Image: Aurora Photos
In Brief
- A growing consensus among psychologists and neuroscientists maintains that children learn best when allowed to explore their environments through play.
- Preschools are increasingly turning away from play-based learning to lectures and testing.
- Placing heavy emphasis on academics early in life is not only out of line with how young brains develop, it might even impede successful learning later on.
On a perfect Southern California morning not long ago, a gaggle of children gathered in the backyard of a million-dollar home in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood to celebrate the birthday of twin four-year-old girls. The host parents had rented a petting zoo for the day, and kids jumped gleefully in a bouncy castle out in the driveway. On the terrace, a few parents chatted beside an alluring spread of bagels, coffee and fruit.
Most of the kids at the party attend the same preschool. The father of one child enrolled there, where tuition is $14,300 a year for half a day, was asked what he likes about it.
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14 Comments
Add CommentYes. This is an important expose of the mindset that had schools in this country in a death spiral. Most schools have always been social sorting devices. Now they are just getting more systematic. SOmeone should call it what is is, child abuse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMuch of parenting today is driven by fear - fear that our kids won't succeed. But what is the standard for that success? GPA? SAT scores? My greatest fear as a parent is that my daughter will not learn how to make herself happy in whatever she chooses to do with her life. My job is to help her learn how to do that, and then step back and see what she makes of herself. Doctor? Lawyer? Line cook? Janitor? I don't care, as long as she loves what she does. So she goes to a Waldorf School, where the emphasis is on educating the body and the heart as well as the mind. We have one of the only Forest Kindergartens in the U.S., where the children are outside most of the day, regardless of weather. In that setting they learn from nature, from each other, and from the unobtrusive guidance of teachers who let children find answers that work for them wherever they are in their development. The teachers may share a story from Cambodia, they may introduce a game or a song from there, but make a child find it on a map? No way!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm heartened to find people supporting the idea of refining today's typical definition of age-appropriate knowledge. Learning in an early childhood classroom needs to be relevant to a young child's life... of which knowing about the political boundaries of countries in a far away continent would be way down on my list.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am the parent of a Waldorf school graduate. It was there that I learned that the only activity that lights up the ENTIRE brain is PLAY ; so I was happy she attended a play-based pre-school. If you observe them closely, most children naturally engage in activities that allow them to learn about how the world works and how to develop their neural circuitry if we provide a healthy environment. Gifted teachers can direct the play or practical tasks taken up by older pre-school students in ways that ensure they are prepared for the academic work they will take up in first grade.
I also learned that academic work, when combined with ARTISTIC activities, engages more areas of the brain than activity on academic work alone; so I was happy that oral story-telling, visual arts, sculpting, woodwork, hand crafts, music, drama, and/or movement were integrated into or complemented her daily academic experiences.
I give the Waldorf approach a lot of credit for nurturing someone who now, as a young adult, is a fine human being with a deep understanding of herself, great interpersonal skills, and a lively and creative mind.
Perhaps pre-schooling has taken on its current emphasis on academics out of fear that our children will not be prepared to compete in the global marketplace without an early start at building essential academic skills. It misses the whole point of childhood, doesn't it?
When I taught preschool back in the 80s in New York, I took my class outside everyday and I let nature help me teach the children how to deal with every day life in this world. They played and learned about the things around them and they learned how to be alert about the things around them and how to survive; they played in the leaves and then they learned how to count them and the child who counted the highest got to be first to jump into a big pile of leaves and mess them all up. We all had fun and learned about the little lizards that hide under wet leaves and we advanced beyond the children who had to sit inside all day. I always believed that the best way to teach was to play in the environment where your subject lives. Inside classrooms are a killer for the imagination of young curious minds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a former teacher, assistant principal, and now the parent of a four-year-old girl; I am convinced that No Child Left Behind is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed. NY Governor Cuomo is now advocating for testing at the beginning of Kindergarten. Direct instruction, supported by the testing frenzy of NCLB, really will bring the macabre classroom scene from "Pink Floyd's The Wall" into reality. As for my daughter, she went to a pre-school that emphasized play and artistic expression, and she'll continue to have parents that nurture playing and artistic expression. She's a thinker, not another brick in the wall.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real problem is a combination of ignorant parents and souless parasitic vermin that will jump on any scam to screw the gullible out of their money. Like the "baby doofus" videos that promised extra smart kids but actually inhibited learning, the focus on a factory like learning environment is just another scam. For thousands of years those who bothered to pay attention have known that spending time with and paying attention to children is the best way to nurture them. As the first commenter said, factory style schooling is properly called child abuse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's the point of play-based preschool, if you can do it for free yourself - at home or in the park, and get some fun and good memories out of it! Then you don't need to go to work to make the money to pay for the preschool! My son was attending a couple days of preschool a week since he was 2. Now, at almost 5, we are taking a year off preschool before kindergarten, so he can spend more time with his mom and two younger brothers, doing spontaneous fun things, like visiting parks and farms, and PLAYING.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlay-based activities at home are the best ... lucky boy! But expert teachers who can guide learning while doing play-based activities can give children experiences that some parents don't know how to do. Good teachers are skilled at ensuring that there are no learning gaps, so kids are ready for instruction (1st grade). Not all kids have siblings and they need to be around other kids. So, there are good reasons to find a great pre-school program ... but, I agree with you - it certainly isn't necessary for all families.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree. The benefit of preschool (and school over homeschool for this matter) is social. Even playing with siblings is not the same as being in a company of many kids of the same age, forming friendships and learning to behave socially.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy name is Chris
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was told that I was a severely learning disable student though out my time in early schooling to the end of high school. I really believe that the way a child should be taught is though life lesson. Life is not structured and it’s unpredictable. I have always wanted to be smart but when I was younger I saw many of my classmates moving forward allot faster then I was. I don’t think that I understood it at the time, but my reaction was that I was stupid because I couldn’t keep up with everyone else. Being smart in the school to me was like a popularity contest that made me feel like an outsider. I always felt like I could not fit in. From being in the military and then getting many different types of jobs that range from a paper boy to an electrical tech on military equipment. I think that it’s important to build a team building environment. I really think that morals need to be stressed at this age, as well as values. This is something that no matter what age you are you can learn, and change you self for the better. By the way I am about to graduate with an AA degree in electronics in December of 2011. I really never thought I would be able to do such a thing, but I have learned overtime that I can learn and that I am not dumb. I just wish someone would have helped me earlier, I am 33 now. I really kind of got upset about this article because it hit home. I think that everyone should be allowed to grow up in their own way, and not by a standard. Thanks if you look at this. So basically I feel that morals and commonsense is developed at an early age more so then most people think.
Thank you for validating - with research - what I teach
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy students everyday. Children need the skills that make them life-long learners. The content/curriculum is important,when in context, but children have to explore and develop the skills to find the information and to assess the value of what is find. That takes a longer process than short term memory flashcards.
I tell my college students that my kindergarten classes were filled with intrinsic curious learners whose cognitive skills were well above the lowest levels of Bloom's scale. That was my job and we used the tool of "play" to get there. That is the true meaning of "ready to learn"...my students weren't just ready. They were really learning by critical thinking and problem solving. We are headed in the wrong direction again because of the fact that adults cannot visualize their own years of learning -- from birth to five years of age. The pendulum swings...we need to find the balance.
How much work is it for an adult to plan a vacation. That's a play time - not such a dirty word after all. Hummmmmm.
Thank you for validating - with research - what I teach
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy students everyday. Children need the skills that make them life-long learners. The content/curriculum is important,when in context, but children have to explore and develop the skills to find the information and to assess the value of what is find. That takes a longer process than short term memory flashcards.
I tell my college students that my kindergarten classes were filled with intrinsic curious learners whose cognitive skills were well above the lowest levels of Bloom's scale. That was my job and we used the tool of "play" to get there. That is the true meaning of "ready to learn"...my students weren't just ready. They were really learning by critical thinking and problem solving. We are headed in the wrong direction again because of the fact that adults cannot visualize their own years of learning -- from birth to five years of age. The pendulum swings...we need to find the balance.
How much work is it for an adult to plan a vacation. That's a play time - not such a dirty word after all. Hummmmmm.
Thank you for validating - with research - what I teach
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy students everyday. Children need the skills that make them life-long learners. The content/curriculum is important,when in context, but children have to explore and develop the skills to find the information and to assess the value of what is find. That takes a longer process than short term memory flashcards.
I tell my college students that my kindergarten classes were filled with intrinsic curious learners whose cognitive skills were well above the lowest levels of Bloom's scale. That was my job and we used the tool of "play" to get there. That is the true meaning of "ready to learn"...my students weren't just ready. They were really learning by critical thinking and problem solving. We are headed in the wrong direction again because of the fact that adults cannot visualize their own years of learning -- from birth to five years of age. The pendulum swings...we need to find the balance.
How much work is it for an adult to plan a vacation. That's a play time - not such a dirty word after all. Hummmmmm.
Paul Tullis' article contains a serious factual error about Hart and Risley's meaningful differences study supports innate learning methods of children. That statement is as egregious as saying Kepler and Galileo supported the earth as the center of the solar system. Todd Risley was one of my dissertation advisors, and I know those studies inside out. The point of the study was that professional class parents spoke to and reinforced many times more the verbal behavior of their young children, compared to middle class who did so much more than families on welfare. Families on welfare had more verbal negatives, reprimands, and punishments than positive verbal comments, as well. In the meaningful differences study, it is clear that the adults in the different social classes selectively prompted and reinforced (intentionally or unintentionally) verbal and social behaviors of their children. Those parental behaviors had huge consequences on the development of the children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTodd Risley, his senior colleagues, and grad students (like myself) not only created longitudinal studies of a descriptive evolutionary processes in family interactions and child development, they also created and tested brilliant strategies to remediate these "meaningful differences" in well controlled experimental and longitudinal studies These behavioral interaction differences in micro-events determining major child developmental outcomes are completely modifiable.
The article also presents a false dichotomy between the use of direct instruction procedures, play or other related social-emotional activities, and long-term outcomes. These are not either-or issues. Both are necessary for optimal outcomes. And using a single snapshot vignette of Montessori preschool for the richest kids in Los Angeles as a basis for social policy and science is laughable.
The lack of due diligence in this article surprises me, as an avid reader of Scientific American, Science, and many journals. For example, there was no fact checking about the long-term study on High Scope versus Direct Instruction reported in 1997. For example, independent analyses show that the claims that High Scope caused less delinquency and criminal behavior than direct instruction is false. Please see Cole, K. N., P. E. Mills, et al. (2005), and Mills, P. E., K. N. Cole, et al. (2002). Both had equal outcomes.
Please do better in future articles.