We have lift-off! Cloudsoft is up and running, and its co-founder and CTO is now entering the blogosphere. But at the same time that I'm starting to write...
I've decided not to teach my children to read. I love books, and of course I want them to do the same, but a friend posed a theory that for better or worse has changed how we're raising our kids. Until this week, I've been diligently teaching Lucas the alphabet: but no more. Apparently learning to read when you're very young screws you up. Well then, I'm a lost cause, but we needn't go out of our way to pass on the sins of the father. Apparently, among other deficits, it can cause poor memory. At least I think that's what my friend said... My own memory is appalling (though having outsourced that functionality to 3G technology -- grep, google, and the good woman -- I get by). But until this week I hadn't realized that Doctor Seuss was to blame.
We'll screw up our kids whatever we do; this theory was compelling. Language is wonderful, certainly, yet it's a skill that is mostly aural and oral (for most people, possibly excluding bloggers and their Dear Readers). Lucas loves his stories, devouring the pictures and hanging on every word. Why force his eyes towards the letters? For it might dampen his joy; and it will surely distract from the story, which is infinitely more important than the letters which constitute it. There is a semiotic gap between our signs (words) and the signified (concepts). There is a solipsistic gap between our concepts (categories) and the reality (instances). These levels are necessary, for both thought (cognition) and language (communication), but can they be developed in one modality -- the spoken word -- for now, while the eyes be left to focus on images? For it is more important that a child know how to listen to stories, than that he know how to read the words.
Surprisingly I've not been able to find much research in the area, but two principles stand out. Firstly, children seem to learn multiple languages quite well if and only if each has a dedicated context (e.g. Mum speaks French, Daddy English, and German at school, as with my cousins; or in my children's unfortunate case, Mum speaks rough Glaswegian, Daddy coarse American, and a gentle Borders Scots accent on the playground). It's tenuous, but maybe the modalities argument works. Secondly, and more compelling (but less conclusive), kids who learn to read early don't seem to do any better than their counterparts who learn when they get to school. So by Hippocrates, or even Blaise Pascal, we should not be stressing reading, not just now. Instead, let us be creativite and attentive, tell stories and draw pictures.
Returning to the good ship Cloudsoft, we're charged with developing a complicated piece of software. I've suggested we not do any coding for a wee while, and the team has agreed -- for reasons similar to those above. Coding is a mindset, of letters and symbols with a precise and elegant semantics, similar to reading. And it is similarly addictive, as knows anyone who has written several hundred lines then realised (or got told by a buddy or code reviewer) that it's all wrong. And it is similarly restrictive, for when enmeshed in code it can be hard to step back and think through what's the best design. A good software design plan makes the code smaller, quicker to write, and crucially, much easier to maintain over time. Simplicity. It's worth devoting time to -- not too much, for the design will be spent and jettisoned, and the proof of the pudding is in the execution -- but enough to get us from lift-off into orbit. The team is unanimous, and it's design time aboard Cloudsoft: we too will be telling stories and drawing pictures.
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