Alliance for Childhood Campaigns to Take Pressure Off
Children
Dear Friends,
When I last wrote
to you about the Alliance I described our latest campaign to restore active,
imaginative play to children's lives. In the intervening months news reports
and research have underlined the growing importance of this work.
In a misguided
effort to boost achievement, time for play is being pushed out of kindergarten
in favor of academics. In many communities five-year-olds now attend all-day
kindergartens where they spend 90 minutes each day in writing and reading
lessons, 60 minutes doing math, and 30 minutes on science.
Music and art-once
at the heart of the early childhood curriculum but now considered frills-come
only once a week. At most, the children get one outdoor recess per day. Some
new schools are being built with no playgrounds. In one Washington, DC area
school district, the word "play" does not appear at all in the
kindergarten curriculum.
In California and
other states, kindergarten children are drilled on reading skills with programs
that require teachers to follow a set script. In Chicago, according to the New
York Times, all kindergarten teachers follow the exact same curriculum that
dictates what is to be taught each day. Each activity is linked to a
standardized test the children will take.
This year Head
Start changed its curriculum to place more emphasis on early academics and less
on play. Head Start programs will be evaluated according to how well children
do on standardized assessments-in spite of research showing that testing of such
young children is generally unreliable.
The Washington
Post reported in March that school officials were eliminating nap time from
all-day public preschool programs. "Nap time needs to go away,"
Prince George's County schools chief Andr� J. Hornsby said during a meeting
with Maryland legislators. "We need to get rid of all the baby school
stuff they used to do."
The main reason
given for such policies is that children need more time for academic learning.
Yet long-term research shows clearly that young children at risk do much better
in play-oriented programs than those pushed into academic work. They showed
fewer learning disabilities, were more likely to graduate from high school, and
were less likely to commit crimes and go to prison as young adults.
Good schools give
breaks to enhance children's learning and well-being, just as good businesses
give breaks to enhance productivity. Especially at a time when childhood
obesity is growing, cutting back on children's limited opportunities to be active
outdoors is short-sighted.
The Alliance for
Childhood has embarked on an ambitious effort to educate parents, teachers, and
education policymakers about the importance of imaginative play in children's
development, and about the potential for harm in current policies that endanger
play. This effort is every bit as urgent-and every bit as difficult-as the
Alliance's continuing work in the area of technology and children, because it
runs counter to what many adults assume is the best way to prepare children for
the future.
We believe that
children who are allowed to be children will grow into healthy, resilient,
productive adults. "Today we are so busy preparing children for the
technologically advanced workplace," writes developmental psychologist William
Crain, "that we fail to give them the experiences they need.
"We see no
point in letting the child ramble through weeded lots or dabble leisurely at
the edge of a stream. Instead, educational-policy makers encourage more time at
computer terminals and longer school days and school years, all of which mean
more time indoors. And children's after-school hours are filled with video
games, electronic toys, and television, keeping them in artificial, indoor
environments."
Dr. Crain, who is
a member of the Alliance's board of trustees, continues: "We are so
obsessed with preparing children for the future that we are depriving them of
the chance to develop their artistic orientation, ties to nature, and other
distinctive traits of the childhood years. I am suggesting that we are, in
effect, stunting their growth, and future research may show that the effects
show up in increased depression, suicidal ideation, restlessness, and other
symptoms of unfulfilled lives."
There are some
hopeful signs, however. Using the Alliance's work, the press is beginning to
question the wisdom of putting so much pressure on children.
"We're
killing our students and teachers with this quest for accountability," the
Portland Oregonian reported last month on the front page of its Sunday Forum
section. "The Alliance for Childhood in College Park, Md., a child
advocacy group, says 'high-stakes testing leads to large increases in the
number of school dropouts and contributes to the flight of good teachers from
public schools.'"
The Fresno,
California newspaper quoted extensively from the Alliance's web site in
commenting on California's increasing reliance on high-stakes testing. It
pointed out that the Alliance's position statement on testing was endorsed by
physicians Robert Coles and Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School, Stanley
Greenspan of George Washington University Medical School, Marilyn Benoit of the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and "a host of other
notable signers" who stated that "test-related stress is literally
making children sick." (To read the entire statement, go to
http://allianceforchildhood.org/news/histakes_test_position_statement.htm.)
We believe that
schools should be places where children grow, thrive, and learn. A balanced,
creative education can foster good health in children-physically, socially,
emotionally, and mentally. An imbalanced education, driven by unreasonable fear
of failure, places unhealthy stress on children and contributes to the alarming
increases in physical and mental illness we are now seeing.
To continue our
campaign to educate the public about play, technology, testing, and their
effects on children's health and well-being through the coming year, the
Alliance must raise an additional $25,000 in the next few months. Please give
as generously as you can. We invite you to work with us in honoring childhood
and supporting children's right to a healthy upbringing and education.
To make giving to
the Alliance easier we now have a secure service for accepting donations via
credit card on our web site. Just go to http://allianceforchildhood.org. You
can also mail a check to the Alliance for Childhood, Box 444, College Park, MD
20741. All donations are tax-deductible.
We thank you for
the interest and support you've shown us in our first five years. Help us to
achieve even more success in this most challenging time-for the sake of the
children.
Sincerely,
Joan Almon
Coordinator
P.S.: All donors
of $40 or more will receive a free advance copy of the Alliance's new report,
Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology, when it is available this
fall.
