Are we hurting kids at school?
Susan Ochshorn is the author of "Squandering America's Future: Why ECE Policy Matters for Equality, Our Economy, and Our Children." The views expressed are her own.
(CNN)This fall, some 65,000 4-year-olds, backpacks hanging from their tiny frames, converged on the nation's largest public school district.
In just a year, New York City had nearly tripled its number of full-day prekindergarten slots. And before they entered their classrooms, Mayor Bill de Blasio crowed about his signature initiative -- a key part of a campaign promise to fight inequality, but a goal that has had more than its share of skeptics.
I'm not one them.
Universal prekindergarten is essential to developing America's human capital. True, preschool isn't enough -- it's not a silver bullet for inequality, and we need to start earlier, with better care of infants and toddlers. Still, it's a critical piece of the enterprise, especially when you consider that the United States stands in the lower half of the Economist Intelligence Unit index for provision of preschool across 45 countries. Indeed, nearly 6 in 10 children are not enrolled in preschool in the United States, while the highest quality programs are off limits to many.
Sadly, early education is perennially on the chopping block, a casualty of Washington's gridlock and polarization. But one of de Blasio's comments didn't sit right with me: The city, he said, was planning to use the Common Core curriculum in prekindergarten. A child who's had the benefit of a full day of rigor, he assured us, would be imbued with a great love of learning.
Rigor for 4-year-olds? What about their social-emotional development, which goes hand-in-hand with cognitive skill-building? What about play, the primary engine of human development?
Unfortunately, it seems like we're subjecting our young children to a misguided experiment.
"Too many educators are introducing inappropriate teaching methods into the youngest grades at the expense of active engagement with hands-on experiences and relationships," Beverly Falk, author of Defending Childhood told me. "Research tells us that this is the way young children construct understandings, make sense of the world, and develop their interests and desire to learn." She isn't alone.
Early academic training has become an obsession among child development experts and teachers of young children as the Common Core standards have encroached upon the earliest years of schooling.
Kindergarten has already undergone a radical transformation. University of Virginia researchers Daphna Bassok and Anna Rorem found that in 2006, 65% of kindergarten teachers -- more than double the number in 1998 -- thought most children should learn to read on their watch. Meanwhile, the exposure to social studies, science, music, and art -- the staples of a well-rounded early childhood education -- had declined. And nearly 20% of teachers never had physical education.
All these trends have accelerated rapidly with recent education reform policies, including Race to the Education: Too much, too soon? (Opinion) - CNN.com: