Teach Effectively!

An Australian site that bills itself as “The Institute of Perceptual Learning,” is “Introducing A Powerful Program That Guarantees Your 6 To 36 Month Old Child Will Learn The Essential Skills They Need To Excel In School And Life!” It advocates something, though it isn’t quite clear to me what it is. I read the text there, but I could not find an objective, procedural description of what the advocates propose to do to promote perceptual learning. (I’m also interested in what learning doesn’t involve perception, but that’s a different question.)

Perceptual learning in your child occurs when they are repeatedly exposed to specific reading and maths concepts. These long lasting and amazing changes to their perceptual system incredibly improve their ability to effectively and positively respond to life and school.

The site has enough typos to make me doubt the power of the program it is selling. As read the material, I began to think the arguments sounded a good bit like the look-say rationale of the 1950s and 60s. Later, I started to remember the patterning and such recommended by Doman and Delacato. Yikes!

I’m with Gary Feng on this one. He commented, “Claims about Brain-based Education are rarely materialized, and if they do, they often have little to do with the brain part of the hype. What matters is what you do to the child and what the child does. And I can’t see how Mr. Lim could fulfull his guarantees.”

Link to the Web site of the Institute of Perceptual Learning.