Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them Numbers

"For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready."

That's just crazy. I've seen four counterexamples in my own family.

One example: my oldest son received a present from his uncle and aunt for his first birthday, a toy that allowed putting plastic balls into a chamber, were they couldn't be seen, and then dumping out the balls again. So my son began playing with the toy, and after a moment of experimenting with it he put in three balls, and then inverted the toy to dump out the balls, but only two came out. (Apparently, as we adults surmised, one ball was still stuck inside.) He looked at the toy, very puzzled, and moved the toy around some more until the third ball came out. This was definitely before I made any formal effort to teach him mathematics. Already at age one he knew that 3-2>0, so he knew that there was still a ball inside the toy after the first attempt to dump out the balls.

Reminded me of this Feynman story with dominos: http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20...

Is anyone else bothered by the subtle social underclass undertones made in the article? Like:

"Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve."

"..two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf."

"..a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks..."

It's almost like the point being made is that, even dummies like these can benefit from our program.