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Education for the Preschool Child
| Article
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20212 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
5,512 Words |
| Author
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Diane McGuinness
Diane McGuinness is associate professor of psychology at the
University of South Florida and the author of When Children
Don't Learn. |
Should a child attend preschool and what should a child learn while there? Depending upon who you are, how much you earn, and your relationship to the child, there are a variety of answers to these questions. Whether a child attends preschool at all and what he or she should learn depend upon values, family finances, and a number of implicit assumptions, rather than a magic formula that works for all children.
For the middle classes or the wealthy, the function of preschool is more often social than academic. These parents want their children to have playmates their own age, learn how to get along with others, and have fun. Others may have more ambitious goals. They might want to see their child reading fluently by age five, or they might want preschool teachers to discover any potential academic problems their child might have and remedy them before school proper begins.
In families where both parents work, parents may have a very different set of requirements. They are much more interested in finding a safe and loving environment with a substitute mom that will help alleviate the guilt that many mothers feel about depriving their child of their love, affection, and time.
Teachers, especially in the public schools, face an overwhelming variation in skills, and many yearn for at least some uniformity in aptitude. They often see preschool as a solution to reducing the discrepancies in academic ability between children.
Principals, members of boards of education, some politicians, and others who are concerned about the problems of illiteracy in this country believe that early education for disadvantaged children will be a partial if not a major solution to the problem of literacy. It is this belief that drives such programs as Head Start, discussed in a separate article in this section.
It is for these reason, plus many more such as the pioneering educational philosophies of people like Maria Montessori, that preschools and day-care centers are so diverse. There is no simple formula for designing a standard program that addresses all the requirements of parents and teachers.
Aside from the diversity in needs and goals, there is a more formidable issue of the diversity of the children themselves. Recently, in a research project on reading. I was testing first-grade children on a standard reading aptitude test. The school where I was
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