Deborah Meier on transforming the world of childhood in school
My brother and I have a running argument about whether things are getting worse or better. When it comes to the schooling of young children, the answer is “probably both!”For the vast majority of young children, life in prior centuries was hardly golden. So as Stipek notes ("Early Childhood Education at a Crossroads"), the fact that in the United States today, young children of all races and income levels are more likely to be in a protected, educational setting is good news. But is starting school earlier necessarily a sign of progress?
Throughout human (and mammalian) history, the young have gained knowledge and competence largely through keeping company with adults, who in turn were largely engaged in their own activities. The novice learned through observation and immersion in a world of more competent performers. Children learned in the midst of experts who took it for granted that most of them would grow up to become as competent as the adults themselves. The idea of learning to be a grown-up through direct instruction, in settings in which novices far outnumber experts (10 to one is utopian!), is a recent development.
What remains unknown is how the introduction of this style of teaching and learning to ever younger humans will work out. Stipek and others note the increasing focus on academic skills and the accompanying tendency to assess children not through observation but through standardized tests. Catherine Snow, one of our renowned child-watchers ("From Literacy to Learning"), is rightly concerned about early literacy gaps. But what about early gaps in play, imaginative activity, strong interests, and tenacity? What about ingenuity, resourcefulness, and curiosity?
We need to transform the world of childhood in school. American educators are almost always interested in moving children forward and upward faster, rather than allowing them to become more deeply and broadly engaged in appropriate childhood tasks. An internally self-motivated child is often able to “make up” for lost academic time. In Finland, children don’t start to learn reading and writing until second grade but top the world in academic performance by the end of elementary school!
We need to reorganize childhood so that fathers and mothers can spend more, not less, time with their own young in settings that allow them all to blossom at their own pace, settings designed to expand the mindful curiosity of both caretakers and children, at home and at school. Before- and afterschool programs should emphasize activities that enhance children’s sense of autonomy and agency, that allow them to take increasing initiative in setting their own agendas, and that let them experience and observe the broad mix of ages that was once readily accessible to children. The family is not the enemy of young children. Rather than starting school earlier and earlier, and having school last longer and longer, we need to turn around the relationships between novices and experts, learners and teachers, parents and schools, so that we can keep the spirit of a good, old-fashioned “children's garden” (kindergarten) alive and well through 12th grade.
Deborah Meier is director of new ventures at the Mission Hill School in Roxbury, Mass., and was the founding principal of the Central Park East schools in New York City.
