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Play and Imagination
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The Hurried Child Revisited By: Barbara Bedingfield
In 1981 David Elkind, a long-time child development professor at Tufts University released his book, The Hurried Child, which lamented the loss of childhood as parents anxiously pushed their children prematurely into academics and adulthood. In 2006 a 25th year anniversary edition was released. Elkind, now retired, fears that, in many ways, matters have grown even worse.
What is behind this cultural phenomenon that has parents flashing Baby Einstein cards to infants, the New York City School System testing four-year olds, the loss of recess in most public schools, the demise of the arts in schools, and school curriculums that are driven by standardized high stakes-testing?
One of the most widespread examples of this push for early academics is the loss of the traditional kindergarten-a virtual children's garden-where children simply enjoyed playing for play's sake. They were not expected to sit and learn reading, writing and numbers at age 5. Nowadays it is expected that young children will know letters and numbers and will have begun writing prior to entering kindergarten.
The Alliance for Childhood (http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/) is an organization of educators, doctors, and leading child development experts who are deeply concerned about children's healthy development, love of learning and joy in living. They are calling for educators and parents to wake up to the fact that child-initiated play is losing out to academic training and programmed activities in young children's lives. This has happened partly because many adults are unaware of the
Who decided that four and five year-olds should have academics instead of play? Who decided that playing is a waste of time? Certainly not the seasoned kindergarten teachers with whom I have spoken. Why is it not known in our society that there is a direct link between children's play and their healthy emotional, social, and intellectual development?
On November 25, 2007, the St. Petersburg Times printed an article written by Boston Globe Magazine in which the journalist alluded to a study done by a noted researcher and Illinois educator in the 1930s. "Carlton Washburne compared the trajectories of children who had begun reading at several ages, up to 7. He concluded that, in general, a child could best learn to read beginning around the age of 6. By middle school, he found no appreciable difference in reading levels between the kids who had started young versus the kids who had started later, except the earlier readers appeared to be less motivated and less excited about reading.
The Boston Globe article also noted a cross-cultural study of European children published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2003 that found those taught to read at age 5 had more reading problems than those who were taught at age 7. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, the psychologist who did the study, urges parents to "put away all the gadgets and encourage their preschoolers to play with blocks or, better yet, get down on the living room floor with them and build forts using blankets and chairs." A passionate advocate for the return of unstructured play into childhood, Ms. Hirsh-Pasek coauthored the book, Einstein Never Used Flash Cards.
"Study after study," reports the Boston Globe article, "shows the best thing parents can do for their children is give them a nurturing, rich, vibrant environment, reading to them often and exposing them to lots of language in organic ways...The exposure
I would add that it is equally important to join the work of the Alliance for Childhood to restore the traditional play kindergartens in schools. Just think, children have a small window of only three years between ages three and six that they can enjoy the kind of imaginative, child-initiated play that all children love and that all children deserve as their natural birthright.
So what is the hurry? Sl-o-o-w down. Children need time to grow, time to play, and time to be children. Let us give them that precious time!
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Barbara Bedingfield is a kindergarten teacher and one of the founders of the Suncoast Waldorf School. She serves on the Board of Trustees and the Governance Council as Chair of the Faculty. Barbara received her Bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Florida and a Master's Degree in Early Childhood from Antioch University New England. Barbara has been teaching children of all ages for 21 years including two years in Liberia, West Africa with the Peace Corp. Barbara was also one of the founders of The Children's Place, an alternative school in Clearwater and taught there from 1973 to 1980.
To learn more about the Suncoast Waldorf School you can visit their website at:
http://www.suncoastwaldorf.org/ *SCHOOL OF THE SUNCOAST Phone: (727) 786-8311 |
direct links between children's play and their healthy emotional, social and intellectual development. Parents have come to expect that the kindergarten will offer what was once reserved for first grade and for children who were developmentally ready to learn academics. Yes, children can learn to read at age four, but this does not mean that being forced to learn to read at age four or even age five is what the young child should be doing. There is, of course, that small percentage of children who teach themselves to read at an early age, but this is an exception.
to rhyming and wordplay that springs from Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes is particularly effective, according to Maryanne Wolf (cognitive neuroscientist and child development professor at Tufts) in helping prepare a child to read."Copyright © WTCB- Women Taking Care of Business, Inc. ® All Rights Reserved See Terms of Use for this website |