The Education Gadfly scoffs at the notion that violent preschoolers are produced by higher academic standards:
The Times reporter rustled up the requisite couple of experts to lament that pre-schools have become places that replace "block sets and dress-up rooms" with "alphabet drills and quiet desk work." "The notion of standards are [sic] coming down almost to the embryo," grumped one such expert. "We are not allowing normal, creative, interactive play. We are wanting kids to sit down and write their names at 3..."Posted by kswygert at May 31, 2005 04:08 PMWhat's behind that dire development? (Are you still on the edge of your chair?) Nothing other than the federal No Child Left Behind act, which, claims the Times, is a cause of "the push for academic-centered preschooling."
Good grief. If we have learned anything about schooling, it is that young children have the best odds of succeeding there if they arrive having already mastered a host of skills by the time they reach kindergarten. When Bill Bennett, John Cribb, and I wrote The Educated Child a few years back, we strove to itemize those skills and, to our own amazement, the "kindergarten readiness list" occupied four pages...The United States is sorely overdue for such a focus in all its pre-school programs. But that doesn't mean you should picture tiny tots sitting in big school desks with dictionaries in front of them. Anyone who has witnessed a well put together pre-school knows that cognitive skills can usually be imparted with very little pain via activities that are also fun—not to mention nurturing.
Of course that calls for pre-school teachers who know what they're doing. And it's helped considerably if parents do their part, too. But as a country we'd be far wiser to try to solve those problems than to accept the nonsense of the New York Times and its hand-picked "experts," namely that pre-school should shun intellectual development and cognitive skills. The kids would be better served, too.