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ALLIANCE FOR CHILDHOOD www. ll onceforchildhood.org

Swiss sychologistlJean iagetf,who ied n 1980,mappeditt.*tugerdfc6$lfitdevelopmentinchitd-hood. He frequently ran into what he called theAmerican question : How cEn pe speed, p thedevel

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said He pointed out that n Europe ch

they read at 5, he said,undue pressure n a child. 8

reading s the earning of play skills,whichfitrm the foundation of cognitive kills, he

fime to Slow Down: Evidence rom Ahroadn the 1970sGermany embarked n a similar plan o

push early earning-turning its kindergartens ntocenters or cosnitive achievement. ut a studvcompared @ith 50@Haming-q@bnd found that by age ten theilfif'dEiffi[ad played excelled over the others na h

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abilit-v, has built a new superhighway withoutspeed imits or guardrails-a dangerous lace orchildren. The new core standards. beginning inkindergarten, are the on-ramp. t is worth notingthat until recently he term core standards wasprimarilyused n manufacturing, here t is vital thatmaterials ike nuts, bolts, and cement are strictlyuni{orm.

dehumanizes ducation.This approach has alreadyfailed in the No Child Left Behind Act. Educationbased on a mechanical iew of the human being can-not succeed.

Rather han standards, ell-prepared arly edu-cators need appropriate guidelines hey can applywith flexibility.Rather han esting narrow skills,we

should broadlv as well as creativitv

are he ong-term onsequences finappro-priate early education? he few studies n this areashow indications of great harm. The HighScopePreschool urriculumComparison tudy PCCS),not as well known as HighScope's amous PerryPreschool tudy,may be the most strikingexample.

The Perry Study documented he ong-term ben-efits of preschool or low-income hildren. Missingfrom the picture is that not all preschools yield

equally good results. n the late 1960s HighScopehegan he PCCS,with 68 at-riskchildren rom ow-in-come amilies andomly assigned o one of three pre-school lasses: L)a direct nstruction program DI),where eachers sed script and expected orrectan-swers rom the children; (2) a traditional nurseryschool, where children learned through play andlarge-group activities; and (3) the HighScope pro-gram, where children earned hrough group imeand playwith a plan, do, and eview ocus.The at-ter two emphasized hild-initiated activities. Withsupport rom the staff, he three- and our-year-olds

in the studypursued heir own nterests. ll were bl-loweduntil age 23.It is important o note that at first the outcomes

seemed o be the same or children in all threegroups. All showed a lalge increase n IQ scores,from an average f 78 o 105. The reseiuchers nitiarllyconcluded hat well-implern:ented reschool urricu-lum models, egardless f their theoretical orienfa-tion, had similar effects n children's ntellectual ndacademic erformance. n the long term, however, time has proved otherwise l6

ffiFbeen subjected o schooling hat demands oomuch too srxrn.We 4rg .r1g[-feg[gtcinghe learninguao with such metffiffin +Flffifl#timer;f;dffisi td6,pftf- fu\e trat guides he medical ommunity:First, ono harm.

lVhat Have VYe Lost?Whileschools ocuson drilling iteracy nd mathskills nto young children, a few researchers re

studying hat sbeing ost.Creativitys one asualryThe Torrance reatiiity @

By age 23, when he study concluded, he direct n-struction students horved erious roblems n overalldevelopment:

. 477oof the DI students ad needed pecialeducation, ompared o only 60/ of the otherstudents,

.34o/o had been arrested or a felony offense,compared with9T of the others;t 27o/o ad been suspended rom work, while

none of the others had been;. None of the DI students ad married and

were iving with spouses, ompared with 31%of the others.

. Only 11olo f the DI students ad ever donevolunteer work, compared o about 43Yo tthe others.

The results are When at-risk childreninappropriate

Curiosity is another.

millions of times over five decades n over 50languages, s a better predictor than IQ of whichstudents will become uccessful nnovators n a hostof professions.

When Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William& Mary an:alyzed lmost300,000 orrance cores fchildrenand adults,Newsweek eported n 2i)10, shefound creativity scores ad been steadily ising, ustlike IQ scores, ntil 1990. ince hen, creativity coreshave eonsistently nched dcwnward. Itk very clear,and the decrease s very significant,'Kim says. t isthe scores of younger children in America-fromkindergarten hrough sixth grade-for whom he de-cline s 'most serious.' 17

Curiosity s an-qthglEggg&y. usan Engel, senior-#

lecturer in psychclogy and director of the Program in

the conceot of core standards o

. Ratcheting

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Teaching t Williams College, designed esearch ostudy curiosity in classrooms. During a series ofschool visits, owever, she saw so few examples fchildren asking questions and expressing uricsitythat she had o call off the study.l8

The oss of curiosity has profound mplications oreducation. Science and math educators ncreasingly

tial learning and curiosity n young children, whichmakes eaching advanced math and science n latergrades more difficult.

IAn rgenffitrs Ttr$s*eJiWhen helAHianceor Childhoodlegan ts campaignto restore\play oth in early education and outside

1Edward Zigler and Elizabeth Gilman, The Legacy ofJean Piaget, chapter 9 of Portraits of Pioneers n Psychol-ogy,Yol.3, edited by Gregory A. Kimble and MichaelWertheimer, Washington, DC and Mahwah, NJ: AmericanPsychological ssociation and Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates 1998), g. 155.2The Natioual Governors Association Center or BestPractices ald the Council of Chief State School Officersreleased he Common Core State Standards or K-12

education l June 2010. By October 201 1 ll but 6 stateshad adopted hem. See http://lvww.corestandards.org/.3Walter S. Gilliam, *Pre-K Students Expelled at MoreThan Three Times the Rate of K-1,2 Students, NewHaven, CT: Yale University Office of Public Affairs (May17, 2005); http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=4271.4Addirional examples of aggression l early childhoodclassrooms can be found in Crzsis n the Kind,ergarten atwww.alliangeforch ldhood.or g/pub ications.5Matt Burgard, Into School, Out of Control Nowadays,Eveu the Youngest Students Tirrn to Violence, HartfordCourant (Aprtl 2, 2007 .6Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, The Cttse .gatnstHomework,New York: Three Rivers Press 20ffi) p. 109.? Burgard, op. cit.I Claudia Wallis, Does Kindergarten Need Cops? TimeMagazine Dec. 7, 2003);b tp ://wlvw. ime.corr/timlmaAazinelarticlb/0,9171, 101031 15-556865,00.html?cnn=ves.e Edward Miller and Joan Almcn, Crisis n the Kinder-garten: Why Children Need to Play in School, College Park,MD: Alliance for Childhood (2009), pg. 7. Furtler informa-tion on the study can be fouud in Curriculum Studies andthe Traditions of Inquiry: The Scientific Tradition byLinda Darline-Hammond and Jon Snyder, nthe Handbook

school, we found other organizations ommitted oplay.Each was doing mportant work, but each n itsown silo. It was a perfect picture of parallel play thathad not yet advanced o rich, social play. Once webegan working (and playing) ogether, a movementwas born. Play began o appear more regularly on thecultural radar screen.

We knew we had reached a critical point in thiseffortwhen the NewYorkTimes eported n January20L1 hat the movement o restore childrent playgains momentum. Z0 his momentum must be con-tinued and expanded. Educators must oin forceswith parents, ediatrrffi

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