Is There a Ray of Light in Rethinking about Early Schooling?
A recent headline in the British press read, "Primary schools have lost their sense of fun and play." What is being referred to is the emphasis in classrooms, not confined to the U.K. but present in our country as well, to teach traditional academic subjects as early as possible.
The inevitable result has been an elimination of the relaxed, play-like exploratory activities associated with early schooling. In their place have come the drills and tests associated with new academic standards. For example, in many classrooms today, recess has all but been dropped from the school day. This is a disastrous development--particularly in an age where so many children show attentional problems and opportunities for physical activity are of enormous benefit.
Now, at least in England, there is a move to return to a more balanced approach. There, a national inquiry, recommends scrapping end-of-term national curriculum tests.
It argues that excessive repetitive learning has damaged children's education by lessening their motivation to learn. As one consultant said, "Fun and play are what motivate young children to learn and to want to go on learning."
These ideas, however, are only recommendations. They stand in direct contradiction to the actual plan that the government has in place.
The irony is that the current conflict between play and achievement is unnecessary and misguided. Unfortunately, when the pressure developed for increasing "academic performance" in young children, people automatically and unthinkingly turned to the old, Victorian models of dreary drills involving endless repetition. There was no need to go this route--especially with the advances in behavioral science that had yielded new insights into children's learning.
As but one example--young children are remarkably adept at learning language. They do so with ease and enjoyment. The drive for improved performance could easily have taken advantage of this by introducing well-designed foreign language programs into the classrooms. But this would have required the bureaucracy to institute major changes all along the line including the way teachers are trained and the way the curriculum is organized. It was cheaper and easier, albeit counterproductive, to put in limited and unexciting drill activities that lend themselves to easy testing.
Once again, it's not that we lack the knowledge of better alternatives; it's that the bureaucratic systems fail to take advantage of and do the work that these better alternatives require.
