ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Frances Wardle is right to touch upon an important aspect of early child care — forcing all children into activities, whether academic or play, that they themselves are not ready for. In accelerated academic instruction, the child isn’t exploring and discovering creatively. She is told what to do in disregard of whether or not she understands the academic material. In forcing dramatic play or mature play upon all children, there is a disregard of whether all children in a particular age group are ready for it. Teachers should be trained in the emotional, cognitive and social developmental stages of the children. When the environment and curriculum are planned by an experienced and well-trained staff, the child learns to play creatively by applying her natural desire to learn. This learning through play is a planned part of the curriculum but in all cases it allows the children to take the lead in their play activities and always makes allowances for individual differences in the group. I cover this topic extensively in a chapter entitled High Quality Child Care as a Learning Experience in my book, Developing Quality Care for Young Children (Corwin Press, 2009).

Dear publisher,
I became very interested in your article o the make believe solution, however, unfortunately could not find the specific article in the NYTimes, as you referred to.
i would greatly appreciate it if you could direct me to the correct location of the article on-line.
Thank you for great posts, I enjoy receiving, reading and learning from your newsletter.
Sincerely,
Lilach Grunfeld-Yona

This approach is used in a school district where I live, and some of the teachers are in my college classes. Many in early childhood in this area, including me, are very opposed to this curriculum. Forcing play (in this case dramatic play) is as bad as forcing anything else at this age. Play is developmental, and many children are not yet ready for dramatic play. Further, all play is equally good; to pose dramatic play as "mature play" is simply wrong. Finally, the way I read Vygotsky, whose approach focuses on language and social input, but is still developmental, this is an inaccurate application of his theory. The architects of this approach are not early childhood people. One of the biggest complaints of its applciation is that there is no place in it for children with a variety of developmental delays. It also discriminates against children who are not verbally advanced (boys).
Why must we continually push children?