Too Much, Too Soon?: Early Learning and the Erosion of Childhood (Early Years)
Richard House
Wondered if anyone has read this and what your thoughts were?
AraBoo,
I have not read the book but I did do a little looking around after you posted this. I read reviews of the book, went to the website and found these videos here: http://openeyecampaign.wordpress.com/video/. This really deserves a full response, but i am not prepared to do it. The Open Eye campaign makes several charges that should be answered and this will certainly have an effect on the image of programs like Brillkids, YBCR, Reading Bear and others. That is sad because we are really talking about apples and oranges, what they have in common is that they are fruit.
I posted to keep the thread bumped and hoping to get someone else to respond. I want to take a couple of days to formulate a real response as I both agree and disagree with the whole premise of Open Eye. One the face of it all, Too Much Too Soon assumes certain things about early education - that it is done in a preschool or daycare setting, Their studies and assumptions follow this model. It is different can of worms when we are talking about a child learning on a parents lap with lots of joy and encouragement. And no testing.
Part of the reason this is a controversy is that in the US and England we are affluent enough to worry about it and decadent enough that our education systems are in great need of repair. Because we are declining cultures, the governments of both countries are attempting to wrestle control away from local schools and parents in an attempt to “fix the problem”. Government is rarely good at anything other than maintaining and feeding itself.
I’m in the middle of watching this video clip now, but the first thing that strikes me is that they pulled the Finland statistics which are a misrepresentation. Finnish kids may start school at age 7, but most are learning at home… “only 27% had no reading ability upon starting school.”
http://learnthingsweb.hubpages.com/hub/Dont-Use-Finland-as-a-Case-Against-Early-and-Baby-Reading
... so what they're doing is setting up children for failure before they've even started compulsory schooling
I stopped the video (1:54) after this sentence as I was fighting back some vomit in my throat. I won’t watch the rest. When she listed the goals, I thought “it’s about time someone somewhere is trying to at least raise the bar a little”
That quote reflects the last 40 years of pedagogy - which is highly responsible for the decline of education here in the USA. It’s time to put a stop to the madness. I just finished the book “The Feel Good Curriculum” which discusses ad nauseum how child psychology has undermined education and turned the institutions from education to therapy (and an ineffective therapy at that)…
It’s no surprise that Dr. Leach is a child psychologist. Only in that realm do we worry about “failure” leading to hurting little timmy’s ego - instead of worrying about the primary goals of raising a child into an adult. I know I’m preaching to the choir, so I’ll just stop now
:mad:
@ PokerDad: The Monti school I send my eldest dd to just received a grant from the commonwealth gov to bring a social worker into the school to work with the kids through a Therapy Program called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. When I showed this to my husband I said I send her there to learn not for a hippy love in session. I said I think we are putting too much into feelings and not enough into learning. I just feel so sick too my stomach about this that I probably wont be be consenting for her to do this.
I also wasn’t aware that sooooo many children need therapy these days. I don’t recall my own childhood an unhappy one and nor do any of my friends remember their childhoods needing therapy. UGHH I am soo over it that like you I think I could throw up. I do not doubt their are children who need it but it is getting ridiculous. :wacko:
Kimba
Thanks TeachingMyToddlers, I was going to do a little research on the Finnish example before I wrote this and was glad you had the link. However, it is not surprising that many Finnish children enter school able to read or are emergent readers. For goodness sakes they are seven. I have several friends who are unschoolers. Their children learn to read on their own. Only one of nine children I know about couldn’t read by age 7 and the mother was getting worried about it. The kids picked up most of the learning on their own.
But, I don’t want to start at using Finland as an example. That is merely a distraction. First lets deal with a practical question. If the early years are years of tremendous growth and learning, and if we give them information like: this is a bird, this is your nose, milk, eat, mommy, daddy and here is how we jump; why on earth is it detrimental to give them additional information like this is called an “a†and it says “ah†and this is a “2â€? Why would giving them information that helps them make sense of the world they live in be harmful and keeping that information from them be helpful? This makes no logical sense.
My response cannot possibly answer all of the questions some of our new members ask themselves. I’ve been around the homeschooling world long enough to know that children survive all kinds of mistakes parents make, usually without lasting effects, if parents are humble enough to correct their errors. I’ve yet to see children refuse to learn because their parents started teaching them to read and write at 3 and 4. What I have seen is children who could read and write at 4 who then got lazy because they weren’t challenged and then had a hard time later. That is a genuine and real problem for the EL community. Parents should go into this with their eyes wide open. But this is not specific to the EL community. This is a problem with all above average children in our public and private educational institutions. I have said this before - children who are gifted/above average are less likely to graduate from college and be successful than children who are merely “averageâ€. It comes down to laziness. Please see the research done by the Belin Blank Center at the University of Iowa. They coast through the elementary years and never learn how to work. Because the studies are dumbed down in high school, they never learn to manage both school and extra-curricular activities. They never figure out how to study or take tests. They didn’t have to. They get to college and their peers have all caught up with them and now they are in trouble. They can’t hack college life. But this is not because they were taught too young. This is because the adults in their lives did not challenge them.
The assumption that EL is hard on a child is false. The children in my daycare are not burdened by EL. Other than the writing, my children will far surpass the goals set forth in these programs. My kids do not balk at learning, they love it. Not only can they read and do math, they know the names of local birds by sight, sound and written name. They can identify local plants, trees and animal tracks. They learn about the solar system and how food digests. Currently every kid in my daycare is taking violin and piano lessons. I must insert here that I have only 2 full-time and 1 part-time plus one of my own. In their MUCH free playtime they act out the stories: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Runaway Pancake, Chicken Little and The Three Little Pigs. Yesterday, I caught my 2 year old reading The Owl and the Kitty Cat to one of the daycare girls. His part of the conversation went like this:
“Kitty said the to Owl, ‘You elegant fowl’. Ana, fowl means a bird, it means he is bootiful bird.â€
This is not a stunted child.
But, having said all the previous, I would stand with the Open EYE folks and oppose the regulations placed on daycares and preschools. A child sitting on the lap of a loving caregiver using the EL techniques you find on this site is not the same thing as lining children up in rows and group activities and didactically teaching phonics rules. My child would rebel in that situation. Most children would rebel in that situation. And the bright children will revolt. In that case, I would much rather have my child outside playing. What I oppose with these regulations is the same thing I oppose in all state schools – cookie cutter curriculum and a poor curriculum at that. Little children do not all learn the same way. Not all programs work for all kids. Our brand of EL works so well because it is implemented by people who love and care about these specific children not by people who like children in general. The caregivers of these children are invested in their particular futures. I know when what I am doing is not working for my child and the children I care for. If I can get all the children working on the same thing at once I will, but that doesn’t happen often. All of my kids have educational goals each day that are tailored for themselves. And if they are tired we quit. If someone misses their mommy too much today we just read stories and snuggle. You cannot do this with 20 children and 2 teachers. LR works for some kids and not others. And Reading Bear works for some kids and not others. Handing down a curriculum and saying you must use this for all little kids a bad idea. The paperwork alone would be a nightmare. But this is not the same as saying EL is bad. What the Open Eye folks are missing is that it is their system that has brought this on. They cannot educate a child properly in 13 years. Why would giving them another 2 or 3 make a difference? It is not just preschoolers that are coming out not able to learn, most children in state schools are not learning. If I were a betting person, I’m not even betting that the curriculum is the problem – I’m going to hedge my bets on the fact that little children want to be with their parents. There are multiple studies that indicate that children do much better if they are kept at home longer. This is not to disparage parents who must send their kids to daycare. I am a daycare provider. But I am painfully aware that the children would rather be with their parents.
The other assumption here is that childhood is some inherently magical special time that shouldn’t be tainted with more mature subject matter (reading and writing and arithmetic). Thus, we have specific programming devoted to children filled with drivel and nonsense or as Charlotte Mason would say twaddle. You see this in some of the comments made in the movie. Yet, the Open Eye folks are a bit disingenuous. All children are learning all the time, they are correct. You cannot stop a child from being educated. All you can do is direct that education. They just want a list of things that are acceptable to learn and things that are not for the sake of some ideal specific to what it means to be a child. I submit that this is silly on it’s face. Giving children more information is not harmful. However, it is possible to make certain kinds of learning distasteful.
Now, what about pushing the kids too hard and fast? There are some parents that do that I am sure. They see the progress of certain children on boards such as BK and then they woodenly apply EL strategies trying to get their child to surpass or meet certain expectations. They push beyond what a child is capable of. This is not an EL problem, this is a parental problem. You will see these same parents on the sports field, in music and math competitions. EL did not make these parents.
The few long term studies and the anecdotal evidence does not support that EL is bad for children. Dr. Beth Lucy Wellman’s studies on orphans in the 30’s showed that children who had participated in EL brain building and educational activities caused a 15-35% increase in IQ scores and that the earlier the intervention the higher the rise in IQ. Those children were followed for some time and often out performed their peers from 2 parent families.
I’ve no doubt that EL can be done wrong and cause damage to children. Please look at the current state school system. That does not mean that EL is wrong. That is like saying that because our state schools turn out children who are functionally illiterate, shallow, and morally bankrupt we should stop educating our children. Most of us are able to put on our big kid pants and see through that nonsense.
Sonya, you put that so beautifully. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I love what you said about children wanting to be with their parents. It echoes what Doman said, “Mothers make the best mothers.”
I actually just came on here to post something similar to what Sonya said:
They cannot educate a child properly in 13 years. Why would giving them another 2 or 3 make a difference?
That is the problem right there. The system is broken and people have tried to fix it with regulations, money, etc, to no avail. Is there really hope in shoving kids into a broken system a couple years earlier? I think the bar needs to be raised, but if they are going to use the same failing methods, I’m not convinced that this is the answer and the kids may well be trampled on in the process for next to no benefit. And obviously I am not against early learning, but I don’t trust that indoctrinating kids even earlier is going to make much difference.
All the lament is about the process and not about the result. Nobody says here that educated children are unhappy. Speakers are worried that bad teachers can be even worse if working with very little children. And here we can agree.
From the OpenEYE folks FAQ. It is helpful to see exactly what we are all talking about. Instead of paraphrasing it - I’ve just copied and pasted the more salient points.
[b]Is Open EYE connected with the Toxic Childhood campaign?[/b] – A number of the signatories to the well-received open letter are involved with Open EYE. We believe that the push towards an ever-earlier start to formal education is a major cause of what has become known as Toxic Childhood.Is Open EYE anti-EYFS and asking for de-regulation? – No. We do not want total de-regulation and we have no problem with most of the principles which underpin the framework. Open EYE is not campaigning against the whole of EYFS, but only against the statutory nature of the Learning and Development requirements in the EYFS. We believe, and research shows, that these requirements are developmentally inappropriate.
Are any of the EYFS goals mandatory? – It is not, as far as we know, expected that every child will achieve every goal, so they are not mandatory in that sense. However, it is fair to assume that failure of children to attain the goals will be seen as failure of the setting to deliver the programmes, which is mandatory.
Will this affect home educators? – No. Children younger than 5 do not legally have to be schooled, and we do not believe the government has quite reached the point of telling parents exactly how they must bring their own children up within the home. Yet.
I am not a fan of the state telling me what to do and how teach my child at any age let alone before compulsory school age, so these regulations crawl under my skin. However, one of the speakers in the video state what we know children need certain things: real food, we know that now (did we used to think that children could eat candy all day and be fine?), lots of talk, love, songs and play. The assumption is that they will learn the rest themselves. I was reading somewhere, I’ll post the link if I can find it again, where one of the OpenEye supporters stated that if you give an infant a toy and show them that it squeeks he is less likely to explore the toy for himself. It is better to just give the child the toy and leave them alone. The jist of the statement was that early education destroys a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn.