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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > October > 02 > Entry
Building Blocks: A new approach to early education
Packed into a Methodist church on upscale Park Avenue in New York City, hundreds of parents of infants and toddlers hung on every word from the admissions directors of four top independent schools.
These folks were well-heeled enough to crack open their checkbooks in a heartbeat to pay $25,000 for kindergarten if only their son and daughter could be the one in every 12 kids granted admission. Many of their kids were attending high quality pre-schools, among the best preparation for future schooling. But what was expected of a four-year-old to enter these exclusive schools?
The answer: the schools would accept those that best exhibit work ethic, citizenship, a sense of community, character and enthusiastic learning.
“Nonetheless, the school representatives said they sought to put the parents at ease and didn’t want to feed the admissions hysteria. Fat chance,” writes author Gene Maeroff.
In a his new book, “Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School,” Maeroff challenges us to think differently about pre-school learning, and to value high quality early education much as the wealthy already do, although perhaps a little less hysterically.
Through the public schools, he argues, kids from every day families can achieve many of the same skills and preparation the Manhattanites at that church absolutely demanded for their kids in pre-school, if as a nation we are willing to make early learning a public policy priority.
Building Blocks is a thoughtful, thoroughly researched study of early childhood education — a great primer for parents, or policy makers, who want to better understand the issues in this rapidly-changing debate.
Today, we know the benefits of a building a strong academic foundation even in child’s earliest experiences.
For about the past decade, as brain research has exploded thanks to new medical tools and observation methods, the bandwagon of advocates for better education program for very young children has begun to buckle.
In the popular press, Ron Kotulak’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1994 Chicago Tribune series on advances in brain science opened a lot of eyes — kids who didn’t receive proper brain stimulation even in early infancy could be left far behind by the time they started kindergarten at age five. (Kotulak’s work is now a book called Inside the Brain: Revolutionary Discoveries of How the Mind Works.)
Today there is a healthy national movement pushing for more and better early childhood education and they’ve had some success convincing states to ride along. Oklahoma and Georgia, for instance, have “universal” pre-kindergarten programs that make state funds available to allow any four-year-old to attend an accredited program.
Maeroff, the former national education correspondent for the New York Times and the author of a dozen books about education in America, thinks its time to push the issue even farther.
In Building Blocks, he argues that state-funded pre-kindergarten should be just the start. In his vision, those kids belong in the public school system and there should be separate schools for pre-kindergarten to third grade to create a specialized, supportive atmosphere to get very young children off to a good educational start and improving their life chances.
“Those who believe in giving children the best possible start have only to resolve to lift out this portion of schooling and provide it with the separate integrity and distinct prominence that it deserves,” Maeroff writes. “The best way to do this would be through an identifiable PK-3 approach, whether the primary grades have their own separate buildings or wings or autonomy within an elementary school that includes upper grades.”
For Maeroff, high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten also is the most politically viable route to effectively expand critical educational opportunity to little kids.
This is a controversial view. Many experts argue that state-paid pre-school should be targeted only to needy children, leaving wealthier parents to foot the bill for their kids. They say state-paid programs for everywhere would be too costly and unnecessary for many, such as families where mom stays home.
But Maeroff says including pre-kindergarten in the public school system is the logical next step after wide acceptance of kindergarten, which also was once seen as a radical and perhaps over-the-top idea before gaining acceptance and inclusion public schools. And, as with kindergarten, with more acceptance will come more buy-in. Nobody would think to propose schools drop kindergarten today.
(However, kindergarten has perhaps not come as far as you might think, considering that my two oldest daughters could get no better than half-day kindergarten programs despite attending high-end public school systems in Michigan and Ohio in the past three years. Universal adoption of full-day kindergarten everywhere — in accordance with overwhelming evidence supporting its value — might be a necessary prelude.)
A stand-alone school for young children, Maeroff says, has advantages in staff training and collaboration and flexibility to group students in various ways. But even more than that, it sends a message — that these grades are important and deserve special, and specialized, attention.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Young Children
Comments
By Laura
October 13, 2006 12:50 AM | Link to this
I am a kindergarten teacher in Kentucky. My students come to school for a full day; I could not possibly cover my curriculum in a half day. Research shows that children up through age 6 are like sponges —- they soak up massive amounts of information. This is why schools are pushing for students to go to preschool and full day kindergarten. Many of my students already enter kindergarten with knowledge of letters and sounds and my curriculum expects students to know blends and the ch, th, wh, and sh sounds by the end of the year, as well as read simple sentences and three letter words. In the past, this was not expected of students until first grade. The expectations of students have increased, and I have found that kindergarten students can meet them……..they are like little sponges at that age.By hogeb
October 11, 2006 11:24 AM | Link to this
I’m a college prof who really has taught in preschool, and a couple of things about this book review strike home. The disparity between kindergartners from affluent and poor areas is startling for two reasons. One, there are fewer educational opportunities in poor areas. And two, chaotic environments that are more common in poor homes than affluent ones, interfere with the basic wiring of the brain that needs the attachment to a care-giver to properly form. Mandatory preK can address the first, but not the second, and the second is probably the bigger factor for most of the “problem” kids in our schools.By null
October 4, 2006 8:33 PM | Link to this
Why do these Schools ask that the child is already taught the things they are suppose to teach them? I call it lazy teachers, they only want the children who are eager and already know most of what they are to teach.??? Lazy…By j
October 3, 2006 11:13 AM | Link to this
Full day kindergartens are beneficial, especially since students are expected to meet standards that 1st graders 10 years ago were expected to know at the end of 1st grade. Full time kindergarten is especially popular in districts (like Dayton) where the socio-economics are low. These children need the extra help, both educationally and socially, because parents are not upholding their responsibility. I have no problem with exclusive schools for the rich, especially if they choose to pay for it themselves. Just like I have no problem with someone paying lots of money for a car or a house, it is all about people’s priorities and if these parents choose to pay more for their children’s education, more power to them. The same can be said about parents who choose to live in Oakwood, Northmont, and Centerville, they are willing to pay the higher property taxes and in return their kids get better schools. It seems to me that whenever we get into a discussion about money, there is a lot of jealousy and contempt, and that clouds people’s judgment. I would love to be rich and affluent but I have chosen a career (teacher) that will not make me rich, and I am fine with that. Most people aren’t rich because they were born into it; they are wealthy because they chose to work hard.By Rick
October 2, 2006 6:07 PM | Link to this
I have heard of these expensive and exclusive kindergartens before. What they show is that often the rich have more money than good sense.By Keith
October 2, 2006 12:52 PM | Link to this
High-priced fees for exclusive kindergartens, what will the gurus think of next. To answer Dave, no the full day doesn’t have a real benefit over the half day kindergarten. But the college profs, most of whom couldn’t teach a K-12 classroom for more than a year, have to make money somehow with studies, books, publishing, etc. Funniest is a local professor who tried to be a principal to learn what it’s like. That person ended up being the butt of jokes from then on from the staff because of total misunderstanding of how to run a high school. No, most couldn’t effect what they often recommend from their book learning; but luckily most college people don’t think they have the same skill set the K-12 teacher has.By Dave
October 2, 2006 9:17 AM | Link to this
Why do you feel the need for kindergarten to last a full day? Last I knew, kids that age didn’t have the endurance for a full day and studies showed they didn’t really learn more from it. Has there been a consensus that full day is worth it, or is this just another fad from a high-paid consultant who never taught kids that age?By Oldprof
October 2, 2006 8:31 AM | Link to this
What, has no one told those New Yorkers that they can’t get quality education by throwing money at it??? Seriously now: I consider that more education at an earlier age might be the strongest way to overcome familial and societal restraints. I believe that, all things being equal, the best teachers and resources should be concentrated in the early grades (putting me second or third from the bottom of the ranks, with graduate faculty scraping the bottom). Should well-off parents foot the bill—well, if we had a fair system of taxation in this land, with no special sweetheart tax cuts for the wealthy and the connected, then the wealthy WOULD be pulling their fair share of the weight—for their own good as well as society at large.