Parents of preschoolers have all seen: kids follow their teachers' instructions way better than they do their parents'.
- Parents of preschoolers have all seen: kids follow their teachers' instructions way better than they do their parents'.
- What's going on?
- I think part of it has to do with the kids seeing all of the other kids following along.
- If the teacher issues an instruction, and 90% of their peers all follow along, it puts more social pressure on the individual to go along.
- Everyone else is doing it, so it can't be that unreasonable.
- They don't want to be the odd one out.
- This is even more effective with mixed-age classrooms: the more mature older kids are a kind of seed crystal of rule following for the rest of the class to follow.
- It seems like a metastable equilibrium, though… You could imagine on day one if most students don't follow the teacher's instructions, it could very quickly switch into another stable equilibrium of chaos where kids learn to not follow the teacher's instructions because no one else does.
- If I were a preschool teacher I'd be an anxious mess that very first day of class!