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Collin's article is very strong and it touches many angles of Early Childhood Care and Education. I wish to thank him for stressing professionalism rather than business. Quality of education should not be measured on statical scales but on the quality which can be attained by motivating educators to focus on teaching children to become indepent and not to recruit them to pass exams.
I recommend this article should be share to policy makers and teacher training institutions.
Fortidas

Colin Gibbs is right on the mark. The idea of when to begin formal lessons with children has stirred periodic controversy over the years. These discussions have tended to become more heated when real shortcomings in our educational system have lead to wide demand for children to be “drilled” with knowledge from the earliest age. It happened back in the late ‘50s, after the Soviet Union had launched its first space satellite, Sputnik, when shrill cries were raised that the education of our children were not keeping up with the Russians. And it’s happened again recently with the “no child left behind” policy that demands that teachers, from the earliest school and pre-school grades pressure children to be able to do well on standardized tests.

In order to consider this question clearly, it is absolutely necessary to take it out of current political and social pressures and put into the perspective of what we know from years of research about child development. School casts the child into a social situation with adults and peers. Preparing the child for this experience must include the ability of the child to share, to cooperate with others in his class, to listen to instructions, to express himself creatively, and to get self-satisfaction from his accomplishments — the emotional and social side of his development. “Adherents to the whole child approach do not devalue the importance of cognitive skills, including literacy,” notes Edward F. Zigler, Director of Yale University’s Center in Child Development and Social Policy, in his 2004 book Children’s Play: The Roots of Reading. “No reasonable person would argue against the merits of literacy,” he emphasizes. “However, reading is only one aspect of cognitive development, and cognitive development is only one aspect of human development. Cognitive skills are very important but they are so intertwined with physical, social, and emotional systems that it is myopic, if not futile, to dwell on the intellect and exclude its partners.”

Educators must always keep emblazoned in their minds that we are not producing shoes or trading stock derivatives. We are educating human beings in all their complexity. The ability to read well and solve math problems are one aspect of this education. So too is the development of a person capable of care, compassion, love, cooperation and all the traits that make us the people we will become.

Eager to learn and try new things