My wife and I have decided we’re going to homeschool our son, almost five, for various reasons. What age do you think it would be appropriate to start rationality training, and how would you go about it? Are there any particularly kid-friendly resources on rationality that anyone can recommend? (The sequences are good for beginners, but they’re well above the level of a five year old).
My wife and I have decided we’re going to homeschool our son, almost five, for various reasons.
You might want to look into the idea of unschooling.
My wife and I have decided we’re going to homeschool our son, almost five, for various reasons. What age do you think it would be appropriate to start rationality training, and how would you go about it?
Certainly before they reach five.
(1)
Kids want parents to do stuff. Most parents rely on their authority and don’t give their kid what it wants, even if the kid is able to provide valid reasons.
A good way to teach rationality is to avoid to rely on arguments by authority.
My father had the policy of always giving me the real reason when I asked for something whether or not I would be able to fully understand the answer. That taught me that it’s okay to get answers to questions that I don’t understand. It was a valuable lesson for me.
Dumbing things down and relying on authority for arguments are the two biggest things that parents do to avoid their children being rational.
(2)
When it comes to giving out pocket money consider giving it out as betting money. Let’s say the allowance is $3 per week.
Whenever the kid disagrees with you about a factual matter, he’s allowed to ask you for your odds.
So the kid thinks it’s raining. You don’t think so and are pretty certain. So you say you have 4:1 odds. The kid can bet $1 from his betting money. If he wins the bet than he get $4 in real coins from which he can buy something.
The pocket money is motivating so he will have a huge incentive to get good at having accurate confidence in his beliefs.
After a while he might even give you some rationality lessons.
(3)
I would think about teaching a five year old Anki for all occasions where he has to learn something.
What is the best existing evidence for unschooling?
To me it seems based on the premise that children, when left alone, become automatically strategic. Which is not a new idea; J.J.Rousseau already made this popular centuries ago (and provided some fictional evidence).
Here is an alternative hypothesis: Children outside of (elementary, high) school do on average significantly worse than their peers in schools, ceteris paribus. But there are also other factors beyond school contributing to education, which means that an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values can get better results by unschooling than an average child of average parents with average attention from parents gets by school.
1) Does an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values get better results by unschooling than an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values gets by school?
2) Does an average child of average parents with average attention from their parents get better results by unschooling than an an average child of average parents with average attention from parents gets by school?
The answers to these two questions are not necessarily the same.
I completely agree that those two are the relevant questions. So is there a good evidence for either of them?
All I found was anecdotal evidence that intelligent children of educated parents seem to fare better with unschooling than average children at school. And we would both agree that such evidence is irrelevant. (At best, it is evidence that unschooling is not completely destructive. But the claims in favor of unschooling seem to be stronger than that.)
Now would be good? You can probably construct appropriate questions for a five-year-old based on the Eliezer’s version of the fundamental question of rationality: “Why do you believe what you believe?”. This can apply to a playground fight as much as to a big political issue.
I have attempted this with my daughter. “Is Father Christmas real?” “Yes!” “How do you know?” “Because [best friend] saw him!” “How do you know [best friend] is right?” “’Cos she is!” At this point I had exhausted a 5yo’s philosophical introspection.
In your position I’d be curious about her response to “Has [best friend] ever said things that turned out not to be true?”, but I’d also be worried about poisoning her relationship to her best friend in the process of asking.
[best friend] is also magical and has power over the weather, or at least making it sunny on a rainy day. Daughter’s mother and I have both attempted to gently stimulate skepticism on this point. (Said best friend has a somewhat troubled family life and I suspect is claiming to be magical to feel power over her life, so we’re happy to be gentle over this one.)
First, I got a more instrumental response from a 7yo on whether the tooth fairy is real: “As long as I find my dollar under the pillow, she is!”
Second, you were using an adult language with a small child. Asking instead what her friend saw in more detail, and discussing that instead could have been more illuminating. Or not.
Pray tell. Or just tell, no praying required, that would be telling. Just prying. Required, I mean.
What age do you think it would be appropriate to start rationality training, and how would you go about it?
About 3. How old is your son again? What are you, a bad father? No worries, it may not yet be too late, if you wake him up and start now. Just ingrain the rationality training as an aspect of the way you interact with him, I go for the Socratic Method. Don’t set apart “rationality training” time (or are you planning to be irrational unless rationality is scheduled?!). Helping your kid develop mental models of others is my favorite. “Why is that person doing that, what does he want to achieve with that? What else could he do? Is what he doing the best way of reaching his goals? Yea, well done, now give the ice cream man his money, he’s looking at us weirdly.”
(Also keep in mind the “kids do as you do, not as you say” paradigm when interacting with others in the presence of your kid. Could lead to some strange conversations with the janitor, but aren’t they always. Strange, I mean.)
Edit: Tone for comedic purposes, here’s a special message to the downvoter(Edit:)s.
Pray tell. Or just tell, no praying required, that would be telling. Just prying. Required, I mean.
It really boils down to the convergence of a few factors; he’s already learning a higher grade level than he’d be placed in by his age, he suffers from some hyperactivity issues, and, quite frankly, my wife and I think we can do a better job than the public system. Or at least my wife can; I’m not convinced of my abilities at a teacher yet.
Just ingrain the rationality training as an aspect of the way you interact with him, I go for the Socratic Method. Don’t set apart “rationality training” time (or are you planning to be irrational unless rationality is scheduled?!). Helping your kid develop mental models of others is my favorite.
Obviously I’m not planning to be irrational at any given moment, but I was originally stuck in the mindset of curriculum since that’s what we’ve been going with for math, reading, and science. This is probably a better idea, though.
My wife and I have decided we’re going to homeschool our son, almost five, for various reasons. What age do you think it would be appropriate to start rationality training, and how would you go about it? Are there any particularly kid-friendly resources on rationality that anyone can recommend? (The sequences are good for beginners, but they’re well above the level of a five year old).
You might want to look into the idea of unschooling.
Certainly before they reach five.
(1) Kids want parents to do stuff. Most parents rely on their authority and don’t give their kid what it wants, even if the kid is able to provide valid reasons. A good way to teach rationality is to avoid to rely on arguments by authority.
My father had the policy of always giving me the real reason when I asked for something whether or not I would be able to fully understand the answer. That taught me that it’s okay to get answers to questions that I don’t understand. It was a valuable lesson for me.
Dumbing things down and relying on authority for arguments are the two biggest things that parents do to avoid their children being rational.
(2) When it comes to giving out pocket money consider giving it out as betting money. Let’s say the allowance is $3 per week. Whenever the kid disagrees with you about a factual matter, he’s allowed to ask you for your odds.
So the kid thinks it’s raining. You don’t think so and are pretty certain. So you say you have 4:1 odds. The kid can bet $1 from his betting money. If he wins the bet than he get $4 in real coins from which he can buy something.
The pocket money is motivating so he will have a huge incentive to get good at having accurate confidence in his beliefs. After a while he might even give you some rationality lessons.
(3) I would think about teaching a five year old Anki for all occasions where he has to learn something.
What is the best existing evidence for unschooling?
To me it seems based on the premise that children, when left alone, become automatically strategic. Which is not a new idea; J.J.Rousseau already made this popular centuries ago (and provided some fictional evidence).
Here is an alternative hypothesis: Children outside of (elementary, high) school do on average significantly worse than their peers in schools, ceteris paribus. But there are also other factors beyond school contributing to education, which means that an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values can get better results by unschooling than an average child of average parents with average attention from parents gets by school.
Apples to oranges. The relevant questions are:
1) Does an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values get better results by unschooling than an intelligent child of educated parents who invest a lot of time and expose the child to their values gets by school?
2) Does an average child of average parents with average attention from their parents get better results by unschooling than an an average child of average parents with average attention from parents gets by school?
The answers to these two questions are not necessarily the same.
I completely agree that those two are the relevant questions. So is there a good evidence for either of them?
All I found was anecdotal evidence that intelligent children of educated parents seem to fare better with unschooling than average children at school. And we would both agree that such evidence is irrelevant. (At best, it is evidence that unschooling is not completely destructive. But the claims in favor of unschooling seem to be stronger than that.)
Now would be good? You can probably construct appropriate questions for a five-year-old based on the Eliezer’s version of the fundamental question of rationality: “Why do you believe what you believe?”. This can apply to a playground fight as much as to a big political issue.
I have attempted this with my daughter. “Is Father Christmas real?” “Yes!” “How do you know?” “Because [best friend] saw him!” “How do you know [best friend] is right?” “’Cos she is!” At this point I had exhausted a 5yo’s philosophical introspection.
In your position I’d be curious about her response to “Has [best friend] ever said things that turned out not to be true?”, but I’d also be worried about poisoning her relationship to her best friend in the process of asking.
[best friend] is also magical and has power over the weather, or at least making it sunny on a rainy day. Daughter’s mother and I have both attempted to gently stimulate skepticism on this point. (Said best friend has a somewhat troubled family life and I suspect is claiming to be magical to feel power over her life, so we’re happy to be gentle over this one.)
First, I got a more instrumental response from a 7yo on whether the tooth fairy is real: “As long as I find my dollar under the pillow, she is!”
Second, you were using an adult language with a small child. Asking instead what her friend saw in more detail, and discussing that instead could have been more illuminating. Or not.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I was stuck in the idea of a set curriculum, but weaving it in wherever possible will probably help it stick better.
Pray tell. Or just tell, no praying required, that would be telling. Just prying. Required, I mean.
About 3. How old is your son again? What are you, a bad father? No worries, it may not yet be too late, if you wake him up and start now. Just ingrain the rationality training as an aspect of the way you interact with him, I go for the Socratic Method. Don’t set apart “rationality training” time (or are you planning to be irrational unless rationality is scheduled?!). Helping your kid develop mental models of others is my favorite. “Why is that person doing that, what does he want to achieve with that? What else could he do? Is what he doing the best way of reaching his goals? Yea, well done, now give the ice cream man his money, he’s looking at us weirdly.”
(Also keep in mind the “kids do as you do, not as you say” paradigm when interacting with others in the presence of your kid. Could lead to some strange conversations with the janitor, but aren’t they always. Strange, I mean.)
Edit: Tone for comedic purposes, here’s a special message to the downvoter(Edit:)s.
Downvoted entirely due to the edit.
It really boils down to the convergence of a few factors; he’s already learning a higher grade level than he’d be placed in by his age, he suffers from some hyperactivity issues, and, quite frankly, my wife and I think we can do a better job than the public system. Or at least my wife can; I’m not convinced of my abilities at a teacher yet.
Obviously I’m not planning to be irrational at any given moment, but I was originally stuck in the mindset of curriculum since that’s what we’ve been going with for math, reading, and science. This is probably a better idea, though.