Wisdom from Kohn and Katz

A Washington Post article quotes education writer Alfie Kohn on how adults both overestimate and underestimate young children’s capabilities:

"Just as a punitive parent may ignore the limits of a toddler’s capacity for remembering...or dealing with frustration, so an Old School teacher may, in the name of ‘rigor’ or ‘holding students to high standards,’ harbor unrealistic beliefs about what young children are able to master...

Lilian Katz, an influential early-childhood educator, has a brilliantly simple way of parsing this whole issue. She says we overestimate young children academically while underestimating them intellectually. I find the distinction between academic and intellectual useful by itself: It captures how so much of schooling is focused on facts-and-skills-based achievement that’s overrated and doesn’t really deserve to be called ‘intellectual.’"

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com

And, Karen Stephens, in her article, Imaginative Play During Childhood: Required for Reaching Full Potential, (which forms the basis for an Out of the Box Training Kit), writes: "It’s very important to distinguish the type of play that nurtures all that positive development. It’s not just any type of child activity that does it. For instance, some may call it ‘play’ when a child follows a teacher’s step by step directions during a craft project. It might be a hands-on learning experience, but different from the types of authentic play researchers have concluded is most critical to early development."

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