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Its been found that parents and educators who prefer imposing the traditional style of classroom learning could find that all work and no play, instead of enhancing a child's development, may actually stunt it. This is according to a university professor after she studied childhood learning and literacy development. Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois College of Education, Anne Haas Dyson, reckons that children's playtime is fundamental to their learning. It seems that, however well intentioned, attempts by parents and educators to create gifted children by bombarding them with facts and information can actually have the opposite effect. The role of play and imagination in child development milestones is so important and where children discover new and interesting ideas and experiences and, by doing so, go on to think about those ideas and experiences and their consequences. “This is where literacy and learning really begins", she said. This attempt by schools to stick to rigid styles of learning where fun and play have little or no part, what the professor called 'banning of the imagination', she believes may be influenced by what some critics are calling the "Baby Genius Edutainment Complex," whereby a cottage industry has grown up supplying mind-enriched products specifically developed for infants and toddlers with a marketing strategy aimed at anxious parents to boost their children's cognitive abilities. Commenting on this trend, she said, "I see this 'Einstein in the crib' trend as a societal reduction of children to the means for fulfilling parents' desires for intellectual distinction. Children learn the way we all learn: through engagement and through construction. They have to make sense of the world, and that's what play or any other symbolic activity does for children." Though she sees some value in teaching the basics of the ABCs to pre-kindergarten children, she believes that trying to speed up the process of learning is actually counter productive for a child's development. According to the good professor, kindergarten and preschool should be where children can experience play as a form of intellectual inquiry before going on to more rigorous learning styles in their later school career. "I'm certainly not opposed to literacy in the early grades," she said, "but the idea that we can eliminate play from the curriculum doesn't make sense. Kids don't respond well to sitting still in their desks and listening at that age. They need stimulation." A child's interests and ability to imagine, together with problem solving or negotiating with other children, all of which are important social and intellectual qualities, are not taken into account in having an early-childhood curriculum that has been boiled down to isolated test scores or other measurable pieces of information. "All tests tell us is how many letters and how many sounds children know," she said. "I think there should be this grand societal conversation about what's intellectually motivating and exciting for our children." She believes there should be no compromise in the amount of learning by rote and play available for preschool and kindergarten children to experience. "We have to intellectually engage kids," she said. "We have to give them a sense of their own agency, their own capacity, and an ability to ask questions and solve problems. So we have to give them more open-ended activities that allow them the space they need to make sense of things." Going on to answer what she thought parents and educators could do to stimulate children, she said, "I think parents ought to engage with their children". "Follow the child's interests in people, objects, places, and activities, and talk with them. It's social interaction that creates a link between the child and an ongoing activity. Help them learn how to articulate themselves and participate in the world." She believes that, rather than worrying too much about the television shows their children watch they should rather make attempts to talk with their children about what they see and attentive to, and make judgements about, the appropriateness of they are watching. "I think we want children to grow up media-literate," she said, "but we don't want to dismiss the sources of their pleasure only because it doesn't appeal to our adult sensibilities. Contemporary childhoods are mediated in large part by the media, and it can be very informative for kids." "Knowledge of media gets kids a lot of social cachet because their peers watch it, too," she said. "And a lot of social bonding between children who normally wouldn't have much in common occurs when they watch the same shows." Her soon to be published book of which she is a co-author along with Ceilia Genishi (due out in paperback* on 1st May this year), will discuss the the nature of contemporary early-childhood programs and children's language learning. If you are interested in reading further of her views on early childhood education and would like to purchase the book it is available for pre-order from Amazon.com at $14.93 (saving $7.02) and is eligible for free super saver shipping. Children, Language, and Literacy: Diverse Learners in Diverse Times (Language & Literacy Series) (*Hardcover edition will be priced at $34.02 from Amazon.com - a saving of $19.98) If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
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