Educacion Infantil

All Work And No Play Makes For Troubling Trend In Early Education

Parents and educators who favor traditional classroom-style learning over free, unstructured playtime in preschool andkindergarten may actually be stunting a child’s development instead of enhancing it, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.
Anne Haas Dyson, aprofessor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education, says playtime for children is a “fundamental avenue” for learning, and attempts by parents and educators to create gifted childrenby bombarding them with information is well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive.
“That approach doesn’t appreciate the role of play and imagination in a child’s intellectual development,”Dyson said. “Play is where children discover ideas, experiences and concepts and think about them and their consequences. This is where literacy and learning really begins.”
What Dyson calls the“banning of the imagination” in schools may be influenced by what some critics have called the “Baby Genius Edutainment Complex,” a cottage industry of mind-enrichment products developed specifically forinfants and toddlers and marketed to anxious parents eager to give their children’s cognitive abilities an early boost.
“I see this ‘Einstein in the crib’ trend as a societal reduction of children to themeans for fulfilling parents’ desires for intellectual distinction,” Dyson said.
“Children learn the way we all learn: through engagement, and through construction. They have to make sense of theworld, and that’s what play or any other symbolic activity does for children.”
While Dyson does see some value in teaching the ABCs to children in pre-kindergarten, she thinks that trying to acceleratelearning actually works against a child’s development. Kindergarten and preschool, she said, should be a place for children to experience play as intellectual inquiry, before they get taken over...