "false start" or "red herring" which may keep the child from finding a path to mastery better suited for him or her.

Remember the concept of the "critical developmental window?" The concept of the critical period is important, but different children may pass through a particular critical period at different times.

Daniel Levitin looked at the concept of "absolute pitch," or perfect pitch -- an auditory sense important to composers and elite musicians. He found that different persons who possessed perfect pitch began formal musical training at different ages.

Levitin (PDF)

It is not possible for every young music student to acquire AP sense. But apparently most of those who do acquire that skill, begin training at a relatively young age.

In reality, most of our children will not grow to be world class golfers, chess masters, or musical prodigies. Most of them will not win Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals in advanced mathematics. In the same way, most children will not make world changing discoveries, nor become mega-billionaire tycoons.

But we do want our children to grow up to be competent across a range of skills, and to be masters of themselves, experiencing a deep sense of confidence, fulfillment, and satisfaction in the living of their lives. We want them to be able to support themselves financially, to raise a family if they wish, and to be able to pass along lessons of competence and mastery to their progeny and those whom they mentor.

And we want them to be dangerous to the status quo of global incompetence and decay which seems to slip in unannounced at any opportunity. Children are not born competent in the skills and complexities of adult human life.

It takes many years and thousands of hours of smart practise to achieve that.

More: An interesting blog riff on the 10,000 hour to mastery concept (including comments)

The Road to Mastery

We talk a lot about competence in the dangerous child, and certainly competence is crucial when dealing with dangerous (and valuable) skills. But on the road to mastery, competence occurs somewhere near the half-way point.

In 1980, Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus described A FIVE-STAGE MODEL OF THE MENTAL ACTIVITIES INVOLVED IN DIRECTED SKILL ACQUISITION (PDF). In the document, they describe 5 steps, or stages, in the growth from beginner to master:

1. Novice
2. Competent
3. Proficient
4. Expert
5. Master

Since then, the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model has been altered so that the 5 stages are now:

Novice -- Advanced Beginner -- Competent -- Proficient -- Expert

When reduced to just 3 stages common to both ancient and modern guilds, we would describe the model as Apprentice -- Journeyman -- Master.

Slideshare presentation of the Dreyfus & Dreyfus model

The road to mastery is a long one, which modern western educational systems are reluctant to follow. The resistance to mastery learning among modern educators is extremely strong, perhaps due to the time and effort required of both teacher and learner.

Famed psychologist of expert learning, K. Anders Ericsson, says that world class mastery requires at least 10 years of directed practise by the most gifted, and more like 15 to 25 years of hard directed practise by the merely elite (PDF).

In Ericsson's view, it is the duration and quality of practise which determines who will master the skill, rather than innate talent or IQ. Perhaps it is best to adopt that view, and teach students to enjoy the hard effort required to achieve mastery, even if it is not entirely correct.

After all, even among the elite, there are those who are clearly superior, who took much less time and practise to achieve higher levels of mastery than the masses of those who are considered "expert" or "master." But again, perhaps it is best to focus on teaching students to enjoy mastering challenges, and solving difficult problem after difficult problem. Students who incorporate persistence and grit along with expertise, are more likely to succeed.

But each child is different, with different propensities and likelihood of achieving mastery, for a wide range of skills and practises. Some children are more likely to be happy as specialists, while others are more naturally generalists. Not only must we provide the child with a likely path to mastery in his general field of choice, we must also learn to gauge his optimal balance of depth vs breadth.

For students who wish a shallower level of mastery for a large number of different fields, the mastery of "heuristics" in each field is likely to be very important.

For those who wish to master a smaller number of fields, the utilisation of customised "mastery learning" should take them to a deeper level, as appropriate.

And for those who are compelled to take the field or profession beyond the level of its current masters -- to achieve creative innovation and genius level work -- a working through the entire 5 stage Dreyfus and Dreyfus model is required, plus just a little extra.

When a master is doing genius level revolutionary innovation, he is working at a hypothetical "level 6" or higher. He is devoting his entire being to the problem, over an extended period of time. This is something that is not easily taught -- if it can be taught at all.

Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, illustrates some of the problems in making decisions and judgments at different stages from novice to expert.

Typically we think of the early stages of mastery as involving more conscious and deliberative thinking, while the more expert stages involve more automatic and intuitive types of thinking.

But if experts and masters cannot "keep their hand in" with the earlier skills of deliberative and conscious thinking and fact-checking, they may be at a loss when entirely new problems arise which do not succumb to their intuitions and learned automaticities.

Early stage learning -- before the ages of 12 or 16 -- will provide the child with a wide range of competencies and mid-level skills which fall far below mastery. But if sometime between the ages of 5, and 12 to 16, the child experiences a special affinity to and talent for one or more skills, he should be encouraged along a road that might lead to mastery of the special skill or skills. The more high quality directed development time the child can put in for a particular skill, the closer to world class mastery he can come.

Early stage learning focuses upon heuristics and rules of thumb. These are practical and easy to remember scaffolds of learning, for building more detailed structures of learning later.

Many people go through their entire lives without ever going beyond the early heuristic level of learning for any given field. And some do not even get that far.

For those who wish to raise truly dangerous children, it is important that you learn to provide the important heuristics which will keep the child safe even in a dangerous environment. And should the child show a marked preference for any particular dangerous environments, the child should not only be given the crucial heuristics to keep him safe, but should also be helped further along the road to mastery so that he can shape both himself, and the environment itself to his own advantage.

Finally, a caveat: IQ and innate ability do play an important part in the road to mastery along with innate inclinations -- despite what well-meaning experts such as KA Ericsson may claim publicly. Pay close attention to cues which may indicate an especially fulfilling direction of development for a particular child.

Children can become infatuated with a particular field without understanding the incredible amount of difficult work that is necessary for mastery of it. It is important that children be given a chance to prove themselves, but in a realistic -- not pampered or sheltered -- way. Force them to see what the thing really is, and what it will take to achieve it. Be brutally honest here, or you may do far more harm than you realise.

The child does not have time for a large number of abortive attempts at mastery, if it takes between 15 and 25 years for him to achieve top level mastery. And most parents don't have the time, patience, or the money to support multiple failed attempts.

Yes, you want the child to aim high. But: Do not pamper. Do not shelter. Do not encourage fantasy dreams which are without realistic possibility. Make the child prove himself each step of the way, but be sure to provide the opportunity for him to do so.

More: We have pointed out in previous articles that dangerous children should be able to support themselves economically -- in multiple ways -- by the time he or she is 18. This is due to the multiple skills and competencies which the child will have learned on the path to becoming dangerous.

This is a very good thing for parents, who will no doubt have their own uses for their hard-earned wages. A widely-competent dangerous child should be able to finance his own long experimentation into mastery over the decades of early to middle adulthood.

Dangerous children typically remain dangerous over entire lifetimes. They are far less likely to sink deeply into time-killing entertainments and mind-wasting amusements and intoxicants. Parents give dangerous children their start, but it is the children themselves who must find their own way.

The Dangerous Child Can Make Things

Modern schooling has very little to do with true education. The graduates of modern government schools may be better suited for collecting lifetime unemployment or disability checks, than for making their own independent way in life.

...education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. _John Dewey

Rather than turning children on to make things, fix things, understand the universe they live in by way of immersion -- schools isolate children from the real world and from meaningful participation or responsibility in the world.

Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make Magazine, has a different attitude about what education should be:

As the publisher of Make magazine and Maker Faire, I find Dewey’s views refreshing and relevant. I see the power of engaging kids in science and technology through the practices of making and hands-on experiences, through tinkering and taking things apart. Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged; in fact, the biggest problem in schools is boredom. Students sit passively, expected to absorb all the content that is thrown at them without much context. The context that’s missing is the real world.

The maker movement has the opportunity to transform education by inviting students to be something other than consumers of education. They can become makers and creators of their own educational lives, moving from being directed to do something to becoming self-directed and independent learners. Increasingly, they can take advantage of new tools for creative expression and for exploring the real world around them. They can be active participants in constructing a new kind of education for the 21st-century, which will promote the creativity and critical thinking we say we value in people like Steve Jobs.

...“Making creates evidence of learning.” The thing you make—whether it be a robot, rocket, or blinking LED—is evidence that you did something, and there is also an entire process behind making that can be talked about and shared with others. How did you make it? Why? Where did you get the parts? Making is not just about explaining the technical process; it’s also about the communication about what you’ve done.

This kind of conversation is the core of Maker Faire. Makers bring what they’ve made and share it with others. They answer questions and explain how things work. They get feedback and meet others who have insights into what they’ve made. We might consider it a performance-based assessment, just like what happens in the work world.

As I walked around the middle school with the principal, we were looking at rooms that could be used to create a maker space for students. We walked into an empty room that once was the metal shop. It was perfect. I could imagine it having tools and materials and workbenches. I could imagine groups of curious kids being active, social, and mobile. She said her students would be very happy. “They never get asked to create anything,” she told me. _Slate

The more things a child can make, repair, and understand, the more dangerous the child.

It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

Tales of a Self-Directed Childhood and Adolescence

Self-directed individuals often learn to follow their own lead at a very early age. With such a head start, many of them become quite successful, and sometimes drop out of traditional educational programs so as to get on with their lives.

The excerpt below comes from "Principles" by Ray Dalio (via Forward Base B), the founder of a $120 billion hedge fund:

In order to be motivated, I needed to work for what I wanted, not for what other people wanted me todo. And in order to be successful, I needed to figure out for myself how to get what I wanted, not remember the facts I was being told to remember.

One thing I wanted was spending money. So I had a newspaper route, I mowed lawns, I shoveled thesnow off driveways, I washed dishes in a restaurant, and, starting when I was 12 years old, I caddied.

It was the 1960s. At the time the stock market was booming and everyone was talking about it, especially the people I caddied for. So I started to invest. The first stock I bought was a company called Northeast Airlines, and the only reason I bought it was that it was the only company I had heard of that was tradingfor less than $5 per share, so I could buy more shares, which I figured was a good thing. It went up a lot.It was about to go broke but another company acquired it, so it tripled. I made money because I waslucky, though I didn’t see it that way then. I figured that this game was easy. After all, with thousands ofcompanies listed in the newspaper, how difficult could it be to find at least one that would go up? Bycomparison to my other jobs, this way of making money seemed much more fun, a lot easier, and muchmore lucrative. Of course, it didn’t take me long to lose money in the markets and learn about how difficultit is to be right and the costs of being wrong.

So what I really wanted to do now was beat the market. I just had to figure out how to do it.

The pursuit of this goal taught me:

1) It isn't easy for me to be confident that my opinions are right. In the markets, you can do ahuge amount of work and still be wrong.

2) Bad opinions can be very costly. Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost tothem. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work,I really can’t be sure.

3) The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker. To make any money,you have to be right when they’re wrong.So …...

1) I worked for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do. For that reason, I never feltthat I had to do anything. All the work I ever did was just what I needed to do to get what Iwanted. Since I always had the prerogative to not strive for what I wanted, I never felt forced to doanything....

2) I came up with the best independent opinions I could muster to get what I wanted. Forexample, when I wanted to make money in the markets, I knew that I had to learn aboutcompanies to assess the attractiveness of their stocks. At the time, Fortune magazine had a littletear-out coupon that you could mail in to get the annual reports of any companies on the Fortune500, for free. So I ordered all the annual reports and worked my way through the most interestingones and formed opinions5...

3) I stress-tested my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them soI could find out where I was wrong.about which companies were exciting. 6 ...

4) I remained wary about being overconfident, and I figured out how to effectively deal withmy not knowing. I dealt with my not knowing by either continuing to gather information until Ireached the point that I could be confident or by eliminating my exposure to the risks of notknowing.

I never cared much about others’ conclusions—only forthe reasoning that led to these conclusions. That reasoning had to make sense to me. Throughthis process, I improved my chances of being right, and I learned a lot from a lot of great people. 7 ...

5) I wrestled with my realities, reflected on the consequences of my decisions, and learned and improved from this process.

By doing these things, I learned how important and how liberating it is to think for myself. _Principles by Ray Dalio (PDF)

In other words, Ray Dalio became self aware and self-directed at an earlier age than is generally the case for modern youngsters. But his story is not that unusual in terms of others who began to blaze their own trails at an early age.

It is true that in the United States, before the public school system became such a dominant part of the lives of children and adolescents, large numbers of young people learned to make their own way -- via self-study, apprenticeship, trial and error, rites of passage, sheer willpower and persistence, and blind luck. But Ray Dalio and many other successful people, acquired self-direction despite society's expectation that children should be put in their place by the educational and societal powers that be.

That is the challenge for concerned parents and significant others in the lives of children, who would like to see these children grow to be self-directed, independent, and very dangerous to the status quo of psychological neoteny and lifelong incompetence. What sort of environment should these concerned guardians and mentors create for children, in order to set them on the path to competent independence?

More on this later.

Obstacles to a Dangerous Childhood

There are a large number of potential obstacles standing between every child and the dangerous childhood that he needs and deserves. Because of the level of control which parents can exert over a child's life, we should look at parental obstacles first:

• Incompetence, low intelligence, maliciousness, and indifference

These characteristics are commonly agreed upon as being signs of poor parents and bad parenting.

• Overindulgence

Overindulgence by parents within affluent classes and in affluent societies is often popularly seen as a sign of good parenting, although this is often the opposite of the truth in many ways (PDF pp 8-11).

• Overprotectiveness

Overprotectiveness can often be seen in conjunction with overindulgence, but not necessarily. The two types of dysfunctional parenting should generally be seen as distinct.

Malicious, indifferent, and incompetent parents are apt to immerse the child inside an impoverished and unhappy environment.

Overindulgent parents are likely to cause children to focus upon the outward signs of success at the expense of development of the inner strengths required to achieve that sucess.

Overprotective parents tend to keep children from testing themselves against dangers and challenges that naturally arise in the course of daily life. As a result, children fail to move through necessary "rites of passage" which naturally lead them from childhood to adulthood.

Here is a quote from Conn Iggulden, author of The Dangerous Book for Boys:

One of the tragedies of the ­increasingly litigious ­society we live in is that schools now treat ­our ­children as though they are made of china.

Teachers worry that they will be sued if they take pupils on school trips where they can enjoy risk and adventure, ­climbing rocks and trees.

They are concerned that bruising sports, such as rugby, where black eyes and ­broken bones are par for the course, could expose them to ­litigation. They even ­hesitate over traditional games, such as tag and bulldog. _Conn Iggulden

What he says about schools is doubly true for homes. Parents must give children a rational exposure to danger and rites of passage, so that the children will not turn to destructive behaviours out of a desperate and unfulfilled need for risk.

Dangers lie all around us, and within ourselves as well. Failing to recognise them, failing to confront them, failing to learn to deal with them -- these failures have their roots in dysfunctional upbringings.

But dangerous children -- who have experienced a dangerous childhood in the best sense of the word -- understand danger very well, and have learned to devise a large number of ways to deal with a wide range of dangers.

That is what a dangerous child curriculum and a dangerous child upbringing is all about.

The ideas of danger introduced by Conn and Hall Iggulden and by Gever Tulley, are important starting points for modern parents -- who are likely to have been somewhat overindulged and overprotected themselves, and in danger of doing the same to their own children. A truly dangerous childhood will require such simple introductions to risk taking to be but springboards into greater and more sophisticated dangers, requiring greater and greater levels of expertise and competence.

A dangerous childhood leads to a positive, constructive, and productive adulthood. But the actual path has to be laid down by each dangerous child on his own, based upon a certain amount of guidance and preparation.

Because the end result of a dangerous child upbringing and education is essentially uncontrolled -- wide open and unpredictable -- it is seen as a threat by status quo educators, politicians, lawyers, journalists, and other vested interests in the modern dysfunction.

It is never too late for a dangerous childhood. But once the concept is grasped, it is better to begin sooner rather than later.

Practical Competencies: Power Welding

Caution: Be sure to learn dangerous skills from qualified teachers and practitioners, and to use top quality equipment, eye protection, shielding, and protective clothing.

Welding metals together to produce a strong joint, is an extremely useful skill for the dangerous child to master. Ideally, the dangerous child will learn to weld with both a torch and with electrically powered welders between the ages of 12 and 16, depending upon the rate of maturation and the judgment of parents and teachers. Here we will take a quick look at some aspects of electric welders.

Popular Mechanics

Wire-feed welders are great, but there's a lot to be said for stick welders, which use a rod-shaped electrode held in a clamp. Here's how it works: A ground lead runs from the welding machine to the workpiece. When you touch the stick electrode to the metal, you make a welding circuit and create a high-­temperature arc that melts the rod. As the electrode melts, the flux coating on it is gasified, shielding the molten metal from the air. When the metals cool, they are fused together. A major advantage of stick welding is that you can easily switch among various electrodes. For example, some achieve high-strength joints; others repair cracked cast iron or fill in pitted areas. Also, there are stick electrodes designed to deal with rust or dirt, a good thing when you're repairing a machine outdoors where achieving a clean weld surface is impossible.

The downside to stick welders is that they are more difficult to learn to use, especially if you're teaching yourself.

Wire-feed welders are more mechanically complex, but they're simpler to operate. These machines drive a thin wire electrode off a motorized spool and through a cable to a welding gun.

And wire-feed welders can join metal ranging from automotive sheet steel all the way up to ½-inch-thick plate. _PopularMechanics

Tests of best wire-feed welders

Arc welding tutorials

Making your own spot welder using a microwave oven transformer. Such projects are for those who have already mastered high voltage transformer safety.

One of the things that makes dangerous children so dangerous, is that they learn to master skills which would be deadly to the untrained and unskilled. The safe mastery of several dangerous skills tends to set persons apart from the herd.

Most modern parents tend to treat children like precious trophies or jewels -- to be sheltered from all possible danger or practical use. And to top it off, they want to instill these helpless incompetents with an abundance of self-esteem!

Do your children a favour, and make them truly dangerous, competent, and deservedly confident. But don't tell anyone you don't trust. These days, raising strong, competent, independent and truly dangerous children is often enough to get you locked up, depending upon where you live and who runs your local social services department.

Using Games to Teach Reading Skills to 4 Year Olds

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have devised teaching games that are capable of teaching Swedish children as young as 4 years of age early reading skills. It is likely that such an approach could lead to even earlier learning of reading skills, in some children.

Previous research has shown that children’s reading development can be stimulated with structured and playful language games from the age of six. In a current three-year study, researchers at the University of Gothenburg are exploring the effects of having children as young as four participate in such games. The hypothesis is that young children who are actively stimulated in their development of so-called linguistic and phonological awareness end up better prepared for dealing with written language.

...The preliminary findings indicate that the phonological training had an effect immediately following the training, and that the effect can be observed one year later as well. ‘The children in the intervention group had a higher level of phonological awareness. They were for example able to identify and manipulate speech sounds. Rhyming is one example of this. The ability to recognise the form of the language is something that researchers know is important for early reading development,’ says Senior Lecturer Ulrika Wolff, who is heading the project together with Professor Jan-Eric Gustafsson. Since the studied children are still in pre-school, they are not yet being taught the art of reading. The researchers are planning to follow the same group of children for a few years once they start school in order to investigate the more long-term effects of early intervention on the development of reading and writing skills. Doing so will show whether or not the children who have not received the training are able to catch up with the intervention group. _UGothenburg

The more headstarts you can give your child in terms of skills acquisition, the more dangerous he can ultimately become. Reading allows one to acquire knowledge independently, without another person supervising or dictating the terms of learning.

The Swedish researchers once again point out the importance of game play in early childhood learning. Infants and young children are attracted to play, and are able to focus better in a play-captive state. This relationship of play and learning can remain in effect throughout childhood and into adulthood, although the "play" of adults can be harder to recognise as such.

Human brains develop according to a schedule, which is determined by the interaction of the child's genetic complement and the child's lifetime history from conception, and earlier (congenital factors affecting gametes and gestational environment).

As critical periods come and go, brain plasticity occurs at variably optimal levels. If parents have not prepared the child's environment for specific critical periods, much of the potential can be lost. A better prepared environment will boost the child's plasticity during particular windows of development, giving the child a head start -- and thus an extended lifetime with regard to specific skills and competencies.

Multi-competent children become multi-competent adults. And that is very dangerous to the powers that be, unless the powers that be happen to closely resemble the original writers of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. But in the modern world, that is most unlikely.

Train your children to be powerful and dangerous. But prepare them for the backlash which is likely to be ginned up by the status quo. H/T Science Direct

Musical Prodigies in Diapers? Science and Early Music Training

A recent study published in Developmental Science suggests that early training in active "participitory" musical experience boosts a six month old's communications and social skills.

We found that random assignment to 6 months of active participatory musical experience beginning at 6 months of age accelerates acquisition of culture-specific knowledge of Western tonality in comparison to a similar amount of passive exposure to music. Furthermore, infants assigned to the active musical experience showed superior development of prelinguistic communicative gestures and social behaviour compared to infants assigned to the passive musical experience. These results indicate that (1) infants can engage in meaningful musical training when appropriate pedagogical approaches are used, (2) active musical participation in infancy enhances culture-specific musical acquisition, and (3) active musical participation in infancy impacts social and communication development. _Developmental Science (abstract)

Six months has always been considered too early to begin musical training for infants. But if, in fact, the infant brain is particularly "plastic" to musical training at, or near, the age of six months, it may someday be seen as a sign of parental neglect to deprive infants of active participatory musical training!

More:

The researchers describe a six-month experiment featuring 34 infants and their parents. The babies’ average age at the time of the first session was six and one-half months; the last week of classes occurred around their first birthday. Twenty of the infants and their parents participated in weekly, hour-long interactive music classes, which utilized the well-known Suzuki method.

“Two teachers worked with the parents and infants to build a repertoire of lullabies, action songs and nursery rhymes,” the researchers write. “Parents were encouraged to use the curriculum CD at home and to repeat the songs and rhymes daily.”

The other 14 infants and their parents enrolled in passive music classes, where they listened to “a rotating series of recordings from the popular Baby Einstein series” while playing together with balls, blocks or books. After six months, those who took part in the active music lessons demonstrated a preference for tonal over atonal music—a pattern not found in the passive group. In addition, the researchers found “significantly larger and/or earlier responses” to piano tones in the brains of the babies who took active lessons.

But the benefits of this training went far beyond early indications of music appreciation.

“After participation in active music classes, infants showed much lower levels of distress when confronted with novel stimuli than after participation in passive music classes,” the researchers report. All the babies smiled and laughed less as they aged during the experiment, but the fall-off was greater among the passive listeners.

Communication skills were also positively affected. “Use of gestures increased greatly between six and 12 months of age,” the researchers note, “but increased more so for those in the active compared to the passive music classes.”

Trainor and her colleagues do not view these developments as isolated. “Positive social interactions between infants and parents likely lead to better communication and earlier acquisition of communicative gestures, which in turn lead to more positive social interactions,” they write. _PSMag

It is important to emphasise that parental participation was key to the positive social and communication skills results obtained from the "active participatory" training group. Parent-child bonding was almost certainly enhanced as well.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of parental involvement in critical period training of children. If parents are too busy to help children take optimal advantage of developmental windows, it is unlikely that anyone else will take the necessary amount of care in such training opportunities.

If parents are there every step of the child's critical development and skills acquisition, the bonding of common experience and the building of trust as the child gains confidence and competence, will pay lifetime dividends for both parent and child.