Despite increasing pressure to make kindergarten more rigorous, the cognitive capacity of children’s brains hasn’t changed much over the past century, a new study by the Gesell Institute of Human Development says. A triangle is still a mystery to most four-year-olds, and counting 20 pennies and then remembering that number is beyond most five-year-olds.
At the Harvard Education Letter, Laura Pappano writes that the findings may seem counter-intuitive:
“Given the current generation of children that—to many adults at least—appear eerily wise, worldly, and technologically savvy, these new data allowed Gesell researchers to ask some provocative questions: Have kids gotten smarter? Can they learn things sooner? What effect has modern culture had on child development? The surprising answers—no, no, and none.”
Children might be coached into reciting the whole alphabet at an early age, but that doesn’t mean they get the concept of letters at a deeper level, the researchers say. So go ahead and sing that alphabet song with a four-year-old, but they’ll really only understand half of what you’re saying.