Posted by Susan Ochshorn, on February 27th, 2023
Over at , where journalist Annie
Murphy Paul writes about how we learn, she zeroes in on a recent bit of
legislative activityin New Jersey. Apparently, the Senate’s Education
Committee has approved a bill, sponsored by State Senator Shirley K.
Turner, which mandates a minimum of 20 minutes a day of recess for
children from kindergarten through fifth grade.
New Jersey’s children are lucky to have a play advocate in the state capitol, one who’s been doing her homework, as Paul notes:
‘Studies show that recess provides students with core
skills needed to succeed in the classroom and in life. Not only does it
help students develop cognitive skills, and teach them teamwork,
cooperation and communication skills, but it also is essential for the
health of our children,’ said Senator Turner, a Democrat and Vice Chair
of the Education Committee. ‘It is important that we stop thinking of
recess as something that takes time away from learning in the classroom
and instead as part of a curriculum that will help our students stay
healthy, as well as develop important skills.’
has long been an obsession among the early childhood
cognoscenti—and rightfully so. The benefits to children are many,
and its disappearance from their overly structured, frenetic lives is
an incalculable loss, with serious repercussions that we’ve only begun
to understand. I’ve weighed in, myself, on “Moving Play up on the Policy Agenda,�?
paying homage to the long, and growing, list of advocates in defense of
childhood. But I have to confess that I left a major light out of
the picture: Melvin Konner, whose magnum opus, The Evolution of Childhood,
which he labored over for three decades, I recently discovered, and
hope to get around to reading, athough it threatens to cut into my own
play time: a beach book, it’s not.
As Benjamin Schwarz wrote in his Atlantic “Editor’s Choice�? review,
Konner is especially interested in play, which is not
unique to humans and, indeed, seems to have been present, like the
mother-offspring bond, from the dawn of mammals. The smartest mammals
are the most playful, so these traits have apparently evolved together.
Play, Konner says, “combining as it does great energy expenditure and
risk
with apparent pointlessness, is a central paradox of evolutionary
biology.�? It seems to have multiple functions—exercise, learning,
sharpening skills—and the positive emotions it invokes may be an
adaptation that encourages us to try new things and learn with more
flexibility. In fact, it may be the primary means nature has found to
develop our brains.
When will we ever learn?
Caption: A still photograph from Spirit Ship, a short
film by Kristin B. Eno, which showcases the original stories children
make up as they go along their journeys, both real and imagined.
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Posted by Susan Ochshorn, on February 19th, 2023
I recently talked with Charles
Bruner, Executive Director of the Early Childhood Policy Center in Des
Moines, Iowa, a former state legislator, and one of the architects of
the initiative, which mentors states in their efforts to design and
implement comprehensive early learning systems that best serve the
needs of young children and families.
“Families are complex things,�? he told me. “They don’t fit
into regression equations very well. You’re building capacity, but its
impact is not always visible. You have to keep your eye on how…
this relates back to the children and their families.�?
What we do know is that the stresses faced by young children and
families are increasing—exponentially. In an released last
summer, Bruner’s Policy Center documented a host of social and
demographic trends affecting Iowa’s young children, including
population growth, single parenting, poverty, parental education and
workforce participation. As the report points out: “The largest
impacts on healthy development are ecological, that is relating to the
home and community environment, and the consistency and quality of
nurturing.�?
As goes Iowa, so goes the nation? Such trends are rampant, and
our social policies, wholly inadequate. From birth on up.
Did you know that the U.S. stands with Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and
Swaziland in its ? Here’s the lowdown, from a Spotlight on Poverty
commentary, which I co-wrote with Curtis Skinner, director of Family
Economic Security at the National Center for Children in Poverty (based
on our , released in September, 2012):
In most U.S. households, all adults are in the
workforce, two-thirds of dual-earner couples work a combined total of
more than 80 hours a week, and nearly 60 percent of women with children
under the age of three work outside the home. These demographics
starkly highlight the juggling act of contemporary parents, in which
job demands increasingly compete with children’s need for care.
This conflict is especially acute for low-income parents, whose jobs
offer few family-support benefits. In 2011, just five percent of
private sector workers earning in the lowest quartile of wages reported
access to employer-sponsored paid family leave. The highest ten percent
of wage earners are six times more likely to have access to paid family
leave than the lowest ten percent of wage earners.
In a nation where a staggering 44 percent of children live in
low-income families and more than one child in five lives in poverty,
the repercussions for family well-being and workforce productivity are
serious and demand our attention.
Families were front and center earlier this month, as a host of policymakers and advocates marked the 20th
anniversary of the , signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Clinton, himself, penned an , touting the economic benefits of paid
leave. “The best antidote to poverty is simple—a paycheck.�? noted
, author of .
A heady, self-congratulatory time for all. But we’re not done yet.
Just before the celebration, in the , Jonathan Last, author of What to Expect When No One’s Expecting,
laments America’s falling fertility rate, and its consequences for the
“sustainability of human capital.�? Among his solutions:
“smart pronatalist policies,�? including flattening the tax code, the
elimination of universities as credential-making machines, and the
improvement of the highway system and opportunities
for telecommuting. Huh? “If we want to continue leading the
world,�? he concludes, “we simply must figure out a way to have more
babies.�? James Heckman’s clearly not on Mr. Last’s night stand.
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Posted by Susan Ochshorn, on January 28th, 2023
The value of the B.A. remains a
hot-button issue in the early childhood community, as I was reminded by
Lillian Mongeau, over at EdSource. Forty-eight percent of Head
Start lead teachers in California now hold the degree, she reports, up
from 27 percent in 2007, the year Congress last re-authorized the
federal preschool program for [... click post title to read more ...]
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