Herald Editorial: All work and no play makes for less than well rounded children

We are told the most recent state budget cuts in education will get elementary education back in alignment with what is “the best and the latest in teaching,” as President John Dunn said at the Kappa Delta Pi Honor Society in Teaching meeting on Saturday.

But unless politicians and parents quit running the school systems where the people do, it may be that school age kids (approximately 6-11 years old) won’t ever benefit from all that is taught in higher education classrooms.  And young teachers may wonder why they spent all that time and money to learn the newest teaching methods and study human development when no one “out there” cares.

Except the kids.

Ask school age kids if they’d rather play outside or watch television? They are more than likely to choose play.  Recess, or read a book inside?

Yet kids have felt the impact of past budget deficits as recesses across the country were cut.  Gym, that used to be a daily event, is more often not more than twice a week today.
Even when they do go outside at school, there isn’t much to do.  Parents have become so fearful of potential harm that playgrounds have been stripped of most equipment to “be safe.”

Some politicians in their quest to raise achievement have pushed for more and more time to be spent on the “core content” of reading, writing, math and science.  Academics from book learning and class work “isn’t fun”— just ask kids.

Yet in the desire for safety and achievement, critical knowledge about kids is ignored.  New teachers entering the field will be ignored on this subject unless they actively speak up.

School age children, according to Developmentalist Jean Piaget, are working on industry so they can conquer the issues related to inferiority, which may be manifested in low self-esteem.

However, the rate of depression in school age children is on the rise.  With their innate pursuit of hard work to learn how they can be productive and diligent, they do not learn best by sitting still in classrooms through direct instruction.

The operational stage of their brains is concrete at this age, meaning to learn best they need “concrete” methods such as touch and movement, i.e. hands-on.

Movement is crucial. It stimulates physical brain growth, which although slowing down at this age, is still occurring from myelination to the expansion of the corpus callosum. This brain activity in turn furthers the gross and fine motor skill development that has been transpiring from birth.  This is an age of rapid learning, an expansion of knowledge base with a growing grasp of classification ability that helps them categorize hundreds of items.

Learning seems automatic in healthy school age kids, and the outcome of the vast capabilities that even average students exhibit fools society into thinking that the way they are learning is satisfactory.  It’s not.  School age kids begin to do everything as well as, or better, than adults providing it doesn’t require adult size.

They can beat uncles in chess or outrace a marathon mother, as examples. It all adds up to an impression that how they are learning is just fine.  Yet when it comes to
academically achieving, more is demanded.

So why not do something to help them meet their potential learning abilities given the milieu of opportunity that exists naturally?

This information is obviously missing in some circles. Piaget, renowned for his cognitive theory and for making one of the greatest impacts in the science of human development for it, understood that how children think is essential to understanding their development.

What he revealed to the world is that for children it is process, not product that is important.  Yet the preparation for the product of higher scores in the form of MEAP here in Michigan during the third through eighth grades and in the form of other state tests elsewhere across the country runs counter to that theory in how tested material is taught.
In this prime time for learning, we have to ask: are we addressing their cognitive and biological-social needs?

For example, why don’t we teach the scientific principle of gravity to school age kids by going outside on the playground?  This could support them with what they naturally do — move and learn socially (according to another recognized theorist Lev Vygotsky).  They could be examining the gravity concept hands-on by dropping oranges from the top of the slide or six-foot jungle gym.

Not to mention it would address that whole growing population of children with behavioral issues and ADHD.  What progressive and insightful teachers know is that more often than not, the way these “problem kids” learn is kinesthetically.  So why not get them moving?

Teachers can’t do it alone. The school framework has to change with parental and political support to sustain those who are willing to try different methods in the classroom.  And because children are wonderful at adapting to their worlds, no one feels the pressure to change.

Instead we blame the kids for not working hard enough to get higher scores.

On the national economic front, politicians and government express desire for more science teachers, putting money into attracting them so that this country can produce top scientists worldwide in the future.  How better to peak a school age child’s curiosity and engage them in the deeper study of the subject than through ongoing hands-on experiments and activities?

This correlates with the increasingly higher statistics for overweight and obese school age children, currently climbing close to 20 percent of this age group.

Today’s kids may seem worldly and willing to work collaboratively because that’s what they are learning from society and in classrooms, respectively.  What would happen if we taught them to learn through curiosity and inquiry, addressing their movement and play needs along the way?  Maybe we’d produce scientists of the future who want to solve problems.

The recent round of budget cuts has area teachers already too aware of their increased number of classes, additional papers to grade, greater stress and decreased planning time they face next school year.  The real hope is that they recognize no one is meeting their needs and in that void, they can’t meet kids’ needs either.

Maybe, just maybe, as a society we can get back to what is really valid: teaching kids in alignment with how they are already engineered to learn best.  If we listened to them they’d say, let us play.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=13192

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Dec 9 2009. Filed under Editorial, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com