The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood - Edith Cobb

I remember studying in a Linguistics class about the time period when a child acquires language the easiest and most proficient. It's called the critical age hypothesis, occurring somewhere between the ages of five and ten. However, I don't think that this critical age is reserved to only language. I am currently taking a creative drama class focusing on teaching children. All of these things reinforce, for me, the importance od letting the child explore the world around him/her. This article also reminds me of Wordsworths's "Calm and beauteous evening" (I'm not sure this is what its called), the one where he talks about the little girl and how her reactions differ from his reactions as an adult. It's the one with the famous line, "The child is father of the man."

I also think that it is interesting that people are so amazed by child prodigies - Why are we adults so vain as to think that a person can only attain greatness thorugh age and experience? I think if the child is exposed to enough and is supported at their window of learning, he/she can doa lot more than an adult. Of course I'm not dismissing the awe present when a child can paint like Picasso, but there is something special in a child that naturally sparks this creativity. I'm not really sure what I'm talking about - I'm just writing aloud. I love the part that where Cobb says that "what a child wanted to do most of all was to make a world in which to find a place to discover a self." So true...aren't we all?