A Dozen Ways to Boost a Child's Education

Last time, I gave the first six pointers to parents for giving their children an educational edge: 1. Speak maturely to them - no baby talk. 2. Recite nursery rhymes daily. 3. Own plenty of books. 4. Encourage them to write alongside you. 5. Compose extemporaneous limericks with them. 6. When they're eight or nine, have them write three-paragraph essays every week or so.

I'll never forget the day my elder daughter came home from school, at the age of about ten, to declare her discovery that her classmates didn't have to write essays for their parents. She was astonished to find that the culture in her own home wasn't universal, and of course she begged to be liberated from the requirement. I asked her to write an essay about it. (See Part 1 for how that turned out.)

Now for the latter half of the dozen suggestions:

Have them read aloud to you. It's well known that reading aloud to children benefits them greatly. But have you tried having a preteen or teenager read aloud to you? It's a window into their reading ability. Encourage them to become proficient at dramatic readings - or the kind a professional newscaster might deliver. You'll quickly discover the limits of their vocabulary. Be encouraging, of course, never discouraging. They'll improve with practice.

As they mature, go through drafts of their essays. If they're nine or older, you have them writing three-paragraph essays once or twice a week. It becomes part of their routine. For the first couple of years, go easy on criticism. You might even abstain from correcting misspellings much. Focus on substance. Encourage them to support their ideas with specifics. As they gradually improve, you can become pickier in your requirements.

From the time my daughters turned twelve, I'd frequently say something like this: "You want to go to that party on Saturday night? Of course you can. But I'll need your three-paragraph essay by noon to give us enough time to go through three drafts. We must always go through at least three drafts. That's how it works in the real world." I'd suggest places that needed amplification by way of example.

ke them look things up in books. Today we all look things up on the internet. But only people of a certain age understand that traditional books underlie much of the information online. I wanted my kids to know what dictionaries and encyclopedias are, and how to use them. True, the internet will tell you that the moon is 238,900 miles from Earth, but I'd ask them to find a hard-copy book that would confirm that. I wanted them to learn to use old-fashioned indexes and reference books. Upon locating such a work, they'd beam.

I still keep stacks of the Oxford First Encyclopedia to give to children who visit my house. They also like The Oxford Children's Book of Famous People.

By the time they're 13, encourage them to keep a vocabulary notebook. Even though I advocate plain English in law, I also recommend having a Buckley-sized vocabulary. In the 20th century, various studies showed a strong correlation between a large vocabulary and a high income. In the 21st century, most studies have tended to show that the bigger your word-stock, the better you can understand and retain whatever you read. That seems like proving the obvious.

The point here is to record every new word they encounter: the word itself, its pronunciation, and its definitions - preferably handwritten. I'd use words that might challenge them and therefore become necessary for their notebooks. By the time they were preparing for college tests, I'd want my kids thinking that "SAT words" were rather elementary.

Encourage them to look up words in print dictionaries. I'd want all young kids to have the Oxford First Dictionary; all middle schoolers to have The American Heritage Student Dictionary; and all high schoolers to have the current Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Other similar books are available, but those are my favorites. Again, we want them fully conversant with looking up words arranged alphabetically. By the time they're high-school sophomores, it can be interesting to compare a middle-school definition (Ironwood: any of numerous trees having very hard wood) with a more advanced one (any of numerous trees and shrubs [as a hornbeam or hop hornbeam] with exceptionally tough or hard wood). The Oxford English Dictionary adds further information: These trees are tropical and subtropical - which leads to a whole new avenue of investigation, about the tropics and subtropics. Finally, we might search the internet.

Part of what we want children learning is the relative value of certain sources, and their variability in value from issue to issue. Without saying as much, we're teaching an element of critical thinking - and information literacy.

In conversation, use your full vocabulary. "That's fallacious. It contains at least three fallacies." "That was a sagacious comment your grandfather just made. Did you notice the sagacity?" "The antepenultimate point seems to be repeated in the penultimate one - the third from the last and the second from the last. Don't you think?" You get the idea.

Has it occurred to you that this isn't just for kids? You yourself will surely benefit. If you do all or most of the things I've mentioned here, you can watch with some bemusement as other parents scramble to bolster their children's skills in high school - when it's pretty late in the game.