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Thank you both for your insightful comments. They say it all! I am going to print these out and pass them out to my staff.

This is more a comment on the two previous comments. Thank you to both of our collegues who stated such important truths concerning early childhood and learning and growing. If our society truly wishes to "grow" a healthy, thoughtful culture then we must admit that the method of measuring learning by check boxes and standardized testing is not the way to go with very young children. Both of those methods have their place when evaluating for specific employment skills, but that is for older teens and adults.
As was mentioned, if we want creative thinkers we must allow the time and space for that to develop.

"School readiness" is a hot button topic for the field of Early Care and Education; at issue is the idea that children need and must be "prepped" for what is still a voluntary school year - Kindergarten.

Though many children enjoy a preschool opportunity, many children do not. Kindergarten was created to socialize children appropriate to their age and abilities in an effort to familiarize them with a school environment; it has become a watered down version of 2nd grade with seated task work and developmentally inappropriate testing.

The goals of "readiness" should be socialization and emotional development. Professionals in our field should take a strong stand against the drilling, calendar circle and worksheet tactics that are pervading readiness programs. Until the age of six years, children really just need a sandbox, blocks, a paint easel and a lot of great books, and some joyful adults to support them as they explore these materials and create and sustain peer relationships.

Besides maturation just being mentioned, the article misses the complex issues of the Mind and Body connections. The neural networking is directly related to being a competent mover. From hard-wired reflexes children; teens; young adults develop sensory-motor-perceptual abilities leading to higher order cognitive skills. Piaget's theory which is now being proven by brain research and MRI images clearly stated, "higher order thinking skills are rooted in the fundamental development of movement skills." The emphasis on the end products related to "symbolic language" with limited or no relationship to the environment as constructivism realizes is the true way to learn and APPLY KNOWLEDGE is being altered by the demands of those who are so anal to think that symbolic language is communication. The truth of child development in the USA today is it has literally tossed the baby out the window in the bath water. Seat time to learn-memorize colors and shapes is not the answer. The majority of children do not have the physical-mental connections to learn colors and symbolic shapes with their hands from the sedentary lifestyle the care givers model for them. The brain-body progression is timeless-Gross motor to fine motor, and verbal language to symbolic language. People somewhere want to go directly to the end product of symbolic language because it can be objectively measured on a piece of paper. Well, is it any wonder that OT/PTs and speech pathologists are in high demand? The kids have not been given instruction of how to move across the midlines of the body nor allowed to play to discover innate movement prior to symbolic language skills. With half the swings removed from playgrounds in the past 5 years and no recess, when will the inner ear get the vestibular stimulation which is essential for brain mapping? If the end product camp wants "lemmings" and children needing LD-"learning differences", then the goals of the sedentary lifestyles and seat time are working. But, somebody better stand up for children today and civilization in the future. STOP THIS RIDICULOUS PRACTICE OF FORCING SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE ONTO CHILDREN IN AMERICA!!! The rest of the world is creating thinkers and literate people through music, movement and "play" which is essential for brain mapping.