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Friday, March 08, 2013

Eleven Plus Instincts


How does this work?

Kittens, brought up with rats, may never have seen their mothers kill the rat. These kittens are reasonably likely to get on well with the rats and even play with them.

Kittens brought up in a more traditional environment where they have seen their mothers killing rats, almost always develop into rat killers.

Does this mean that kittens killing rats is an acquired response? Are adult cats supposed to feel instinctively that they want to kill rats?

It was felt, at one time, that people reacted instinctively to certain activities like hunting, collecting, rivalry, co-operation, teasing and play. This is not an exhaustive list of supposed instinctive behaviour by any means but it does seem to miss out the key area of desire to do well on eleven plus papers.

An eleven plus child, chosen at random from a group of one thousand, may have a mental age of twelve, the social intelligence of an eight year old, a reading age of fifteen and the weight of a nine year old. How does a child develop a `killer instinct’ when working on eleven plus papers? Is this from learned behaviour from the parents? Would a child develop a `killer instinct’ by working in a class of bright and highly motivated children? If a child did develop a `killer instinct’, what are the chances of him or her retaining that drive during the GCSE and `A’ level years? Does a child need a `killer instinct’ to be able to well on eleven plus papers?

The last thing any one of us would want is a child to be approaching eleven plus work in a frenzy.






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