T H O M A S . A R M S T R O N G, Ph.D Kindergarten is the New High School

Reprinted from GREEN MONEY JOURNAL winter08/09

I see the question of how K-16 education needs to change for the 21st Century asked a lot in educational circles these days, and I feel that it is often a question masquerading as an agenda. The agenda is basically to make kindergarten the new high school and college - hence the "K-16" label - by pouring more academics on already stressed children "to get them ready for the challenges of the future."

The problem with this is that children have different developmental needs at different ages:

• Young children need to play. 
  
• Older children need to find out how the world works. 
  
• Young adolescents need to work on social, emotional and meta-cognitive growth. 
  
• Older adolescents need to prepare to live independently in the real world. 
  
• Young adults need to work on vocational and relationship challenges.
  

Any attempt to prepare students for the 21st century must include addressing these different needs. 

I suggest that we don't really know what the challenges of the 21st century are going to be, and since we don't know, then we'd better teach our children to be self-reliant, to be curious, to ask questions, to be tolerant of other points of view, to be playful (in other words, not to take life too seriously), and to find something that they are really good at that they can use to help make the world a better place. 

Obviously, even though we don't know for sure what the future will bring, there are strong indications that an emphasis on ecology and diversity, in particular, will help prepare students for the coming decades. Consequently, we need to create living schools that help students think in terms of whole systems and cooperation rather than water-tight modules and competition with others. Since it appears that Marshall McLuhan was right about the future forty years ago when he said we were increasingly living in a "tribal village" then we need to help our students understand the challenges of globalization, and at the same time, help them prepare to work in their own neighborhoods to effect change. David Brower's famous adage, "think globally, act locally" certainly applies here. 

We need to stimulate our students to develop character and a deep appreciate for ethics that are not based on rigid moral values but on living and breathing spiritual principles. Finally, in order to prepare for the future, we need to help our students understand the past, since history all too often provides us with a map of what may lie ahead, so that we can avoid the mistakes repeatedly made by previous generations. 

Article by Thomas Armstrong, Writer 

Recently I've completed two books on human development and the stages of life, The Best Schools, and The Human Odyssey, and am now working on a book about neurodiversity, The Gift of Neurodiversity: Discovering the Hidden Strengths of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and Other Brain Differences (DaCapo/Perseus, 2010), which applies metaphors of biodiversity and cultural diversity to conditions that have thus far been couched in metaphors of deficit and disease. After this book, he plans a book on schools that are based on strong ecological principles (and would welcome suggestions of specific schools to investigate). 

Email: thomas@thomasarmstrong.com 

Website: http://www.thomasarmstrong.com 

Blog: http://www.thehumanodyssey.com

J O A N . A L M O N The Politics of Play

Reprinted from GREEN MONEY JOURNAL winter 08/09 

Five years ago, when the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood announced its campaign to restore imaginative, freely chosen play to children's lives, at home and in school, we were told that "play" was a four-letter word. "Don't use it," said many of our friends. We thought about it, and said, "No. We're going to change people's minds."

Despite its importance as the foundation for learning in early childhood, child-initiated play has practically disappeared from today's public kindergartens, and it is rapidly disappearing from preschools as well. This trend began more than 20 years ago, but it has accelerated under the No Child Left Behind Act. The Alliance for Childhood will issue a report this fall with disturbing new data on what is actually happening in kindergartens and why change is urgently needed. 

Public perceptions are at last starting to shift. Educators, health professionals, and parents are beginning to recognize that play is as vital to children's health as eating and sleeping. Cut it off and children suffer from play deprivation, which affects all aspects of their development. 

In recent months the importance of play has been addressed in The New York Times, on National Public Radio, and through other media. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a major clinical report in October 2006 asking pediatricians to talk with parents about the vital role of play. Environmental groups are focusing on children's need to play outdoors and connect with nature, and a number of new studies and books make a strong case for play-based education in preschool and kindergarten. 

In recent surveys of kindergarten teachers in New York and Los Angeles the majority reported spending two to three hours per day instructing children in literacy and numeracy and preparing them for standardized tests, but offering less than 30 minutes per day for play or other freely chosen activities. 

Many urban school districts, such as Los Angeles, have chosen scripted curricula as the primary mode of instructing kindergarten children in literacy and math, so that teachers spend two or more hours per day reading from a script. Inspectors come into classrooms frequently, and teachers are reprimanded and even fired if they do not follow the script exactly. 

The publishers of these scripted materials claim that these methods are research-based. In fact, there is little or no research showing long-term gains from scripted teaching or other intensively didactic programs in kindergarten. Yet these approaches were chosen for federal funding under the Reading First program. Recent government research, however, revealed that Reading First has had no effect on reading comprehension, despite large increases in the amount of time being spent in classrooms on literacy instruction. 

Scripted teaching began in the 1960s but was largely discredited when the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation conducted a comparison study of three preschool classes for low-income at-risk children. Two emphasized experiential activity. The third was a scripted program. The children were followed until age 23, and it became clear that those who had been in the scripted program had suffered greatly. They showed more signs of behavioral and learning difficulties than the others, were more likely to drop out of high school, and more likely to go to prison. Scripted approaches fell into disfavor until the current Bush Administration began to promote them. In the famous footage of President Bush being told of the 9/11 attacks, the book he is reading to a group of children is part of a scripted program sold by McGraw-Hill. The Bush and McGraw families have been close friends for three generations. 

Meanwhile, young children are showing increasing signs of stress and mental health problems. "Kindergarten rage" and other extreme behaviors have become alarmingly frequent. A Yale University study showed that the highest rate of school expulsion for children ages four to eighteen was among four-year-olds. Preschool boys were expelled at 4.5 times the rate of girls. 

The kindergarten picture is growing clearer: First we create unrealistic standards and expect kindergarten children to perform at a first- or second-grade level. Then we frustrate them by demanding hours of concentrated work every day to meet these standards, expecting them to learn in ways for which they're not developmentally ready. We test the children relentlessly to measure what they have learned, using standardized measures whose validity is highly suspect. We threaten teachers and principals with the loss of their jobs if the test scores don't go up. Then we deprive these stressed-out five-year-olds of the most effective means of coping with their distress-time for free play. Finally, we penalize them for misbehaving and acting out their frustration and anger. Is it any wonder that, for many children, the first lesson they learn in school is that they are not good enough? 

What's the solution? Adopt realistic learning goals for emerging readers, such as those delineated by Bank Street College, and restore creative play and experiential learning to kindergartens. These methods, combined with the guidance of teachers educated in child development and early learning, provide a foundation for a lifelong love of learning and a capacity for creative thinking. That is what 21st-century children need. 

© 2008 All Rights Reserved 

Article by Joan Almon, Educator and Advocate for Social Change 

Joan Almon is the Chair of the U.S. Alliance for Childhood, a partnership of educators, physicians, parents, and others advocating for social change to improve children's overall health and well-being. A major focus of the Alliance is the restoration of play to childhood ( http://www.allianceforchildhood.org and http://www.indefenseofchildhood.org ). There are also Alliance groups in the U.K. ( http://www.allianceforchildhood.org.uk ), Brazil ( http://www.aliancapelainfancia.org.br ), and a Europe-wide network based in Brussels ( http://www.allianceforchildhood.eu ). The U.S. Alliance is also part of a coalition to end the commercialization of childhood, which is composed of 25 organizations ( http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org ).