Figuring Kids Out, But Not Me

I have all sorts of aversions - most famously winter coats (I layer sweatshirts when it's really frigid and have made it through winters in St. Louis, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston through the system) and rain gear (I just get soaked). I just think they're both uncomfortable.

The XX Factor (quickly becoming a must-read in my book) recently reported on a new study (whose title's first word appears to be the final round of the 2004 Scripps National Spelling Bee) that explains why "children" don't put their coats on, even after their mothers tell them a million times (perhaps slightly exaggerated) to do so. Turns out the mind of the child doesn't actually work like a miniature, less-well-developed (or better-developed, depending on which Fortune 500 CEO, hedge fund manager, or politician you're asking on a given day) version of the adult mind. Rather, the kid needs a "hook" on which to attach the abstract knowledge and make it meaningful in a practical way - not dissimilar, perhaps, from other generally-excepted theories of learning that acknowledges that the contextualization of knowledge is of paramount importance - we truly make sense of information only by weaving it into already existing knowledge. I could go on for a while on this stuff, but it's an interesting piece from the ladies at XX.