“Mommy, mommy, I throwed the ball”
The mother smiles at her three year old’s absolutely adorable and intuitive conjugation of the verb to throw, but still she corrects him.
“It’s ‘I threw the ball’ dear, not ‘I throwed the ball’”
“Why?” is the immediate response, and the standard retort to almost any statement she makes these days.
“Because it’s an irregular verb,” she explains. But by the time she finishes her explanation his mind is already concentrated on other things and the notion of an irregular verb is much too abstract to even ask why.
In all languages around the world that interaction is nearly ubiquitous. But what exactly did that child learn from that interaction? Did he learn to conjugate an irregular verb? Probably not. He did however, learn that there is right and there is wrong and there is a reason. He learned that he should opt for what is right even if he doesn’t understand the reason. He learned that opting for right is a path to self improvement. It’s a basic lesson for a developing brain: there is right, there is wrong, choose right and you’ll be better off. There, at that moment a synapse is formed in his brain to distinguish right from wrong and opt for right in order to be a better person.
As I walk around Porto Alegre, I frequently eavesdrop in the conversations of passersby, (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, it’s infinitely more entertaining than anything on TV) and I’m frequently dumbfounded by the incorrect use of the language, in this case Portuguese. The phenomenon is more glaring here than it was in Mountain View or Sunnyvale (CA) where I lived before. But I’m certain that if my life had been less sheltered and I had spent more time in less privileged communities, the phenomenon would have been just as glaring in English. These people are usually very poor and uneducated. When these people were 3 years old no-one told them “this is right dear, that is wrong, choose right,” because no-one around them had enough of an education to know the difference. On a daily basis these people are exposed to media that demonstrates to them through examples that their use of the language is different for the use of the language made by ‘successful’ people. But it’s too late. At the age of 3, while their brains were forming synapses that would serve them for the rest of their lives, no-one around them had enough command of the language to teach “right, wrong, choose right,” “right, wrong, make the choice that improves you.” By the time that person is 6 years old and finally goes to a public, underfunded, violent school for an indifferent education, it’s too late, his brain is already formed. The critical period in brain formation is before the age of 3 and that critical lesson will never be ingrained and instinctive in his thought processes unless it is taught from birth. He will learn right from wrong, and he may improve his life, but it will not be instinctive. It will not be part of his brain’s physiology.
Underprivileged communities everywhere in the world are characterized by the improper use of their local languages, along with criminality and a complete lack of opportunity for social mobility. And everyone believes that poverty propagates a lack of education and social mobility. It does, absolutely. But there may be a very basic underlying reason for that. It’s not just that people in these communities can’t afford better schools, it’s that children under the age of 3 in these communities are never taught awareness of self improvement through these basic lessons a mother gives when she herself knows the difference. It has been shown that in extremely poor communities, the children of women who receive the most rudimentary education are more likely to leave abject poverty and lead productive lives. This is because they are able to teach their children from birth that there is right and wrong and a choice must be made. And that lesson teaches her child self improvement, and an awareness of self improvement gives her child opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to him.
There is right, there is wrong, I must chose and the choice I make improves me. It’s simple, but it can’t be taught in school, it must be learned from a caregiver before the age of three.
Do you want to fix the world? Here’s the solution, it’s surprisingly simple: give each woman the most basic, rudimentary education and the miniscule amount of power needed to protect and teach her child. Mind you, it’s not about correct grammar and a literary education. Basic grammar is just one of the foundations the society where I live and where you live. A Massai woman isn’t going to correct her daughter’s grammar, she’s going to show her to proper technique for making flour from the grain they harvested. But if she knows that when her daughter is 7 years old she will become the fifth wife of a 40 year old man in exchange for a cow and five chickens… she may be less emotionally invested in the child’s early education.
Name a current social problem in the world: a rudimentary education and a miniscule amount of power to protect her child is the solution to the root cause of that problem.
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