The central component in making schools more ready for children is an understanding of the way young children learn. Young children are not just smaller and less experienced versions of older children and adults. The National Association of Elementary School Principles has expressed this point very clearly:
Children in the three-to-eight range acquire knowledge in ways that are significantly different from the way older children learn. Younger children learn best through direct sensory encounters with the world and not through formal academic processes. Since early childhood is a period of rapid mental growth and development, children seek out the stimuli they need to nourish these developmental abilities...Young children acquire knowledge by manipulating, exploring, and experimenting with real objects. They learn almost exclusively by doing, and through movement.* (*ref at the bottom of the page says: References cited in this report refer to the upper range of early childhood as being anywhere from the end of the child's seventh year to age nine. These variations in terms reflect the imprecision of measuring developmental age for individual children, in contrast to chronological age.)
The body of research confirming this concept of how children learn grows daily. Its importance to the design of effective pre-school programs has gained increasing acceptance, although the reality of many pre-school settings admittedly lags behind.
An understanding of the way young children learn is equally crucial in kindergarten and the primary grades, yet too few schools provide a primary education that reflects such an understanding. On the contrary, far too many schools continue to use outmoded instructional models for grades K-3 that are inappropriate for the developmental levels of virtually all children during those years. The benefits of high quality pre-school programs and other measures to improve children's readiness can be lost very quickly when students enter schools that are not ready for them.
The failures that children experience because of unrealistic and inappropriate expectations in kindergarten and the primary grades can have lasting effects. Children's attitudes toward themselves as learners and their expectations about their chances for success in school are well established by the end of grade three.
How can the potential negative consequences of inappropriate primary school practices be avoided? What should a school that is developmentally appropriate and ready for all children look like? The most effective way to answer those questions is to examine the way most primary schools look today in contrast to the way we know they should look.
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