Jose Hernandez
Parkhurst
English 132
20 June 2018
Education is important in Early Childhood
Education has become such a broad term in the new generation childhood because, nowadays, children are expected to read and write before leaving kindergarten. When back in the early 1990’s, children learned how to read and write in middle schools. With this being said, my argument is that why are school boards demanding teachers to introduce material for upper-level grades to kids in kindergarten. Rather than, to wait until they move to the level that the material is initially proposed to be delivered by that specific grade-level teacher.
The ideology of behind the program is that students are capable of retaining more information while they are young. Science has proven that if a child is exposed to upper-level skills, most likely, the child will retain that information and will be kept in the future. According to Laurie Levy, director of Cherry Preschool in Evenson, Illinois, “ Kindergarten has changed so much over the past decade; it is so much more work and so much less time playing.” Kindergarten has become the new first (even second) grade, with the kids being anxiously filling in knowledge bubbles and receiving reading instructions when they can’t even know the meaning of some words yet.
Then, school board directors are pushing this mentality that kids should be “test-ready”, but children hesitate to answer adult’s questions, and many don’t really understand that giving a complete answer matter. When children speak, they don’t necessarily use correct grammar, punctuation, etc., because, back in the day, teachers were not expected to teach that to kids and they spoke informally. Nowadays, teachers are expected to teach the kids to speak formal and with a broad vocabulary. But some kids fall behind because they don’t have the capability to retain some of the knowledge that teachers are delivering to them.
Furthermore, The idea of “play to learn” is pervasive and compelling, but it can be somewhat misleading. It is undoubtedly true that children gain a variety of different skills through play, like literacy (Saracho & Spodek, 2006), self-regulation (Elias & Berk, 2002) and social understanding (Taylor & Carlson, 1997), to name just a few. But the relationship between play and the acquisition of explicit knowledge is more tenuous.
At birth, infants can perceive all the sounds of every human language— about 600 consonants and 200 vowels (Tsao, Liu, & Kuhl, 2004). By 1 month of age, infants are able to make sharp distinctions between speech sounds (Aslin, Jusczyk, & Pisoni, 1998; Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, & Vigorito, 1971), suggesting they are already somewhat adult-like in their phonological perception. With experience to a single (i.e., native) language, however, infants experience perceptual narrowing; by the end of the first year, they only distinguish the sounds of their language (Werker, 1989).
Speech perception is not a skill that is taught; rather, children’s speech perception is governed by their ambient language. Importantly, young children need relatively little indirect exposure to influence their language development. After listening to a foreign language, 9-month-old infants retained their ability to perceive. When discussing vocabulary development, researchers tend to focus on children’s ability to learn new words in ostensive contexts, such as from language directed to them or during pedagogical book- reading contexts. Recent research, however, suggests that young children may monitor others’ conversations and learn new words through these indirect experiences.
For example, Akhtar, Jipson, and Callanan (2001) had 2-year-olds either engage in an explicit word- learning task themselves or observe a word- learning task between two adults. The children were able to learn new words equally well in both contexts, suggesting that ambient language may be a valuable source of new vocabulary knowledge.
In subsequent studies, Akhtar and colleagues demonstrated that children may learn from overheard conversations even when distracting activities were going on (Akhtar, 2005) and, under certain conditions, even 18-month-olds may be able to learn from third-party conversations (Floor & Akhtar, 2006).
Taken together, these studies suggest that word learning can occur outside of typical ostensive contexts. Indeed, children may actively seek information from interactions occurring in the world around them. Although children may be able to learn new words equally well through direct and indirect experiences (Jaswal & Markman, 2003), some words may only be learned indirectly. As compared to object labels, for example, there are fewer natural pedagogical situations in which verbs can be directly taught to children. Verbs tend to be used to refer to impending or completed actions rather than ongoing actions (Tomasello & Kruger, 1992).
The idea of getting the kids “test-ready” has become a more frustrating, yet, broad term to be discussed among school board due to the inability of most children to retain the information that is given to them during the first, 3 years, of school. Most elementary schools, mostly in foreign countries, are expected to have the largest test-ready kids by the age of 8. This has been showed more among the Chinese culture. Kids in China had learned many mathematical and literacy education in the early stages of school. Statistics show, in 2009, that 4 out of 5 Chinese kids’ brains are more developed before age of 8. With this being said, the rest of the world started to follow the same path that the Chinese culture taught their kids in, almost all of them, schools.
Therefore, learning new verbs may at least partially be a function of children’s ability to observe and interpret contingencies in the real world. Furthermore, young children should be offered opportunities to learn that humans are part of the vast and intricate ecological system, and that sustainability is everyone’s issue. That encourages values such as empathy, sharing, respect for others and diversity as positive and richness. Living sustainably requires an understanding about different populations – their particular history, culture and traditions – and a desire to live together.
And, promotes children’s contact with nature and incorporates concrete outdoor projects that allow them to have an awareness of environmental and other issues concerning sustainability. As young children are in sensitive periods for social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, first-hand experience with local plants, flowers, vegetation, animals, climate, water resources, etc., should be encouraged. Creative projects demonstrating interdependence between human activities and the environment can be conceived and developed with children’s active participation. Carey (1985) indicates that the use of an anthropomorphic style can be a sign of lack of biological knowledge. One reason for teachers to choose other subjects/topics, or a way of talking other than the appropriate one for the content in focus, might be because they have a lack of knowledge. They might not have access to the natural science vocabulary in preschool.
According to the results of this study, and previous findings, teachers in preschool look at their mission in different ways (Hensvold, 2003), one can suspect that there are different opinions, too, about the approach to science. Dewey (1997) maintained that if a child or an adult is to learn a concept and the meaning of it, it is necessary to have the opportunity to use it. It is exactly the same as with other tools: the function has to be experienced in a context. This study takes its starting point in natural science. If children are supposed to have access to a science discourse, they also need a language so that they can talk to ‘the others’ who already are members of this discourse. Schoultz (2002) discusses the meaning of learning science. He suggests it is about becoming socialized into a discursive tradition, to be enabled to use science concepts and terms as tools in context with meaning and communication.
Comparisons can be made to other content areas. Smith (2000), who is a language scientist, says that if children are supposed to be members of ‘the reading and writing club’, we as members have to show how good it is in this ‘club’. We have to communicate the benefits of being a member – the point, the use of being a reader and a writer. A membership in this club does not demand any member charge or entrance examination. The members are simply concerned about the interest and success of each other. An assumption for success with this is shared mutual communication ability.
With the examples and discussions provided, my idea of early childhood teaching is that: school boards are demanding teachers to introduce material for upper-level grades to kids in kindergarten. Rather than, to wait until they get to an upper level that the material is initially proposed to be delivered by that specific grade-level teacher. And, my argument truly states that school boards are demanding teachers to introduce material for upper-level grades to kids in kindergarten. Rather than, to wait until they move to middle schools, where they will show more of the material that is initially proposed to be delivered by the grade-level teacher the child is on. Yet, science proves that if children are exposed to a more higher-grade education in his or her early childhood education, they will have more knowledge retained in their brains that might be useful to succeed in their lifetime.