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The Preschool Paradox
March 17, 2016
Hopelessness is an illusion, a gripping force, but an illusion. I can choose to be an actor, not a reactor.
-Holly Elissa Bruno, Happiness is Running through the Streets to Find You
-Holly Elissa Bruno, Happiness is Running through the Streets to Find You
Erika Christakis' new book, The Importance of Being Little, is an impassioned plea for educators and parents to put down the worksheets and flashcards, ditch the tired craft projects and exotic vocabulary lessons, and double-down on one, simple word: Play. In an NPR interview Christakis was asked, what is this phenomenon that you call "the preschool paradox"? Her response:
"It is the reality that science is confirming on a daily basis: that children are hardwired to learn in many settings and are really very capable, very strong, very intelligent on the one hand. On the other hand, the paradox is that many young children are doing poorly in our early education settings. We've got a growing problem of preschool expulsions, a growing problem of children being medicated off-label for attention problems. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence that parents are frustrated and feeling overburdened....
"We have very crammed [preschool] schedules with rapid transitions. We have tons of clutter on classroom walls. We have kids moving quickly from one activity to another. We ask them to sit in long and often boring meetings. Logistically and practically, lives are quite taxing for little kids because they're actually living in an adult-sized world.
"On the other hand, curriculum is often very boring. A staple of early childhood curriculum is the daily tracking of the calendar. And this is one of those absolute classic mismatches, because one study showed that, after a whole year of this calendar work where kids sit in a circle and talk about what day they're on, half the kids still didn't know what day they were on. It's a mismatch because it's both really hard and frankly very stupid.
"We're underestimating kids in terms of their enormous capacity to be thoughtful and reflective, and, I would argue, that's because we're not giving them enough time to play and to be in relationships with others."
Teachers Roles in Childrens Play |
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Comments (3)
Displaying All 3 CommentsPennsylvania, United States
I agree with the article and the need for just natural, conversational, playful learning. I am always amazed at what the children design, discover and create. However, we do talk about the calendar not so the children can master it, but because they enjoy singing the days of the week, they enjoy guessing what day it is by the initial sound and they love writing the number on the calendar when it's their turn. They often fill the empty calendar blocks in with appropriate numbers, silly numbers, letters, words they copy, squiggles--you name it. It lends itself to conversation which to me is the heart of the whole program. I am not testing them on anything but I like to be able to allow them to hear names of days, months, numbers, letters, colors, holidays in playful and enjoyable ways. We talk about a wide variety of topics naturally through the course of our day and guess what --days happen.
MBR Professional Development Group
Fort Worth, TX, United States
I heard that broadcast on NPR and was so excited to hear someone who has "nailed it" on some of the central issues to quality care of young children. Can't wait to get started reading her book.
CSBC
Denver, CO, United States
How often do we have to keep saying this? Obviously the people creating the standards and setting the expectations are not the people who understand the research and how children learn. This is the ultimate mismatch!
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