Push Down- part one

I was thinking the other day about an observation that came to me many years ago. I had the opportunity to hear David Elkind and later read his book- The Hurried Child. What resonated with me through the years is how society keeps pushing everything to younger and younger ages. Elkind went on to talk about how “age markers” are disappearing. The book and Elkind’s premise comes to mind when I see children in early elementary grades discussing and wearing designer brands, talking about dates, owning the latest in electronic equipment, and wearing makeup.
Society is strongly pushing education in the same direction- more formal instruction at a younger age. There is a push for academics in playschool/preschool. Kindergarteners are now expected to be reading and writing and performing math functions before exiting. Educators realize that some children are ready for this but many children struggle to please and try to understand. What is upsetting is that parents believe something is wrong with their child if he/she is not reading, writing, or doing math at an early age. This leads to parents with one more thing in life to worry about and to feel the need to pressure and/or do more for their child. It could easily be that their child is just not ready (developmentally not ready the educators would say) and is just fine but needs time to explore material and practice. I see this push tumbling into much bigger issues; a young student not developing a positive self- image or a healthy attitude toward learning rather adopting an inner worry that he/she is not good enough.
Jim Grant said, “Childhood is a journey, not a race.” Yet in this instant-do-it –right-and-get-it-the-first-time attitude many children are starting their educational journey feeling confused, stressed, and out of control of their situation.
States, districts and soon to be national expectations appear to be narrowing in on information to be learned during a specific grade level. In the beginning of trying to develop standards and benchmarks, said benchmarks were developed in clusters of grades; for K, 1, 2, then 3rd, 4th and 5th. This allowed time and space to become confident by many exposures and time to practice. With the current emphasis on testing, flexibility toward learning is becoming more structured.
The curriculums that today’s students are being taught, appear to be highly packed with “need to know” academic knowledge. Content is plentiful causing little time for a student to absorb the knowledge (process) for understanding, long term learning, and transferring and application of knowledge. So, many people who have not studied learning and brain development are pushing educators to teach more academic knowledge and processing at younger and younger ages not realizing that the brain may not be ready. Curriculums are becoming much more involved for our students in the younger grades. The societal and political feeling is that our students need to learn more. Some educators will tell you that we need to have higher expectations but are the expectations realistic? Children need time to play with knowledge, practice processes, and use what is expected to be known, to become competent strong learners.
Society seems to have forgotten that lesson we all learned during our early education: we are each unique, have individual experiences, each person learns in his/her own way and time.
Educational research and brain development research shows that knowledge becomes stronger and lasting when connections can be made and the new information is meaningful and useful. Students and adults learning information for a specific experience or test or to please others soon forget. Long term retention depends on the usefulness, connections developed, and relevance to the learner.
Currently people appear to be looking for the competitive edge. I would like to suggest that to get that edge young learners need time and practice for the first skills in life that form an all-important strong foundation for learning and creativity. Each student needs help to find self-esteem and a joy of learning by being given time to explore learning, time to practice therefore building a strong foundation, a positive self-image as well as a lifelong love of learning.