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- <text id=91TT1656>
- <title>
- July 29, 1991: Good Things, Small Packages
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 29, 1991 The World's Sleaziest Bank
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- EDUCATION, Page 54
- Good Things, Small Packages
- </hdr><body>
- <p>In a time of gloom and doom about U.S. schools, early-childhood
- education is something different, a cauldron of fresh and
- innovative approaches
- </p>
- <p>By Stefan Kanfer--Reported by Karen Grigsby Bates/Los Angeles
- and David Thigpen/New York, with other bureuas
- </p>
- <p> Some of the best education in America goes on below the
- adult eye level.
- </p>
- <p>-- Philip Coltoff, executive director, the Children's Aid
- Society
- </p>
- <p> Coltoff's observation is being echoed in every region of
- the country. Allan Bloom decried The Closing of the American
- Mind in his 1987 best seller, referring largely to college
- students. But in the two-to-six age group, American minds are
- rapidly dilating. So is the interest in early-childhood
- education--ECE to the trade. "This is a wonderful time to be
- in the field," says Sara Wilford, director of the Early
- Childhood Center at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.
- "Interest in ECE has never been more intense."
- </p>
- <p> The moment small children step into their first classroom,
- they enter a new world of learning. Early childhood education
- has become a cauldron of fresh and innovative approaches, a
- place where research is applied with dramatic effect. The days
- of too much control, overstructured hours and too many "punish
- mechanisms"--difficult children forced to take naps--are
- going. The old "teacher-directed" activities are also on their
- way out. So are elements of rote learning: reciting the
- alphabet and learning the early stages of reading through
- memorization.
- </p>
- <p> Building on research that proves children learn more
- rapidly, and with more sophistication than authorities thought,
- educators increasingly use tools like one-on-one conversation
- and drama. Interaction and imagination are settling in.
- Pre-schools are bright and inviting; so are the teachers and
- staffs. They have to be. Close to 60% of U.S. mothers with
- children under age six are out of the house and on the job.
- Child care has had to grow up fast.
- </p>
- <p> Although the content and curriculum are as varied as the
- settings, most ECE centers adhere to guidelines set down in 1986
- and revised last year by the National Association for the
- Education of Young Children. The 60-year-old association is
- early-childhood's powerful lobby and accrediting body; its
- membership has doubled in the past decade and now numbers 77,000
- professionals. Today it examines teachers and administrators,
- demands that early-childhood programs meet criteria of health
- and safety and continually reviews facilities to make sure its
- standards are being met. When the association outlines the
- future it wants, it often points to the Perry Preschool Project
- in Ypsilanti, Mich. Back in 1962, this project selected 123
- children ages three and four to take part in an experimental
- program. All came from families at the poverty level. Half the
- group was given two years of preschool instruction, 2 1/2 hours a
- day, five days a week for 30 weeks. The aims were increased
- self-esteem, socialization and curiosity. Formal learning was
- not a high priority. The "control " half was given no
- preschooling. After the preschooling program ended, the kids
- were tracked through the rest of their school careers to
- adulthood.
- </p>
- <p> The results, published in 1984, seemed to validate the
- Head Start program, launched in 1965 as part of the Johnson
- Administration's War on Poverty. Often located in public school
- facilities, Head Start provided quality early-childhood
- education for disadvantaged children. But would it bring any
- long-lasting benefits?
- </p>
- <p> The Perry Project offered a solid yes in reply. Its
- preschool group enjoyed a 15 point rise in IQ rating per student
- after one year. Only 15% of the preschoolers required special
- education in later years; 35% of the control group needed aid.
- Of the preschoolers, 67% graduated from high school, vs. 50% of
- the control group. By age 19, only 31% of the preschoolers had
- been arrested for some crime, vs. 51% of the others.
- </p>
- <p> The implications for society are as plain as chalk marks
- on a blackboard: the relatively high cost of the original
- program--$5,000 a year for each preschooler--was actually
- a bargain. The results at Ypsilanti are echoing louder across
- the country, not only in facilities for the underprivileged but
- also in preschools everywhere. Twenty-seven states now fund
- prekindergarten facilities--a huge jump from only seven in
- 1979. And the early-childhood boom goes on unabated. Some 1,700
- nationally accredited public programs operate in the U.S.; an
- additional 4,300 are actively seeking accreditation.
- </p>
- <p> The private sector is even more active. About 5,600 firms
- provide some kind of day care, and a small but growing group
- offers on-site or near-site ECE centers. The Lotus Child Center,
- situated at the company's Cambridge, Mass., headquarters, is an
- impressive example. The software giant employs 2,000 people, and
- 60 of their children are currently enrolled. Costs vary
- according to income. Some parents pay the going rate for private
- preschools, while other employees are subsidized and pay as
- little as $20 a week. "In the future," says program director
- Mary Eisenberg, "we're going to see a lot more of these centers,
- as companies calculate the gains for two generations: the
- employees and their kids."
- </p>
- <p> Whether children are at their parents' workplace or in the
- basement of a public school or in an idyllic country setting,
- the approach to learning is undergoing a mini-revolution. Today
- imagination and play are being stressed as never before.
- Observes Chicago kindergarten teacher and author Vivian Gussin
- Paley, winner of a $355,000 MacArthur "genius" grant in
- recognition of her books about young children: "Essentially,
- everything you learn in school can be broken down into a story.
- If you allow children to talk about the little worlds they've
- created, they'll be able to take on everything."
- </p>
- <p> In other words, play is children's work, and finding the
- right materials--stories, drama, clay, blocks, sand, water,
- paints--really means finding the tools for reasoning and
- maturing. "What's basic and important to any young child's
- education," says Shelley Lindauer, head of the Lab School
- Preeducation Program at Utah State University, "is curiosity and
- observation. It's much more important to know how to go about
- finding an answer--not a right answer."
- </p>
- <p> At the Pacific Oaks School in Pasadena, Calif., while the
- kids seek answers, they are encouraged to see how their
- individual actions affect the world around them. Children at the
- school range in age from three months to nine years.
- Two-year-olds spend two hours twice a week there, and their
- parents have to come too. While the kids experiment, the adults
- get lessons in childhood perception. To develop pre-reading
- skills, older children tell stories and dabble with writing.
- </p>
- <p> The same philosophy pertains at the Early Childhood Center
- of Sarah Lawrence, where director Wilford finds that her
- charges learn by imitating, by pretending to be Mommy or Daddy.
- "In that process, they are developing language and knowledge of
- symbolic things--the basis for reading and writing."
- </p>
- <p> In the University of Alabama in Birmingham programs, older
- kids stage plays and operettas; younger ones play with blocks
- as a means of learning how to add and subtract. Says director
- Virginia Marsh: "We have never had a discipline problem. The
- children are so busy doing things that they don't have time to
- get bored."
- </p>
- <p> The children in Birmingham--and everywhere else in the
- country--are going to be a lot busier in the coming decade.
- And so are their instructors. Yale Professor Edward Zigler,
- director of the Bush Center for Child Development and Social
- Policy, predicts that "by the year 2000, the number of working
- women will rise to 75%. We will see full-day programs for
- children from the age of three." It will take thousands of new
- preschools to meet that demand, and many more thousands of new
- teachers and assistants. The prospect is inviting and daunting:
- the millennium is only nine years away.
- </p>
- <p> Listen closely and you can hear the future banging its
- spoon on the high chair.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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