Kindergartens That Prize Play and Academics–In That Order
“Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?” asked a group of researcherswho looked at U.S. kindergartens in 1998 and then again in 2010. Their answer, based on surveys and direct observation is “yes.” The struggle over play vs. academics that has consumed early childhood educators for the past two decades shows that the academic-driven kindergarten has triumphed in the U.S. especially after No Child Left Behind (2001) and now implementing Common Core standards (2010). Applied to kindergarten, there are now literacy targets and tests that five year-olds are supposed to meet and take during the school year.
There are, however, many other kindergartens that prize the play and discovery approach to early learning that also includes reading and math. Here is one instance of such a kindergarten described by a veteran teacher. I have changed names and places to protect the school and individuals.
Approaching the school’s playground that morning, I watched as an army of 5- and 6-year-old boys patrolled a zigzagging stream behind … preschool in the city of ____, unfazed by the warm August drizzle. When I clumsily unhinged the steel gate to the school’s playground, the young children didn’t even lift their eyes from the ground; they just kept dragging and pushing their tiny shovels through the mud.
At 9:30 a.m., the boys were called to line up for a daily activity called Morning Circle. (The girls were already inside—having chosen to play board games indoors.) They trudged across the yard in their rubber boots, pleading with their teachers to play longer—even though they had already been outside for an hour. As they stood in file, I asked them to describe what they’d been doing on the playground.
“Making dams,” sang a chorus of three boys.
“Nothing else?” one of their teachers prodded.
“Nothing else,” they confirmed.
“[Children] learn so well through play,” Anna , one of the preschool’s Kindergartens That Prize Play and Academics–In That Order | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
