Today's kindergartens are very different from what they were 20 years ago and are more like primary education.
Researchers have shown that five-year-olds devote more time to academic learning activities imparted by the teacher to the learning options based on games that are what help children develop their capacity for initiative and encourage social development among children.
I am a former nursery teacher, father of three girls who have recently gone through daycare and a researcher and educator of primary education. Nursery schools have been an important part of my adult life for almost 20 years.
As a parent, I have seen how some student-led projects, sensory tables (which include sand or water) and theater play areas have been replaced over time by teacher lessons, writing centers and posters with word lists that children have to memorize. As a researcher, I have verified, together with my partner Yi Chin Lan, that preschool teachers expect children to have academic knowledge, social skills and self-control skills when they arrive at daycare. Why does all this matter?
Just work and no games
First you have to understand what are the nurseries of today. Part of my job as a researcher is to interview all the people who are part of a daycare (children, teachers and parents) about their opinions about what they think is a daycare and what it should be. During the interviews I teach a 23-minute video I made last year about a normal day in a nursery class in a public center.
The class that I recorded on video had 22 preschool children and a teacher and they spent almost the entire school day together. During that time, they carried out 15 different academic activities that included decoding and visualizing words, reading for themselves and then reading a classmate, counting up to 100 (one at a time, five at five and ten at ten), practicing easy sums, count money, science exercises about living things and write in a class diary several times. There was no recess until the last hour of the day and it only lasted 15 minutes.
Children are already being prepared in the nursery with a view to taking exams.For children aged five to six, it is a huge workload and teachers are also saturated to cover all the material they have to teach. When I asked the teacher who appears in the video why she gave so much subject, she told me that:
We are pressured for children to perform more academically.
Although the teacher admitted that the workload of children in preschool was exaggeratedHe also said that she couldn't do anything about it.
She is asked to evaluate her students constantly, not only for her personal control, but also through quarterly reports, reading tests, literacy according to the area, mathematical tests and tests according to the province.
In turn, when I asked the children what they had learned, their answers made two things clear to me: one, who learned to follow the rules; and two, that learning was simply mandatory to move on to the next course and have options to find work one day. Almost all the students told me that they wanted more time to play and a child even told me:
I wish there was more recess.
These findings are similar to those of researchers Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham and Anna Rorem on how daycare centers now focus on language and math classes. They also echo other statements from preschool teachers who say that already The children are being prepared at the nursery to take exams.
Playing is beneficial for children.
Science has not ceased to show that game-centered activities help children improve academically, socially and emotionally. In addition, recess especially helps children regain attention capacity so they can learn in the classroom.
If we give children the opportunity to play and get involved in manual activities, we are helping them internalize new information and compare and contrast what they learn with what they already know.Focusing on the rules may decrease children's willingness to strive academically and their curiosity, as well as being a lock for your self-esteem and his motivation as students: all this can have a negative effect on his performance in school and in his future.
If we give children the opportunity to play and get involved in manual activities, we are helping them internalize new information and compare and contrast what they learn with what they already know. It also gives them the possibility to interact with other children in a more natural and they can solve problems on their own. Finally, it also allows children to make sense of their emotions in and out of class.
The children that ask for more recess time They are not trying to get rid of homework and they know they have to work in class. What they really want is time to recover and to be themselves.
In one of my studies, another preschooler told me that:
We learn about the things we need to learn, because if we don't learn things, then we don't know anything.
Learning by exploring
What can we do to help children in daycare centers?
I don't think you have to remove all academic training from daycare centers. All the parts with which I have spoken, including the children, agree that in the nursery school one must learn the basic skills to be able to go to school well prepared.
But nevertheless, what is missing is the freedom to explore as a teacher told me in one of my recordings:
Learning by exploring and freely has been replaced by sitting, attending, doing homework and, if there is time, play for a while.
Both the education system and the schools have to realize that the things they ask for in the compulsory exams have changed the classrooms of the nursery schools significantly. But families also have to do their part and can defend teachers so that complaints to institutions come from different parts.
Children in kindergartens deserve to have experiences of learning that foster their personal development and their desire to learn and interact with other children. This way they will see the school as a place that will help both them and their friends to be better people.
Author: Christopher Brown, Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education, University of Texas at Austin.
This article has originally been published in The Conversation. You can read the original article here.
Photos | iStockphoto
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