Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
~Fred Rogers
One education topic that every politician running for office mentions is preschool for all. What do they mean? What do they think preschool should be about?
It’s common knowledge that children are capable of learning much the first years of life. This doesn’t mean it’s right to douse them with developmentally advanced information they aren’t ready to learn.
Many kindergarten teachers expect more from children when they enter kindergarten than they did years past. Kindergarten play kitchens and art easels were discarded long ago. Young children are lucky if they get recess breaks.
Because kindergarten has become more advanced, preschool is seen as the time children must have prereading skills they find difficult for kindergarten. If they don’t, it’s seen as a red flag. This makes teachers and parents push children to learn to read early.
Children are expected to know letters and numbers, even basic sight words. They’re supposed to be able to sit and focus on tasks for longer periods. But preschool wasn’t always about teaching prereading skills, and we should question if children that young are being pushed to read too soon.
In 2002, Newsweek published an article entitled “The Right Way to Read.” The title was conjecture. Reporters visited the Roseville Cooperative Preschool in northern California. Children there were called “masters of the universe” because they oversaw play. Children played most of the time. The school based everything on play.
Children played at a science table. They used magnifying glasses to explore flowers, cacti, and shells. They donned smocks to do art, lots of art. They were able to climb and stay active. They had access to books and a dollhouse.
There were no letters or numbers on the wall.
Director and founder Bev Bos told teachers, Forget about kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We should be focusing on where children are right now.
But Newsweek didn’t praise the preschool. They were there to show the controversy surrounding it.
The Bush administration had claimed research indicated that 50,000 Head Start teachers were going to have to learn how to provide explicit instruction on how to teach the alphabet, letter sounds, and writing to young children.
Not only that. Preschool teachers were to use a detailed literacy-screening test. Forty-five million was being earmarked for preschool-reading research.
Children were no longer masters of their world. Adults were in control.
Bush’s domestic-policy adviser, Margaret Spellings, who he eventually appointed education secretary, tried to allay preschool teachers’ fears. She said, “This is not about putting little kids in desks at age 3. This is about doing things right from the beginning of life. It’s the social-emotional plus the cognitive.” Spellings had no early-childhood or any teaching experience, or education degrees.
Newsweek cited new brain research that claimed children who face poverty and middle-class children with disabilities needed to start to learn specific sounds and letters, the basics of literacy, at a much earlier age to avoid trouble reading.
The idea was that more and earlier reading instruction, pushing first grade to preschool, would better prepare children who lacked a rich literacy background, or who had disabilities. But why? Just because a child is behind doesn’t mean you push them beyond what’s developmentally appropriate to learn.
Why wouldn’t a richer learning environment involving play be considered best for all children?
Preschool teachers and the Head Start Association took issue with the Bush plan, but look at preschools today. It’s easy to tell whose side won.
President Obama continued the push for preschool reading, and it continues today. Children are expected to reach learning benchmarks, or they are considered behind before they get to kindergarten.
For a while, parents and educators complained about this increased push to make children learn to read while taking away play. That seems all but forgotten.
Complaints are high today from parents that children haven’t learned to read well. Public schools and teachers are criticized repeatedly for not teaching reading correctly. Yet few look at preschool and kindergarten and question what’s being expected of children when it comes to reading.
DEY and the Alliance for Childhood have outlined the important role play still has for young children. The research indicates play is more likely to lead to reading than pushing children to do academic work during preschool and kindergarten.
Unfortunately, the talk is now about neurological studies and brain science. The claim is that we live in a new technologically advanced world, so this is justified. But this doesn’t justify pushing children to learn more advanced work where they become frustrated. Nor does it indicate that children need to be pushed to learn faster.
Scientists have known for years that learning happens in rich play environments where children have access to the kind of play found in the Roseville Cooperative Preschool. We know play is not a frivolous waste of time. Serious cognitive learning takes place when children have to think for themselves, and when they are given the kinds of opportunities to raise questions and wonder about the world they see around them.
It’s troubling that replacing play with reading is now the norm.
In Mississippi we read Of the more than 35,000 Mississippi kindergarten students who took the state’s skills assessment last fall, about 64 percent scored below the state’s readiness benchmark. Since then, the state has made few strides in expanding efforts to help more of its youngest children prepare for school.
The school district is now providing preschoolers with Chromebooks promising Waterford online learning will be able to get them to close the reading gap. A reading gap in preschool? Fifteen minutes a day online should be all it takes to fix the problem, parents are promised. But there is no research to indicate Waterford will teach preschoolers how to be better at reading.
Apparently no one there will stop and ask whether they are creating expectations of their preschoolers that are beyond their reach. Few in this country seem willing to do that. The idea that preschoolers must learn prereading skills ready or not, and kindergartners must learn how to read has become the norm.
Reference
Barbara Kantrowitz, Oat Wingert, Nadine Joseph, Karen Springen, Newsweek. April 29m 2002, 139(17), p60.
Thank-you Thankyou for writing this!!!!Kids need to play and experience real hands in learning!!
Play builds language skills- and fantasy and imagination – sounds and decoding do not!
Everyday I see more children who are anxious and not happy to learn— why????? My view is they are pushed too hard at an early age!!!
Thank you, Mira.
As a Substitute teacher preschool to fourth grade I see this in many districts I teach! I agree with the article! The exception is in Montessori taught schools, unfortunately most are expensive . There are a few in my area that are free in public schools as they should be available to all!
The only thing I take issue with here is your comment that pre-reading skills don’t belong in a preschool setting. There are so many pre-reading skills a child must acquire before they actually read and many of those *DO* belong in the preschool classroom. Here are just a few examples and in parenthesis the way to achieve them through play. Tracking (toss balloons around a room and have students play a volleyball type game) Vocabulary (singing songs and reciting rhymes – even with nonsense words) Gross motor development (running, jumping, climbing, skipping, hopping).
It would be more beneficial, in my opinion, to identify the ‘pre-reading’ skills that have no business being in a preschool setting.
Good point, MaryMargaret, I revised and added “that they find difficult.” Certainly some children even like learning about letters and numbers. My point in the post is to not intentionally push children to learn more than they’re ready for.
You are spot on. How much ink has Ben spilled complaining that kindergarten is the new first grade. Pushing all students to be ready for algebra as ninth graders is another example of modern thinking. The problem is, we Americans are stuck on comparing each other. Who is the best at whatever? Pushing students along becomes a competition between parents who fear that their children will be left behind. And perhaps they are right. The urge to choose children for rewards based on their ACT scores or evaluate schools on the basis of such scores is more of this thinking.
Let the children play in a rich environment filled with word play and theatrics and stories. When they are ready, reading will come upon them like the tide upon the sand.
Thank you, Roy. Excellent points as usual.
I teach middle school math, and the teachers at my school are seeing a vastly different child arriving in sixth grade than we used to.
Students who arrive in recent years don’t seem to take the initiative to do things, and they want and ask for teacher-direction for most of what they do, If left to their own devices, they write on desk surfaces or deliberately break school materials- pulling apart scissors, snapping pencils into pieces and dropping them on the floor, and more. Last year, I saw more vandalism on a weekly basis in my classroom than what I would see in a year in the past.
I believe that much of this is the result of having them in constant controlled, adult-directed behaviors from toddlerhood. I am shocked at what is being done to kids in taking away their freedom to play and make decisions.
Thank you for your excellent work!
I notice that kids affected by poverty often exhibit these behaviors. I have always laid it to a sort of youthful,carelessness that occurs when parents do not have the time or inclination to correct smaller behaviors. Are your kids coming from the same socioeconomic backgrounds?
This is what’s so odd: my students are mostly very wealthy.
It isn’t odd that children of wealthy parents manifest as helpless or dependent. Helplessness can result from a number of situations. With wealth comes with certain expectations for many. The family’s image must be maintained. Things are tightly controlled at home. Children may be micro-managed by helicopter parents. Or vice versa; parents prioritize everything else over their child, so the child is essentially neglected, which can also lead to a sense of helplessness. This is a trend that deserved more attention.
Very young children can and do learn an incredible amount of stuff at an incredible rate because they love to learn, and they learn mostly by experimenting with anything and everything they can get their hands on and by moving. And that’s the key, they learn by getting their hands on things and by moving their bodies. They learn in a physically centered manner. Intellectually and emotionally centered learning come later, as young brains become more completely wired. The other important factor is that they learn what they love to learn, not what they are forced to learn, and this is something that remains true for everyone, into adulthood. Trying to force anyone to learn something when they are not interested or ready is a sure way to turn them off of learning.
One important aspect of learning that begins to be fulfilled through group play is how to be a social being, how to relate to and get along with others. They learn about paying attention to others, about communication, about sharing, about acceptance, about cooperation and helping. Free play, structured play and guided play provide various opportunities to work on these essential skills. Looking at society today, with all the divisiveness, poor communication and lack of harmonious cooperation, it seems to me that all the things people really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be were not learned in kindergarten or in pre-school. And, because of that, a lot of other things were not learned, very well or at all, later on in school or in life.
Carl, Very well put! Thank you! Your point at the end is especially well-taken too. Since reforms changed the nature of kindergarten, children have been pushed to learn advanced material whether they’re ready or not. Early childhood specialists have been warning for years that children are more anxious and even doing poorly in school. There has been little socialization since recess, where students socialize the most, was removed in many schools. So your last point is well-taken. Thank you!
Thanks, Nancy. Broadening the picture even further, I suspect that the deficiencies in socialization that can begin to be learned very early on, but are not, due to the academic emphasis, is contributing significantly to a wide variety of problems that plague modern society. These include poor mental health, drug use, theft and malicious destruction, abuse (verbal, physical, emotional, sexual), bullying, road rage, hate crimes, suicide and mass shootings.
The lack of good opportunities for leaning social skills at an early age is then compounded by a lack of mental health services and by the overuse of court convictions and incarceration instead of providing appropriate mental health services. Rather than dealing with rising crime and anti-social behavior by helping children learn good social skills, the response has been to militarize the police forces, which only compounds many problems even further.
What you have written is right on target. As a college professor supervising student teachers, I have seen kindergarten classrooms where children spend almost the entire day in whole class academic lessons in reading, writing, and math. The result was that when I was observing the student teacher, I saw children who were frustrated and gave up because they were unable to what was being asked of them and expected of them because they were not developmentally ready to do first grade activities in kindergarten. Do we want 5 year olds who feel like failures? I would hope not. Teachers are in a place where they are using inappropriate practices without any reflection or pushback. This is going on now in both prek and kindergarten.
Back in the day, when I taught kindergarten, the students were taught the sounds of letters and math concepts and vocabulary but the amount of time that was spent in whole class instruction was very limited, informed by the developmental characteristics of 5 year olds. Play was the main way in which learning took place – intentional setting up of the environment to emphasize the concepts that we knew young children needed for growth in learning and in their social skills.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Nora. I always appreciate comments from professors who’ve also been teachers and recognize the terrible changes taking place in kindergarten and preschool. There’s no reason to be pushing children, and yet it continues. It is sad to see so many children being introduced to school in such a negative, defeating way. I hope there will be positive change soon that involves common sense and a return to developmentally appropriate instruction.
Yes children should be playing! It is also a well known fact that to raise a reader, children need someone reading and sharing stories and poetry with them.
A conversation that is needing attention; there is no denying “academic pushdown” is discouraging our children, increasing challenging behaviors, and burning out our professionals. Through play, lots of pre-reading, preschool-appropriate experience and skill development takes place; it doesn’t have to be one or the other as long as the emphasis is on PRE-reading.
I am, however, confused with the statement, “Unfortunately, the talk is now about neurological studies and brain science.” What this research is showing actually supports the necessity of serve and return reciprocal interactions, which is at its essence, playful interactions between caring adults and children, and as they are developmentally ready, between children and their peers. As a family engagement facilitator in a preK program, my message is, “We (parents) do not have to teach preschoolers how to read, what is more important between you (parent) and your child is a positive, lifelong relationship, and playing together will support both your child’s kindergarten readiness AND your family relationship.. Allow your child to play on their own, with other children and with you. Comfortably and playfully look at and reading books together, creating a lifelong appreciation of reading. With these pieces in place, children will read when they are ready and when they need to.”