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Educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.
Testing and technology has become a mantra in American schools, reaching down as far as kindergarten and preschool as politicians and policymakers aim to ensure that our country has a competitive edge in today's information-based economy. But top educators and child development experts are battling such reforms. Here, educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.
This book also spotlights a program at Yale University that, in response to the dearth of play in preschool curricula, emphasized learning through play for youngsters. Children who participated scored significantly higher on tests of school readiness. In addition, an internationally recognized expert explains why-in striking contrast to U.S. policies starting academics in preschool-several European countries are raising the age when they begin formal schooling to 6 or 7.
List of contents
Introduction by Sharna Olfman
The Power of Play in Early Childhood EducationThe Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education by Joan Almon
A Role for Play in the Preschool Curriculum by Dorothy G. Singer, Jerome Singer, Sharon L. Plaskon, and Amanda E. Schweder
Early Childhood Education: Lessons from Europe by Christopher Clouder
Wired Classrooms/Wired BrainsCybertots: Technology and the Preschool Child by Jane Healy
Hand-Made Minds in the "Digital" Age by Frank R. Wilson
Building Blocks of Intellectual Development: Emotion and ImaginationImagination and the Growth of the Human Mind by Jeffrey Kane and Heather Carpenter
The Vital Role of Emotion in Education by Stuart Shanker
A Mental Health Crisis among Our Children: The Rise of Technologies and Demise of PlayAttention/Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder in Children: One Consequence of the Rise of Technologies and Demise of Play? by Thomas Armstrong
Play and the Transformation of Feeling: Niki's Case by Eva-Maria Simms
Pathogenic Trends in Early Childhood Education by Sharna Olfman
About the author
Sharna Olfman is Series Editor for the Praeger series Childhood in America. A Clinical Psychologist and Full Professor of Developmental Psychology at Point Park University, she is also Founding Director of the annual Childhood and Society Symposium held at the university. Olfman is the author or editor of six previous Praeger books, including All Work and No Play (2003), Childhood Lost (2005), No Child Left Different, (2006), and Bipolar Children (2007).
