The Natural Laws of Children: Why Children Thrive When We Understand How Their Brains Are Wired

Child development researcher Alvarez provides a cogent argument for child-directed early education, inspired by the pedagogy of Maria Montessori and bolstered by “current scientific research on human development and French linguistics.” For support, she reports on her successful three-year experiment in teaching a group of three-to-five-year-olds in an underprivileged French public school, using a guided exploration approach predicated on the child’s built-in desire to learn and the plasticity of young brains. Alvarez describes her students flourishing using traditional Montessori learning exercises, such as being directed to sort differently sized but otherwise identical red rods by length. She strongly argues for the superiority of classic tools over newer, technology-assisted methods, such as “Montessori-based” apps or videos, in the latter case describing how children picked up language more readily from hearing it in person than from recordings. Nonetheless, Alvarez persuasively uses modern methods to substantiate her approach, such as MRI scans showing accelerated development of brain areas associated with reading in her students. Kohn’s translation should be particularly credited for seamlessly offering English alternatives for Alvarez’s examples of phonetic language teaching. Parents and educators will find Alvarez’s study both fascinating and useful. (Aug.)