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(More customer reviews)Packed into a Methodist church on upscale Park Avenue in New York City, hundreds of parents of infants and toddlers hung on every word from the admissions directors of four top independent schools.
These folks were well-heeled enough to crack open their checkbooks in a heartbeat to pay $25,000 for kindergarten if only their son and daughter could be the one in every 12 kids granted admission. Many of their kids were attending high quality pre-schools, among the best preparation for future schooling. But what was expected of a four-year-old to enter these exclusive schools?
The answer: the schools would accept those that best exhibit work ethic, citizenship, a sense of community, character and enthusiastic learning.
"Nonetheless, the school representatives said they sought to put the parents at ease and didn't want to feed the admissions hysteria. Fat chance," writes author Gene Maeroff.
In his book, "Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School," Maeroff challenges us to think differently about pre-school learning, and to value high quality early education much as the wealthy already do, although perhaps a little less hysterically.
Through the public schools, he argues, kids from everyday families can achieve many of the same skills and preparation the Manhattanites at that church absolutely demanded for their kids in pre-school, if as a nation we are willing to make early learning a public policy priority.
Building Blocks is a thoughtful, thoroughly researched study of early childhood education -- a great primer for parents, or policy makers, who want to better understand the issues in this rapidly-changing debate.
Today, we know the benefits of a building a strong academic foundation even in child's earliest experiences.
For about the past decade, as brain research has exploded thanks to new medical tools and observation methods, the bandwagon of advocates for better education program for very young children has begun to buckle.
In the popular press, Ron Kotulak's Pulitzer Prize winning 1994 Chicago Tribune series on advances in brain science opened a lot of eyes -- kids who didn't receive proper brain stimulation even in early infancy could be left far behind by the time they started kindergarten at age five. (Kotulak's work is now a book called Inside the Brain: Revolutionary Discoveries of How the Mind Works.)
Today there is a healthy national movement pushing for more and better early childhood education and they've had some success convincing states to ride along. Oklahoma and Georgia, for instance, have "universal" pre-kindergarten programs that make state funds available to allow any four-year-old to attend an accredited program.
Maeroff, the former national education correspondent for the New York Times and the author of a dozen books about education in America, thinks its time to push the issue even farther.
In Building Blocks, he argues that state-funded pre-kindergarten should be just the start. In his vision, those kids belong in the public school system and there should be separate schools for pre-kindergarten to third grade to create a specialized, supportive atmosphere to get very young children off to a good educational start and improving their life chances.
"Those who believe in giving children the best possible start have only to resolve to lift out this portion of schooling and provide it with the separate integrity and distinct prominence that it deserves," Maeroff writes. "The best way to do this would be through an identifiable PK-3 approach, whether the primary grades have their own separate buildings or wings or autonomy within an elementary school that includes upper grades."
For Maeroff, high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten also is the most politically viable route to effectively expand critical educational opportunity to little kids.
This is a controversial view. Many experts argue that state-paid pre-school should be targeted only to needy children, leaving wealthier parents to foot the bill for their kids. They say state-paid programs for everywhere would be too costly and unnecessary for many, such as families where mom stays home.
But Maeroff says including pre-kindergarten in the public school system is the logical next step after wide acceptance of kindergarten, which also was once seen as a radical and perhaps over-the-top idea before gaining acceptance and inclusion public schools. And, as with kindergarten, with more acceptance will come more buy-in. Nobody would think to propose schools drop kindergarten today.
(However, kindergarten has perhaps not come as far as you might think, considering that my two oldest daughters could get no better than half-day kindergarten programs despite attending high-end public school systems in Michigan and Ohio in the past three years. Universal adoption of full-day kindergarten everywhere -- in accordance with overwhelming evidence supporting its value -- might be a necessary prelude.)
A stand-alone school for young children, Maeroff says, has advantages in staff training and collaboration and flexibility to group students in various ways. But even more than that, it sends a message -- that these grades are important and deserve special, and specialized, attention.
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A student's entire journey along the educational spectrum is affected by what occurs--and, crucially, by what does not occur--before the age of eight or nine. Yet early learning has never received the attention it deserves and needs. In his latest book, education expert Gene Maeroff takes a hard look at early learning and the primary grades of schooling. Building Blocks offers a concrete and groundbreaking strategy for improving early education. Filled with colorful descriptions and anecdotes from Maeroff's visits to schools around the country, Building Blocks creates a rich portrait of education in America, ranging from math lessons imported from Singapore in Massachusetts to serious but joyful kindergartens in California. He speaks of the need for schools to prepare for the burgeoning enrollment of youngsters from immigrant families and for all children to acquire the habits and dispositions that will make them committed and productive students. Maeroff issues a call to action for policy makers and parents alike.
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