VPerspective
So-called ‘extras’ critical to childhood development
Feb 14, 2008 11:03 AM
If the city axes $100 million now and another $324 million next year from school budgets, then all people ever really need to know sure isn’t going to be learned in kindergarten.
When times are tight, playtime activities — those “extra” things like music and art, building castles and cities with blocks, or stretching like tigers and running like horses and playing tag — are the first casualties.
Those “extra” things are in fact absolutely crucial to early childhood development.
Those “extra” things are in fact the very basis of creating a healthy society — learning how to work with other people in groups, learning the give-and-take that starts with sharing the blue crayon and can eventually lead to sharing ideas in boardrooms or with a fellow choreographer or with delegates at a convention on global warming.
The other day I was talking with Neil deGrasse Tyson, a graduate of New York City public schools and the head of the Hayden Planetarium, and he put it quite plainly: You can’t have science without creativity.
It’s true. When children are at creative play, asking questions and trying things out and making mistakes, or taking things apart or putting them together, that’s when they’re figuring out the world. Play is important work, forming intellectual and cognitive growth.
There are so many traits and qualities that make a whole person, and so many different kinds of skills to be developed, but the school system has become very skewed, with an intense focus on literacy and math, losing track of so many other important things.
What is truly important to children’s development? What must not go by the wayside due to budget cuts or reorganization or test-score goals or the latest trend or anything under the name of efficiency that sacrifices the educating and nurturing of the whole child?
To address these questions, the UFT is hosting a conference of teachers and family child care providers in conjunction with the Department of Education, the principals’ union and the Administration for Children’s Services to take a long, hard — and playful — look at what the truly essential things are that prepare young children for a future as healthy human beings and successful learners and contributing members of society.
The UFT initiated this discussion because we feel that all stakeholders should be fighting on the same side — for what is best for children’s development. We’re busy hammering out the plans together — yes, we know how to share our crayons — for a daylong, workshop-rich conference open to all, to be held at the end of March [watch for registration ads in the New York Teacher and the UFT Web site, www.uft.org].
Anyone who is interested in childhood development — and what early-childhood educator isn’t? — is welcome to come explore topics ranging from teaching values to the value of play.
Yes, play. Good old play. Imaginative, spontaneous, constructive, interactive, creative play. It’s that curiosity, the desire to figure things out, that spark, that is the basis not only of advances in science and technology but of just about anything important and interesting and useful that we look for in people later in life.
We must fight against ill-timed midyear budget cuts or a skewed definition of what’s essential being allowed to put our students’ spark on the back burner, or repressing their curiosity to the point of being extinguished.
Addressing concerns
UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Michelle Bodden on Feb. 8 met with staff members at PS 304 in Brooklyn, one of the schools the Department of Education announced it would close following the release of its Progress Reports in December. right: Bodden, flanked by Damaris Rivera (left) and Madeline Oquendo.
