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Lilian Katz is a world-class provocateur. She is constantly challenging all of us in the early childhood field to examine our practice, to reflect upon the reasons for what we do. She has been instrumental in professionalizing, and in elevating, the work of caring for young children. And, she is a great storyteller. In her latest book, Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching, we have the opportunity to see how as a child and a mother her ways of thinking were shaped. In the book she addresses challenges (the intellectual emergencies) she faced as a parent. As with all writing by Katz, you can close your eyes and poke your finger at any passage and it will be inspiring. For example, here is where my finger landed in this book:
"... It is clear that teachers and most others want to be kind and accepting of the young children. Perhaps the constant use of sweet tones and unreal phrases may just be an occupational hazard of working with young children over a period of long time. We also have come to offer children very frequent praise as in 'Good job!' or 'Fantastic!' and other such phrases. Sometimes I think that we have simply over-corrected for the practices when I was a child many years ago and adults withheld compliments or praise for fear that children would become conceited.
"But children are not likely to be hurt when we speak to them directly and clearly and calmly instead of super-sweetly. I once observed a young, enthusiastic, and dedicated kindergarten teacher who had put on the top right-hand corner of her large blackboard a very colorful smiling tiger made of cardboard about three feet long and two feet tall.... Every time the children became a bit rowdy the teacher raised her voice and said, 'The tiger (by its pet name) is upset that you are so noisy!' The children seemed to understand the game she was playing. But why an adult would ask children to respond to the feelings of a cardboard tiger and not to the judgment of their teacher is something of a mystery to me. Why should a teacher say to a child who just grabbed a stapler from another one, 'We don't do that in this class!' when the child just did it? Practices like these create a phony classroom culture that fails to involve children in making good sense of their experience and environment."
Lilian Katz's new book is now available on the Exchange website. Describing why she wrote the book, Katz observed: "I have tried to share my own views of what education is about. To me it is about developing in the young certain dispositions. These dispositions should include being reflective, inquisitive, inventive, resourceful, full of wonder (wonder-full?) and perhaps puzzlement too."
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