Triggered above all by the results of the PISA study, we are talking today, more than ever, about the education crisis and early childhood education.

Now, it is certainly positive when a matter increasingly comes to the attention of the public. On the other hand, it always means that a problem has become worse. Let's think, for example, of the environmental debate and the current state of our planet.

Since I have been working intensively on the perception of small children, I would like to start by telling you something about this first, often completely underestimated and misunderstood stage of human development.

We adults usually have few memories of this diapered time of dependency . We are rather glad that we have overcome this phase and can lead our lives much more independently today.

The fact that the foundations for one or even several languages are laid at this early age is only mentioned here in passing. But this example alone shows that the young child absorbs everything new openly, unfiltered and full of interest - like a sponge.

This fact prompts psychology to say: "The essential imprinting of a person takes place in the first three to four years". The development of the brain is extremely rapid at this earliest age and makes us adults look really old, even in a figurative sense.

So we need a completely different attitude towards these little crawling children.

Let's put ourselves in the perceptual situation of a small child.

Imagine you are sitting in the cinema. The film is playing in a language you don't understand. On top of that, only different coloured spots flit across the screen, of which you have not the slightest idea what they are supposed to mean. And already you find yourself in the situation of a newborn child who has no idea what is going on. But your advantage over the toddler is still that you at least know what a "cinema", a "film", a "language", a "screen" and "spots" are, whereas the child does not have all these thinking terms at its disposal. It has hardly any experience with all the things it is surrounded by. But how does the child make these experiences and learn all these "terms" with the help of which it can gradually unknot, distinguish and signify this optical confusion?

The word "concept" already says it. The child "grasps by grasping". He takes things in his hand, puts them in his mouth, squeezes them, pulls on them and sees what they can withstand, smells them, listens to their sounds and sometimes throws them around. In this way, the child learns to distinguish between things. They all have different shapes, properties, surfaces, temperatures....

So please remember, dear parents: If your child clears your best china, including silverware, off the table at the next opportunity, this is not done with malicious intent.  The child is learning! It makes important experiences about things in the world and thus also about itself and its own strength.

Let's stay with the cup and spoon!

The child learns: I can reach into a "cup" with my hand, I can put my fingers through the "handle". The cup is "thin-walled", "smooth" and "deep". When I throw it on the floor, it makes a "clink" - and my parents react annoyed. All these characteristics together make a "cup". 

The "spoon" next to it is quite different. I can really grasp it and push it into my mouth. The spoon has a long "handle" and only a small, shallow depression, a "hollow". It feels "smaller", "colder" and "lighter" than the cup and is therefore also something different. When I throw this object away, it sounds lighter than the cup - and my parents don't react quite as annoyed!

This perception is called "tactile", which means nothing else than "touching, grasping". It is concrete, because it is bound to things, and holistic, because it "encompasses" things in their entirety. 

Visual perception gradually develops from all these tactile experiences. For example, the child has had so many gripping experiences with a cup that it recognises it without necessarily having to touch it. Visual perception is thus on a more abstract level than tactile perception and gains the upper hand more and more as the child grows older.

The more everyday and emotional a thing is, the earlier it is recognised purely visually. Studies have shown, for example, that the face of one's own mother is recognised purely visually a short time after birth, because it is filled to an extremely high degree with affect, i.e. with affection. This example makes it clear that it is hardly possible to precisely determine the time of the gradual transition from tactile to visual perception. However, it is a fact that visual perception and subsequently also intelligence are promoted through a variety of grasping experiences. So feel free to give your child all kinds of different, naturally harmless things to hold, this can only be beneficial!

In this way, the child is well on the way to learning to recognise and distinguish its surroundings bit by bit, and this works increasingly better until......

...yes, until suddenly a two-dimensional picture appears. Even if the objects in it are still so familiar and affect-occupied, sometimes considerable difficulties arise in recognising the image of a real object.

On the first double page of my book entitled "My first things" there is a spoon and a cup.

That is clear for an adult. But for a small child it is not at all! This is where the most serious misunderstandings occur, because hardly any adult can imagine where the problem is supposed to be. 

But you are already somewhat informed and sensitised by now: Just think about what we already know about the so-called "tactile perception". 

For the distinction and recognition of real things, everything that could be experienced by grasping was primarily decisive. But now the situation is completely different:

The spoon in the book suddenly feels just as flat as the cup, you can neither grasp it nor put it in your mouth. You can't reach into the cup, you can't put your finger through the handle. Everything here is flat and smooth. 

But this means that everything the child has learned about the things around it is no longer present. All previous criteria are now no longer useful.

The step from three-dimensional reality to two-dimensional image must be learned. Making and recognising a picture is not a natural but a cultural process.

The child must now learn anew that the image of an object stands for a real object. The so-called "picture sign" of a cup therefore stands for a real, genuine cup. 

Finally, another level of abstraction is writing.  Here, instead of real things, there are only completely abstract characters. This makes it clear that learning the "pictorial signs" is the basis for later learning the "written signs".

Or to put it another way: "reading" pictures is the preliminary stage of reading texts. 

This makes it clear that early, playful contact with "suitable" pictures significantly facilitates and promotes learning to read later on.

In order to make this important step from reality to image easier for the children, I have tried in my work to keep this enormous step as small as possible by drawing the depicted things and situations as realistically and detailed as possible.

It was always particularly important to me to depict the materials, as the children have rich experiences with these very things during their tactile phase.

The numerous positive reports from parents confirm my work here in particular, so I seem to have hit an essential point...

If you are interested in this topic, I can recommend my Facebook page, where the topic of children's perception is dealt with vividly in small bites.

Bei Interesse an diesem Thema kann ich Ihnen meine Facebookseite (und auch Instagramm) empfehlen, wo in kleinen Häppchen das Thema der kindlichen Wahrnehmung anschaulich behandelt wird.

www.facebook.com/helmutspanner.bilderbuch