Here is an excerpt from an article by David Kohn that was featured by The New York Times. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Illustration Credit: Bjorn Lie
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Twenty years ago, kids in preschool, kindergarten and even first and second grade spent much of their time playing: building with blocks, drawing or creating imaginary worlds, in their own heads or with classmates. But increasingly, these activities are being abandoned for the teacher-led, didactic instruction typically used in higher grades. In many schools, formal education now starts at age 4 or 5. Without this early start, the thinking goes, kids risk falling behind in crucial subjects such as reading and math, and may never catch up.
The idea seems obvious: Starting sooner means learning more; the early bird catches the worm.
But a growing group of scientists, education researchers and educators say there is little evidence that this approach improves long-term achievement; in fact, it may have the opposite effect, potentially slowing emotional and cognitive development, causing unnecessary stress and perhaps even souring kids’ desire to learn.
One expert I talked to recently, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., describes this trend as a “profound misunderstanding of how children learn.” She regularly tours schools, and sees younger students floundering to comprehend instruction: “I’ve seen it many, many times in many, many classrooms — kids being told to sit at a table and just copy letters. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s heartbreaking.”
The stakes in this debate are considerable. As the skeptics of teacher-led early learning see it, that kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors. Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?
In the United States, more academic early education has spread rapidly in the past decade. Programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have contributed to more testing and more teacher-directed instruction.
Another reason: the Common Core State Standards, a detailed set of educational guidelines meant to ensure that students reach certain benchmarks between kindergarten and 12th grade. Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have adopted both the math and language standards.
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Here is direct link to the complete article.
David Kohn is a freelance science writer based in Baltimore.
I also urge you to check out the most popular TED program, “How Schools Kill Children’s Creativity,” presented by Ken Robinson.
America is on the fast tract and it appears we have neither the patience nor the will to cherish early childhood. “Read by 5 years of age” is the latest mandate. Early learning is not the issue…TIMING is the issue. Children are like young, tender plants. They need time to develop and come to full bloom. You can’t “hot house” kids and push them into formalized education too fast too soon without damaging naturally developing curiosity. Young Children have a deep need to “play out” the stories of their lives. A preschool learning environment organized around open-ended learning materials has a better chance of stimulating the “ready to learn” than the didactic teaching and testing of discrete skills.
Thank you for your contribution to the ongoing conversation. You remind me of two neglected (albeit immensely important) insights. First, almost all of the high-impact improvements of learning in schools, colleges, and universities are throwbacks to learning in the one-room schoolhouse; and,. Also, in the workplace culture of the most innovative organizations, “play” is a foundational principle. I presume to add: children learn from from unstructured play outside of the classroom than they do from what happens when in a classroom.
Ken Robinson’s TED program on creativity in schools is a “must watch.”