Prerequisite to Kindergarten: Instead of demanding four-year-olds talk of geometric “attributes,” how about getting them to show up the first day of kindergarten with great big smiles on their faces?
The New York Times is praising a new study in a report titled “Free Play or Flashcards? New Study Nods to More Rigorous Preschools.” The study itself is titled “Do academic preschools yield stronger benefits? Cognitive emphasis, dosage, and early learning?” The authors are researchers from the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley and the Food and Drug Administration. But I am not going to spend much time reading this study.
The first mistake these researchers make, is that many Americans want to see the word “rigor” buried. It’s mean-spirited, and we recognize that people who use rigor and preschool, in the same breath, know little about children, or, worse, they don’t like them. So “rigorous” in the title, especially when it is getting a nod, is troubling.
It’s a study done on low and middle class children. I think many are also tired of pushing this group of children to learn. We understand that poor and middle class students do well with all the stuff wealthy students have in school. Why didn’t this study include a private school like Sidwell? At least then, if children grow up mal-adapted due to rigor, their parents will be able to afford therapy.
But, really, children are children. Studies that separate the rich from the poor and middle class raise questions. They seem un-American. The big question is why? Why expect preschoolers to achieve at faster rates than ever before? What’s the objective—really? Should ten-year-old children be put into the workforce, when there aren’t enough jobs for twenty-three year olds?
Why go through the trouble of having a child, if they are made to become an adult before their time? Why do these researchers care so much about who “outperforms” who? Most of us don’t want preschool teenagers. That period comes soon enough! We’re sick of hearing young children can and should work above and beyond their age and development!
We don’t live in a dystopian society where children are born with extra brain power that needs to be corralled for the good of mankind. Why are we continually misled to believe that children have brains today that are different from children in the past?
We understand already how children learn. We have studied Piaget and many scientists, child development experts, who taught us how children develop. So studies about rigor seem like trickery. Many of us are concerned, that much of this is about placing children in front of computers, where they will sit still and do their schooling.
It’s about getting rid of democratic public schools and teachers. If children can learn to act older, and pay attention for longer periods of time, they will do as they are told. They will focus longer. They will be able to learn at home, in a charter warehouse, or sitting outside in the park with a digital device.
Researchers of this study are wrong to use rigor to convince politicians they have a reason for funding preschool. Politicians and researchers should be about the ethical treatment of children. We should show other countries how to treat young children well.
We don’t want child oddities, children forced to know facts and figures, and pushed to read before they’re ready. Little children don’t need to be browbeaten to learn. It could backfire. They could easily learn to hate learning.
Preschools should be about love. They should encourage children to enjoy learning about other preschoolers who are different, but fun and interesting. And play is sacred. Dressing up and playing make believe, and building a Lego structure are critical. Play is where children really learn. And good teachers help make this happen through good guidance.
A preschooler should never be hungry or have a toothache. They should have lovely books to read and be read to often. Dancing, art, and joyful music should be a daily affair.
So I’m not interested in this study. I’m just not.
Yes to all.
I add my then-4-year-old daughter’s comment as I was pointing to words as I read aloud to her (emergent literacy, right? Kindergarten prep, right?): “Mom, will you just READ THE BOOK?!”
And may I do a little Dewey here, and question the dichotomy implied in the way our entire education conversation uses the term “learning”?
• … pushing this group of children to learn.
• Little children don’t need to be browbeaten to learn.
• They could easily learn to hate learning.
• … encourage children to enjoy learning…
• Play is where children really learn.
Sometimes we use “learning” as something more like “schooling,” implying sitting and listening or filling in blanks—the schoolish stuff, as in “We want kids to be ready to learn,” or “they need recess so they can learn in the classroom.” Or sometimes we use “learn” to mean “school-learning:” reading, math, science, history, coding (?!); but not climbing a tree (kid-physics and botany), cleaning up toys (systematic thinking), negotiating for dessert (reasoning and argumentation), or going to the beach to play (all kinds of content here).
If we imply either one of these distinctions, we also say then that playing IS learning, and blocks and dressup are critical elements of early childhood curriculum. And we appropriately distrust anyone who uses “rigor” and “preschool” in the same sentence.
But what if we deliberately smeared away the dichotomy, so that learning is life and life is learning? Kids filling out worksheets, kids climbing trees, kids sitting on the carpet in school are all learning important things. When I spend time with workbooks, I may learn to count things on a page and that math is what I do in the workbook, sitting down, with a pencil. When I spend time (trying to) quietly listen to a teacher explain things while I sit on the carpet, I’m learning that I should listen quietly, that moving my legs is a problem, that children who talk and move more than I do are bad, and that the teacher can read. When I spend time climbing a tree, I learn what’s up in a tree, what the ground looks like from 10 feet up, how far I can reach, how thick a branch needs to be to hold my weight, and how to be brave.
Kids are learning all the time because they are experiencing life all the time. Dewey would say, though, that some experiences are educative and others and miseducative, and that educative learning experiences are the ones that enable more learning, experiences stringing along over time into a life of growth.
Without the dichotomy between things that are learning and things that aren’t learning, the question becomes not “How do we get kids to learn?” or “How early should kids begin learning?” but “What are kids learning from this?” Because they are learning, all the time, how to be a person in the world.
Nancy, pardon my dwelling on what may be a tiny point. I just got through teaching a course about education theory to 6 thoughtful preservice teachers, and I am still in an analytic mood. And thank you especially for calling out the idea that kids these days learn foundationally differently from kids in previous generations.
Carrie, your 4-year-old gets it and made me laugh! Thank her for me.
I bet you have a lot to talk about in that course! Your preservice teachers are lucky. I appreciate your thoughtful comment.
Thanks Nancy. These studies evaluate the benefits of early “learning” by looking at math, reading, whatever test results. Who gives a hoot?!
Thanks, Mate!
Wouldn’t an article about “Distrust The Studies” have been worthwhile only if the studies were rebutted?
Is there some kind of official educational study rebuttal agency the report of which we are supposed to be waiting for as we do for a police report in case of an accident?
From the study
The math-concepts assessment gauged children on six constructs:
number sense, counting, operations, geometry, pattern understanding,
and measurement.
Why should we care how 5 year olds “perform” in these “constructs”? And who says, it’s possible to measure (gauge) these things?
The basic question is, whom we want to raise. Do we want real children around us, who then grow up to be happy, curious, enthusiastic adults or we want to make sure, our kids are showing good progress from day one of birth towards college on a completely artificial scale set up by educational researchers.
I have 32 years experience in teaching math in college, and a curious, enthusiastic kid never ever fails to do well while a kid who spent her life studying and memorizing math concepts from age 3 more often than not show signs of early burn out and general disinterest.
There is only one word to describe all these studies on academic progress of 2-3-4-5 year olds: nuts. Why isn’t it enough for these people if a pre-K teacher organizes games, teaches songs, drawing, painting, dances, tells mysterious or funny stories, jokes? Ah, they cannot “measure” the outcome of these frivolous, non-rigorous activities? They cannot talk about the “national average” and the STD from this average of these activities? Sounds like a disaster to me.
Thank you for sharing what can happen in the long run. I don’t think anyone’s thinking of the reality, Mate.
Btw, the study uses the statistical method called “Marginal structural models” which was developed for epidemiology. Why is this model more reliable than VAM, which is a well respected model in agriculture, but has been discredited by many?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/leading-mathematician-debunks-value-added/2011/05/08/AFb999UG_blog.html?utm_term=.37bf39bfaecf
Thanks for sharing this, Mate!
As a teacher in a Montgomery County, MD, public school (grades Pre-k/Head Start through second) I have to agree. Since we have become obsessed with data gathered through extensive testing and instruction is supposed to be data driven, we have eliminated almost all hands-on learning experiences. Children as young as four are expected to sit on the carpet, legs folded, sitting up straight, with hands in their laps. Play is permitted in pre-k/Head Start, but after that there are no toys and the emphasis is strongly academic. Children coming into kindergarten without preschool are at a disadvantage from the first day. How crazy is that? The school where I work has a large, low-income, ESOL population and I often question the effectiveness of classwork that is developmentally inappropriate being inflicted on young children who have many other difficulties in their young lives.
How sad. Demanding Head Start accountability by insisting young children demonstrate progress beyond what’s normal, has done much harm to public schooling in general. All that data. Who can tell us how it actually helps children? Well…it doesn’t.
Thank you for taking the time to tell us about your experience, Paula. It sounds like your students are lucky their teacher understands.
Let kids be kids. I am sick of push push, push to learn. Once graduated from high school or college they Still don’t know the basics. Glad my kid missed this stuff.
I agree with the first part of what you say, Elsa. But somehow many of our young people do manage to learn. We still have many bright and hard working high school students who go on to college and do well. But thank you for your comment.
Perhaps we should not trust any study. Science applied to social phenomena is necessarily observational. We cannot measure learning, nonwithstanding the claims to the contrary by those whose careers are based on the ability to do just that. Honest studies are observational narrative.
This word rigor is just the latest buzz word appropriated by those in education seeking too make the profession more palatable to some portion of the population engaged in the debates about what we should be doing. It is a metaphor that points to our trying to do something, not nothing. It is predicated on the idea that hard work is a good thing, and we should instill a work ethic from youth.
I think everyone accepts the idea that some things are necessarily difficult. It was a rigorous job to climb up the silo in my youth and throw down the food for the cows with a big fork. That is what you did on the farm. It was sometimes difficult, challenging. You often learned to enjoy it. Other aspects of farming were just crushing. Trying to figure the bottom line was too much for me. I could work all night to beat a rain when it was time to make hay. But looking at the figures was more difficult. So I did not find my career in farming like my father did. He must have found it more possible than I did. During World War II, he carefully calculated the amount of money he made due to the war effort and donated the balance to the church. I would not have known.
Did my being exposed to the rigors of farming make me a better student? From the above narrative, it would seem not. Something made me sit for hours in the library while my fellows were out having big fun. But I do not believe it was my farming experience. Some people run marathons. Others write books. Both require dedication. Both are good. Both can be taken to excess, can consume the individual and make trouble in life. Society needs both.
Society needs all these types of people. Comedian Danny Thomas once said his father told him that there were two kinds of people, the givers and the takers. Many people divide the world into their own little dichotomy. These oversimplifications are harmful. The way I see it, the two kinds of people are made up of one group that views all life as dichotomy and another that does not. In education, we need to behave like the group that does not separate all life into two opposites. To borrow a metaphor from Stephen J. Gould, a good educational outcome is more like a full house. If we try to produce 4 of a kind, we will fail more often than we succeed. But if we are satisfied to try for one of the more probable hands, our efforts will be rewarded more often. We need many talents. We should try to be interesting the business of allowing the development of many talents in the education business.
Roy, your posts are always interesting. I have several friends who grew up on farms and your explanation seemed on point. NPR recently had a program about the trials and tribulations families face farming today. It was fascinating. http://www.npr.org/2017/05/09/527051948/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-to-own-a-farm
You had me until you started ranting about Charter schools, homeschooling, and online schools. I totally agree that kids should be allowed to be kids. We push kids to be adults far too fast in this world. The rabid need to “outperform” is completely out of hand! But I also think that online schooling is a valid option for many kids. And parents… not you… or anybody else… should be allowed to make that decision.
If you read my blog posts you will know I worry there is a concerted effort in play to replace public schools and teachers with total online.
I also don’t think it is good for children to do all their schooling from a screen. That includes preschoolers who are in some places going to online preschools!
But I’m not in control of what you do with your child.. You can do what you want. I can only warn you there is no research that online is better. And as an educator, putting a preschooler on a computer for preschool seems ridiculous.
“But I also think that online schooling is a valid option for many kids.”
The problem is that the choice of a very small percentage of parents may screw up the education for the rest by taking money away from it.
As far as I know, home schooling doesn’t take any money away from public schools, but the rest of the options, like online and charter schools, and vouchers do take money away from public education.
So in effect, what we have is that 1% of the population wants the 99% to sacrifice the quality of their education just so that they can have their precious choice.
I would also add, I don’t think cheating is controlled very well. But perhaps I’m wrong.
As an outsider reading this blog for the first time, I did not find that Ms Bailey ranted about homeschooling, charter and online schools. There were a mere three lines (out of 65) relating to those alternatives. My take on that para was: the homeschooling bit was off-base, unrelated to her point– which was: teaching kids ‘rigor’ at ages 2-4y.o.– if interpreted as sitting quietly and learning passively from teacher-directed activity– is of little use except perhaps in preparation for schooling in (a)those charters which deliver scripted teacher-directed lessons to passive learners [e.g., KIPP & some other charter-chains], and (b)online-schooling, which– tho important for homebound [ill] kids– requires preternatural focus & ability to learn passively.
Thank you, Viv!
Thanks for this post, Nancy. I agree completely. “Rigor” for learning is wrong-headed and counterproductive, and “rigor” and “pre-schoolers” should never be used in the same sentence. This put me in mind of something I wrote a few years back when our Commissioner of Ed, Ken Wagner, was brought to RI by Governor Gina Raimondo:
“Developmental Appropriateness—to Matter or Not to Matter?”
At the recent joint meeting of the RI Board of Education and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education at which Dr. Ken Wagner’s nomination by Governor Raimondo as Commissioner of Education was confirmed, Wagner was asked what strategies he would propose to address the achievement gaps between white students and minority students.
He stated that what is essential for closing the achievement gap is to have the same “high learning expectations for all students.” In using this phrase, he is referring to the Common Core State Standards. These standards, along with the EngageNY curriculum aligned to them, a curriculum which Dr. Wagner has taken credit for developing in NY State, have been declared developmentally inappropriate for young children by many experts on early childhood education. In his remarks, Wagner disparaged these authentic voices by claiming that ideas on developmental stages by the esteemed child psychologist Jean Piaget are passé. “Now the consensus seems to be much more that students can achieve things never thought possible, provided the right supports.”
I was distressed by this at the time, and continue to be distressed today.
Thank you, Sheila! I remember that! It upset me too. I cannot believe they think children have brains that suddenly evolved to where they can learn much more difficult material! It’s bizarre. No proof. Notice he says consensus…which to me means a whole lot of uninformed, misguided individuals! Too bad their brains don’t evolve when it comes to schools and children!
“Now the consensus seems to be much more that students can achieve things never thought possible, provided the right supports.”
More thoughts on, Jean Piaget is passé & ‘Now the consensus seems to be much more that students can achieve things never thought possible, provided the right supports’…
Piaget’s observations on brain devpt, esp the passage from concrete to abstract thinking, have merely been substantiated by subsequent neurologal research as far as this layman can determine (correct me if I’m wrong). [And I say that as Mom to an unusual child who advanced to abstract thinking preternaturally young– it was clear from comparison to his cohort that he was an outlier.].
Wagner’s hyperbole as to the ‘things students can achieve given the right supports’ — in the context of Common Core & its aligned assessments’– can be parsed differently. If one promotes breaking down learning into computer-testable skill-bites attained by rote, for sure, the test results [eventually, w/enough drill-&-kill] will illustrate ‘achievement never thought possible.’ What remains to be seen– what in fact is being tested today in 2- & 4-yr colleges & on-the-job– is whether that ed approch translates to hs grads capable of flexible & innovative thinking. So far, what we’re hearing from those quarters is that increasing numbers of recent hs grads are incapable of independent thinking, & just want to know ‘what will be on the test’.
Again, I would have to disagree that so many grads are incapable of independent thinking. I am always cautious about painting students with a broad stroke.
I do think young people are missing out on skills that used to be found in classes like home economics that help prepare them for life and living.
And they are prepped for taking tests. I taught a college class a while back where I was asked by students when I would provide the answers to an upcoming exam! They didn’t need this because they were bright enough to figure the answers out on their own, but I think that behavior was learned in high school.
Very good points, Viv. Thank you!
Here’s an anecdote from my last PreK class of 2017 in one school– prompted by the NYT article’s cite of a didactic PreK lesson in ‘the attributes of a square’– compared by many on the comment thread to the superior lessons learned from simply working w/blocks at that age.
I teach Spanish enrichment to the 2.5-5y.o. set at various PreK’s ranging from working-class daycares to the children of chi-chi private PreK’s. Class closes w/a big-book story. One particular school (mixed-ethnic middle-class in a play-based PreK) was ahead of the pack so I had to find something new for them. I chose Alma Flor Ada’s “Amigos” –mostly because I loved the illustrations, & liked the message of friends working together– but also because we had just been working w/geometric shapes in a bingo game. (It’s a story of adjacent nbhds, each of whose characters are circular, square, triangular, etc).
Ada’s ’90’s message is heavy-handedly about integration– I adroitly finessed her message [about parental squares who did not want their kids playing w/triangles etc] in my translation, presenting the nbhds as isolated & unaware of other-shaped beings.
But the joke was on me, & [as often!] the kids schooled me. They could have cared less about the social ramifications of shapes mixing. What I learned: the 2.5-3.5y.o. set understands shapes, but are quite literal. When a ‘circular’ character is turned sideways, they see an oval. And they think of a rectangle as taller than a square, so are flummoxed by a horizontally-presenting rectangle. Whereas the 4.5-5y.o. set are able to perceive 3 dimensions, & quickly school their juniors that circular characters standing sideways would look like ovals, rectangles presenting sideways are still rectangles, etc.
There is nothing wrong with teaching geometrical shapes in preK. The ‘wrong thing’ is teaching kids to mimic articular verbalizations such as ‘squares have 4 equal sides and 4 right angles’– that’s an abstract concept that might be appropriate to 4th-gr. The right thing in PreK is working with concrete manipulables, 2- &-3- dimensional– through block play and art projects– while simultaneously– gradually– [because 2-4y.o.’s are just learning to articulate concepts]- talking about how to describe the activity.
Nicely said! I like all the thought you put into understanding your students. Thanks again, Viv!
Thank you so much, Viv, for your authentic teaching and for your informed observations. I think you described exactly what is wrong with the thinking of reform do-bees like Ken Wagner and his “kids can do so much for than we give them credit for” + Piaget is passe. Prematurely regurgitating abstract definitions is not learning. Manipulating objects and interacting with peers and adults leads to internalized understandings that can be built on later with abstractions. This puts in a nutshell what is wrong with the Common Core $tate (sic) $tandards and accompanying testing.
What’s happened to us? How did we sink into such an ugly circumstance that we dare use words like “grit and rigor” in the same sentence as “child”?
Who thought that was a good idea? And who permissioned that so-called “good idea” to become part of childhood education?
Childhood has no reality. It’s not supposed to.
Childhood is all about fantabulous fabrications, amusing imaginings, and daring daydreams.
Those are real jobs. Done by real children.
And not one of them has a whiff of rigor … or an ounce of grit. Nor should they because these are the preoccupations childhood. And the job descriptions include grins and giggles and tons of teehee.
Why is it that we never know the names of these dark childhood exterminators? These ghosty-theoreticians who seem obsessed with hardship and tenacity and guts … for children not even 100 months old? Let’s examine that sad psychosis.
And then let’s ask why they live in some peculiar shadowland … and never stand before real-deal educators and defend their dogmatic presumptions on early education? Why aren’t they identified … and ever confronted?
Who are these educational Scrooges anyway?
It’s stunning to have to defend recess … and play … and fun. Astonishing to have to champion fantasies and whimsy as healthy and necessary exercises for a brand new mind.
This manic era of reform seems in an absolute rush to dispose of every phase of childhood as hurriedly as possible. And yet, too few ever learn the identities of those who advocate for this sick-sad competition.
These freaky theories just appear … and are shoved into practice as if they are infallible. And it’s not just about recess.
Testing the new pedagogical god. Close reading has made reading a special torture … and sabotaged joyful reading for an entire generation. Unrestrained technology is frankensteining classrooms into learning centers offering kiosk-educations from touch-screens that will supply the finger-pointer with all they need to succeed in a life of rich monotony.
And at every level, parents will lose more and more control of their children. And that is all by design because the very last thing these new educational absolutists want is any mother or father acting as though they have any regency at all over their own child’s education.
Orwell yourself and come to terms with what sits on the horizon of touch-screen scholarship. Huxley yourself into the world where children will have been programmed and plugged into lifetime situations based not on their passions but on some algorithmic prescription burped out by some electronic-ouija-motherboard.
And childhood is the greatest casualty of all. An extraordinarily special part of life now routinely smothered by educational frauds who have flimflammed an entire profession with dangerous nonsense.
How did this happen … and why did we let it happen? And how we will repair these children?
Denis Ian
My answer to your question, Denis. It was permitted. People bought into the idea that it’s nice to have outside groups take responsible for what they owned and needed to pay for. Thanks for taking the time to comment on my blog.
I serve as a Director of a public school Early Childhood program. Most of my teachers understand the importance of learning through play, but would you agree that academics can be integrated into activities? Our data shows that students are making great progress. I think there’s a balance.
What do you mean by academics? I guess that matters. Sure students are making progress, maybe they’re learning to read early. But what’s the hurry or the point? Thanks for sharing, Linnea. It’s an important topic.