Preface
1. Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard, The Important Book (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949). When my children were small, they liked to hear me read The Important Book, an odd little picture book that described the most significant feature of different sorts of everyday things. The author, Margaret Wise Brown (of Goodnight Moon fame), explains, for example, the important thing about rain. It’s wet, the reader learns. It “falls out of the sky,” and “makes things shiny and doesn’t taste like anything and it’s the color of air.” But, as Brown notes, “the important thing about rain is that it’s wet.”
2. Steven W. Barnett and Donald J. Yarosz, “Who Goes to Preschool and Why Does It Matter?,” National Institute for Early Education Research 15 (2007), 1–16, nieer.org/resources/policybriefs/15.pdf.
3. United States Department of Health and Human Services, “Child Care and Development Fund Reauthorization,” Office of Child Care, Department of Health and Human Services (May 2015), www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/occ/ccdf-reauthorization.
4. Barnett and Yarosz, “Who Goes to Preschool and Why Does It Matter?”
5. T. J. Mathews and Brady E. Hamilton, Delayed Childbearing: More Women Are Having Their First Child Later in Life (Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2009).
6. National Center For Health Statistics, “Births: Final Data for 2012,” National Vital Statistics Reports 62.9 (2013).
7. Susan Aud et al., “The Condition of Education 2012 (NCES 2012-045).” U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC. Retrieved May 25, 2015, from nces.ed.gov/pubsearch. The percentage of three- to five-year-olds enrolled in full-day pre-primary programs increased from 32 percent in 1980 to 58 percent in 2010.
8. The proliferation of childlike experiences increasingly hijacked by adults has generated much media interest in recent years. See, for example, Adrienne Raphel, “Why Adults Are Buying Coloring Books (For Themselves),” New Yorker, July 12, 2015, www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-adults-are-buying-coloring-books-for-themselves.
9. Louise Greenspan and Julianna Deardorff, The New Puberty: How to Navigate Early Development in Today’s Girls (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2014). See also Sandra K. Cesario and Lisa A. Hughes, “Precocious Puberty: A Comprehensive Review of Literature,” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing 36.3 (2007), 263–74.
10. Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” The Philosophical Review 83.4 (1974), 435–50.
Chapter One: Little Learners
1. George Orwell, “Such, Such Were the Joys,” in Autobiography: A Reader for Writers, ed. Robert Lyons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
2. Deborah Stipek, “No Child Left Behind Comes to Preschool,” Elementary School Journal 106.5 (2006), 455–63.
3. Debra J. Ackerman and W. Steven Barnett. “Prepared for Kindergarten: What Does Readiness Mean?,” National Institute for Early Education Research (2005), 1–23, nieer.org/resources/policyreports/report5.pdf.
4. Karen E. Diamond, Amy J. Reagan, and Jennifer E. Bandyk, “Parents’ Conceptions of Kindergarten Readiness: Relationships with Race, Ethnicity, and Development,” Journal of Educational Research 94.2 (2000), 93–100. See also Beth Hatcher and Jo Ann Engelbrecht, “Parent’s Beliefs About Kindergarten Readiness,” Journal of Early Childhood Education and Family Review 14.1 (2006), 20–32.
5. For a discussion of direct instruction and other classroom practices, see Deborah Stipek, “Classroom Practices and Children’s Motivation to Learn,” in Edward Zigler et al, ed., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 98–103. See also Nina C. Chien et al., “Children’s Classroom Engagement and School Readiness Gains in Prekindergarten,” Child Development 81.5 (2010), 1534–49.
6. One prominent scholar, E. D. Hirsch, offers a thoughtful defense of the use of DI in French preschool classrooms: E. D. Hirsch, Jr., “Academic Pre-School: The French Connection,” in Zigler et al., The Pre-K Debates (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 94–98. My main concern is the overreliance on DI in settings to the exclusion of conversational and spontaneous learning. In Chapter 11, I discuss why an approach that works in a country like France isn’t necessarily an optimal fit for American culture.
7. C. Gillanders, I. Iruka, S. Ritchie, and C. Cobb, “Restructuring and Aligning Early Education Opportunities for Cultural, Language, and Ethnic Minority Children,” in R. Pianta, ed., Handbook of Early Childhood Education (New York: Guilford Press, 2012), 111–36.
8. Edward Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 117.
9. For a general introduction to the major early learning theorists, including Vygotsky, see Carol Mooney, Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky (New York: Prentice Hall, 2005).
10. Jonathan Cohn, “The Hell of American Day Care,” New Republic, Apr. 15, 2013, www.newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care, accessed May 15, 2015. Regarding preschool quality, see also United States Department of Health and Human Services, The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, National Institute of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Jan. 2006; Julia Wrigley and Joanna Dreby, “Fatalities and the Organization of Child Care in the United States, 1985–2003,” American Sociological Review 70.5 (2005), 729–57, www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/seccyd_06.pdf; Vanessa Dileo and Sherry Patterson, “Why Aren’t We Outraged? Children Dying in Child Care Across America,” Child Care Aware of America White Paper, July 30, 2012, www.naccrra.org/sites/default/files/default_site_pages/2012/why_arent_we_outraged_july_22.pdf.
11. Steven Barnett, “Low Wages = Low Quality: Solving the Real Preschool Teacher Crisis,” Preschool Policy Facts, National Institute for Early Education Research and the State University of New Jersey, Rutgers, nieer.org/resources/factsheets/3.pdf, accessed on May 14, 2015. See also Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Childcare Workers, 2014–15, www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/childcare-workers.htm.
12. Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education.
13. Liz Willen, editor in chief of the nonprofit Hechinger Report at Columbia Teachers College, shared these details at a talk at the Yale Child Study Center in 2014, based on reporting from the Mississippi Learning Project.
14. Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham, and Anna Rorem, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? The Changing Nature of Kindergarten in the Age of Accountability,” EdPolicyWorks Working Paper Series 20 (2014), curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/20_Bassok_Is_Kindergarten_The_New_First_Grade.pdf.
15. Kayl Skinner and Chris Kieffer, “Mississippi’s Youngest Students Pile on the Absences, Lose Learning Time,” Hechinger Report, Oct. 12, 2014, hechingerreport.org/content/mississippis-youngest-students-pile-absences-lose-learning-time_17651/.
16. Ibid.
17. Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School (College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009), files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504839.pdf; Carollee Howes et al., “Ready to Learn? Children’s Pre-Academic Achievement in Pre-Kindergarten Programs,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 23.1 (2008), 27–50.
18. Catherine Gewertz, “‘Platooning’ on the Rise in Early Grades,” Education Week 33.21, Feb. 19, 2014, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/02/19/21department.h33.html?tkn=WTMFEZOgQblwYbG2DTYz6q7lor%2BjvrkoLEsx&cmp=clp-edweek, accessed on Oct. 22, 2014.
19. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Do You Believe in Magic? What We Can Expect from Early Childhood Intervention Programs, issue brief, 1st ed., vol. 17 (Society for Research in Child Development, 2003); Lisa Klein and Jane Knitzer, Pathways to Early School Success: Effective Preschool Curricula and Teaching Strategies, issue brief no. 2 (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006).
20. Robert Pianta et al., “The Effects of Preschool Education: What We Know, How Public Policy Is or Is Not Aligned with the Evidence Base, and What We Need to Know,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 10.2 (2009), 49–88. See also Howes et al., “Ready to Learn?,” 27–50.
21. Pianta et al., “The Effects of Preschool Education.”
22. Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education.
23. Pianta et al., “The Effects of Preschool Education.”
24. Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education.
25. Personal communication with Walter Gilliam, director of the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, Yale Child Study Center, February 2014.
26. L. J. Schweinhart et al., Significant Benefits: The High-Scope Perry Preschool Study through Age 27 (Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope, 1993); Frances Campbell et al., “Early Childhood Investments Substantially Boost Adult Health,” Science: 343.6178 (2014), 1478–85.
27. Arthur Reynolds et al., “Effects of a School-Based, Early Childhood Intervention on Adult Health and Well-Being: A 19-Year Follow-up of Low-Income Families,” Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 161.8 (2007), 730–39.
28. James Heckman et al., “A New Cost-Benefit and Rate of Return Analysis for the Perry Preschool Program: A Summary,” NBER Working Paper No. 16180, July 2010, www.nber.org/papers/w16180.pdf.
29. Pianta, Handbook of Early Childhood Education.
30. Walter S. Gilliam and E. Frede, ”Accountability and Program Evaluation,” in ibid., 73–91. See also National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE), “Position statement: Early Childhood Curricula, Assessment and Program Evaluation: Building an Effective, Accountable System for Children Birth through Age 8” (Washington, DC: NAEYC, 2003).
31. Pasi Sahlberg and Andy Hargreaves, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? (New York: Teachers College, 2011).
32. One standard survey finds that fifteen-year-olds in Finland consistently scored well above average in reading, math, and science when compared with other OECD countries. On the other hand, fifteen-year-olds in the United States scored at or below average in each of these three categories. For Finland and the United States, see Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Education GPS, “Finland Student Performance,” 2012, gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=FIN&treshold=10&topic=PI, accessed May 24, 2015; and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Education GPS, “United States Student Performance,” 2012, gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=USA&treshold=10&topic=PI .
33. “In early education, from birth to about age eight, the environment is the curriculum.” Ann Lewin-Benham, Twelve Best Practices for Early Childhood Education: Integrating Reggio and Other Inspired Approaches (New York: Teachers College, 2011), 183.
34. Ann T. Chu and Alicia F. Lieberman, “Clinical Implication of Traumatic Stress from Birth to Five,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 6 (2010), 469–94.
35. J. P. Shonkoff et al., “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress,” Pediatrics 129.1 (2011), E232–46.
36. Valerie E. Lee and David T. Burkam, Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2002); Kayleigh Skinner, “Mississippi Kindergartners Start the Year Behind, New Test Finds,” Hechinger Report, Oct. 17, 2014, hechingerreport.org/mississippi-kindergarteners-start-year-behind-new-test-finds/.
37. Child mortality has dropped for all racial groups, but gaps between groups still remain. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, “Child Mortality in the United States, 1935–2007: Large Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities Have Persisted Over Time” (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010); United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Protect the Ones You Love: Child Injuries Are Preventable,” National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Apr. 19, 2012, www.cdc.gov/safechild/NAP/background.html, accessed May 25, 2015; G. K. Singh and S. M. Yu, “Infant Mortality in the United States: Trends, Differentials, and Projections, 1950 through 2010.” American Journal of Public Health 85.7 (1995), 957–64.
38. Walter S. Gilliam, Pre-Kindergartners Left Behind: Expulsion Rates in State Pre-Kindergarten Systems, Yale University Child Study Center, A. L. Mailman Family Foundation, May 4, 2005, www.childstudycenter.yale.edu/zigler/publications/34774_National%20Prek%20Study_expulsion.pdf.
39. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, children as young as four can be diagnosed: “The primary care clinician should initiate an evaluation for ADHD for any child four through eighteen years of age who presents with academic or behavioral problems and symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity (quality of evidence B/strong recommendation).” See Mark Wolraich, L. Brown, et al., “ADHD: Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents,” Pediatrics 128.5 (2011), 1007–22.
40. Richard D. Todd et al., “Should Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Symptoms Be Included in the Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder?” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 43.5 (2004): 588–97. Regarding the controversy on “Slow Cognitive Tempo Disorder” as a new diagnosis, see Stephen P. Becker et al., “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo in Abnormal Child Psychology: An Historical Overview and Introduction to the Special Section,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 42.1 (2013), 1–6. See also Russell A. Barkley, “Issues in the Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children,” Brain and Development 25.2 (2003), 77–83.
41. Alexandria Neason, “Welcome to Kindergarten. Take This Test. And This One,” Slate, Mar. 4, 2015, www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/03/04/kindergarten_has_changed_less_time_for_play_more_time_for_standardized_tests.html.
42. This politically explosive topic has garnered a lot of attention from scholars. Some studies find that maternal and/or parental employment, especially in the first year, has some negative effects on cognition and behavior for some children. See, for example, Christopher J. Ruhm, Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development, Working Paper No. 7666 (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000); and Jay Belsky and David Eggebeen, “Early and Extensive Maternal Employment and Children’s Socioemotional Development: Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,” Journal of Marriage and Family. 53.4 (Nov. 1991): 1083–98; and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Wen-Jui Han, and Jane Waldfogel, “Maternal Employment and Child Cognitive Outcomes in the First Three Years of Life: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care,” Child Development 73.4. (2002.), 1052–72. Psychologist Jay Belsky, whose work on daycare effects generated much attention in the 1990s, cautions that early childhood research has for too long relied on crude population-level generalizations about what is, or isn’t, good for young children and has overlooked the great variation among children themselves in terms of their susceptibility to both positive and negative interventions. In an op-ed in the New York Times, he explained: “After a half-century of childhood interventions that have generated exaggerated claims of both efficacy and ineffectiveness, we need to acknowledge the reality that some children are more affected by their developmental experiences—from harsh punishment to high-quality daycare—than others,” www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of-resilience.html.
43. Alfie Kohn, The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting (Boston: Da Capo Lifelong, 2014).
44. Julia B. Isaacs, Starting School at a Disadvantage: The School Readiness of Poor Children (Brookings Insitution, March 2012); Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Double Jeopardy: How Third Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation” (Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011), accessed Oct. 29, 2014. See also Annie E. Casey Foundation, “EARLY WARNING! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters” (Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010).
45. James Heckman, “Effective Child Development Strategies,” in Zigler et al., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 2–8.
46. J. C. Tout, “Quality and Qualifications: Links Between Professional Development and Quality in Early Care and Educational Settings,” in Martha J. Zaslow and Ivelisse Martinez-Beck, ed., Critical Issues in Early Childhood Professional Development (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2006), 77–110.
47. Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968), 1243–48.
Chapter Two: Goldilocks Goes to Daycare
1. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, “Why Study Philosophy? ‘To Challenge Your Own Point of View,’” interview by Hope Reese, Atlantic, Feb. 27, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/why-study-philosophy-to-challenge-your-own-point-of-view/283954/, accessed Nov. 30, 2014.
2. Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin, and Howard Seltman, “Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad,” Psychological Science 25 (2014), 1362–70.
3. Alan Schwarz, “Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries.” New York Times, May 16, 2014. See also Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Children: National Health Interview Survey, 2012 (Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2013).
4. Benedict Carey, “Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/health/13kids.html?_r=0. See also S. Timimi, “Debate: ADHD Is Best Understood as a Cultural Construct,” British Journal of Psychiatry 184.1 (2004), 8–9.
5. Rosemary Kendall, “Parents and the High Cost of Child Care,” Child Care Aware of America (2013), usa.childcareaware.org/sites/default/files/cost_of_care_2013_103113_0.pdf.
6. Laura J. Colker, “Block Off Time for Learning,” Teaching Young Children 1.3 (2011), 14–17, National Association for the Education of Young Children, www.naeyc.org/files/tyc/file/Block%20Off%20Time.pdf.
7. Ellen Galinsky, Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs (New York: Harper Studio, 2010).
8. Walter Mischell, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (New York: Little, Brown, 2014).
9. Elizabeth Bonawitz et al., “The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy: Instruction Limits Spontaneous Exploration and Discovery,” Cognition 120.3 (2011), 322–30.
10. Dan Berrett, “How ‘Flipping’ the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 19, 2012, chronicle.com/article/How-Flipping-the-Classroom/130857/, accessed Apr. 17, 2015.
11. So-called “tablework” or “seatwork” has become so prevalent in early childhood classrooms that some early education supply stores now feature separate shelves of smaller-sized toys and materials marketed for this purpose.
12. Judith A. Shickedanz and Molly F. Collins, So Much More Than the ABCs (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2013).
13. Ibid., 93.
14. Greg J. Duncan et al., “School Readiness and Later Achievement,” Developmental Psychology 43.6 (2007), 1428–46.
15. Sallee J. Beneke et al., “Calendar Time for Young Children: Good Intentions Gone Awry,” Young Children (May 2008), 12–16.
16. Kate Taylor, “At Success Academy Charter Schools, High Scores and Polarizing Tactics,” New York Times, Apr. 6, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/nyregion/at-success-academy-charter-schools-polarizing-methods-and-superior-results.html.
17. Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).
18. Wilfred Bion, “Notes on Memory and Desire,” Psychoanalytic Forum 2.3 (1967), 271–80.
Chapter Three: Natural Born Artists
1. My colleagues at Yale are working with Chinese preschools to adapt more flexible curricula, and a number of American pedagogic traditions are gaining traction in China. See, for example, a careful description of Waldorf schools in China: Genevieve Fussell, “A Waldorf School in China,” New Yorker, Jan. 23, 2014, www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-waldorf-school-in-china, accessed May 25, 2015. See also Ian Johnson, “Class Consciousness: China’s New Bourgeoisie Discovers Alternative Education,” New Yorker, Feb. 3, 2014, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/03/class-consciousness, accessed Nov. 6, 2014.
2. A general summary of the connection between complex play and children’s use of language can be found in a number of books, including: Zigler et al., Children’s Play: The Roots of Reading (Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 2004); Carol Garhart Mooney, Use Your Words: How Teacher Talk Helps Children Learn (St. Paul, MN: Redleaf, 2005).
3. Cybele Raver, “Emotions Matter: Making the Case for the Role of Young Children’s Emotional Development for Early School Readiness,” Social Policy Report, 16.3 (2002), 3–18; Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta M. Golinkoff, “The Great Balancing Act: Optimizing Core Curricula Through Playful Pedagogy,” in Zigler et al., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 110–15.
4. Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
5. One of the more radical notions of the Reggio-based pedagogy is the concept of the inherent “rights” of the child. Regarding Reggio, see Carolyn P. Edwards et al., The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach—Advanced Reflections (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1998); and Claudia Giudici et al., Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners (Cambridge, MA: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2001).
6. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., ”Academic Pre-School: The French Connection,” in Zigler et al., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 94–98, italics mine.
7. E. D. Hirsch, “Core Knowledge Sequence Content and Skill Guidelines for Preschool,” Core Knowledge Foundation, www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/494/CKFSequence_PreK_Rev.pdf.
8. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (London: William Heinemann, 1912).
9. Louise Boyd Cadwell, Bringing Reggio Emilia Home: An Innovative Approach to Early Childhood Education (New York: Teachers College, 1997).
10. R. C. Pianta et al., “The Effects of Preschool Education: What We Know, How Public Policy Is or Is Not Aligned with the Evidence Base, and What We Need to Know,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 10.2 (2009), 49–88. See also Robert C. Pianta, “A Degree Is Not Enough: Teachers Need Stronger and More Individualized Professional Development Supports to Be Effective in the Classroom,” in Zigler et al., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 64–68.
11. Ginia Bellafante, “As Prekindergarten Expands in New York City, Guiding Guided Play,” New York Times, Sept. 4, 2014, mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/nyregion/as-prekindergarten-expands-in-new-york-city-guiding-guided-play.html?_r=0. See also: Sarah Carr, “Pre-K Has Changed. Can Teachers Keep Up?” Slate, Nov. 6, 2014, www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2014/11/06/teaching_pre_k_higher_standards_not_enough_training_and_the_importance_of.html, accessed Dec. 2, 2014.
12. Jonah E. Rockoff, “The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data,” American Economic Review 94.2 (2004), 247–52; and Matthew A. Kraft and Shaun M. Dougherty, “The Effect of Teacher–Family Communication on Student Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment,” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 6.3 (2013), 199–222.
13. Stella Chess and Jane Whitbread, How to Help Your Child Get the Most Out of School (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 19–20.
14. Alison Gopnik, “Babies Are Smarter Than You Think,” CNN.com, Oct. 23, 2011, www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/opinion/gopnik-ted-children-learning/, accessed Feb. 11, 2015.
Chapter Four: The Search for Intelligent Life
1. Roger Ebert, review of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), weblog post, RogerEbert.com, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/willy-wonka-and-the-chocolate-factory-1971, accessed Nov. 12, 2014.
2. Alison Gopnik, “Babies Are Smarter Than You Think,” CNN.com, Oct. 23, 2011, www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/opinion/gopnik-ted-children-learning/, accessed Feb. 11, 2015.
3. Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (New York, NY: Broadway, 2013).
4. J. Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn, and Paul Bloom, “Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants,” Nature 450.7169 (2007), 557–59.
5. F. Warneken and M. Tomasello, “Altruistic Helping in Human Infants and Young Chimpanzees,” Science 311.5765 (2006), 1301–3.
6. Christine Moon et al., “Language Experienced in Utero Affects Vowel Perception After Birth: A Two-Country Study,” Acta Paediat 102.2 (2013), 156–60.
7. L. Thomsen et al., “Big and Mighty: Preverbal Infants Mentally Represent Social Dominance,” Science 331.6016 (2011): 477–80.
8. Kristine A. Kovack-Lesh et al., “Four-Month-Old Infants’ Visual Investigation of Cats and Dogs: Relations with Pet Experience and Attentional Strategy,” Developmental Psychology 50.2 (2014), 402–13.
9. Karen Wynn, “Addition and Subtraction by Human Infants,” Nature 358.6389 (1992), 749–50.
10. Elizabeth M. Brannon, “The Development of Ordinal Numerical Knowledge in Infancy,” Cognition 83.3 (2002), 223–40.
11. Melissa M. Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson, “Young Children ‘Solve for X’ Using the Approximate Number System,” Developmental Science 18.1 (2014), 38–49.
12. Gopnik, “Babies Are Smarter Than You Think.”
13. Common Core standards for each grade, as well as the initiative’s own rationale for their purpose and how they came into being, are found at the Common Core State Standards Initiative Web site, www.corestandards.org.
14. For one of the many critiques of the Common Core kindergarten standards, see Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, “A Tough Critique of Common Core on Early Childhood Education,” Jan. 29, 2013, Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/29/a-tough-critique-of-common-core-on-early-childhood-education/. Educator and historian Diane Ravitch’s critique of the process for developing the standards, “Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards,” can be found at dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/.
15. Maria Droujkova and Yelena McManaman, “Advanced Math Is Child’s Play: An Interview with Maria Droujkova and Yelena McManaman,” interview by Laura Weldon, Geek Mom, Mar. 19, 2014, geekmom.com/2014/03/advanced-math-childs-play-interview-maria-droujkova-yelena-mcmanaman/, accessed Dec. 1, 2014.
16. Luba Vangelova, “5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus,” Atlantic, Mar. 3, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/5-year-olds-can-learn-calculus/284124/, accessed Dec. 1, 2014.
17. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, “When Education Goes Wrong,” TEDxTalks, Apr. 1, 2013, tedxtalks.ted.com/video/When-Education-Goes-Wrong-Dr-Na.
18. Common Core State Standards Initiative, “English Language Arts Standards,” www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/, accessed Feb. 11, 2015. As of 2015, the Common Core Standards are for K–12; however, the impact of the standards is felt on pre-K children as preschool curricula rush to make children ready for the new academic focus of kindergarten.
19. This displacement of responsibility from adult to child has assumed almost comical dimensions in some schools; I recently heard of a principal in Alabama who is equipping children with cans of peas and corn to hurl at potentially dangerous intruders. Katia Hetter, “Can Canned Goods Stop School Shooters?” CNN.com, Jan. 14, 2015, edition.cnn.com/2015/01/13/living/feat-students-canned-goods-stop-school-shooters/, accessed Feb. 11, 2015.
20. “Build Oral Language in PreSchool: Scholastic Big Day for PreK,” Scholastic, Dec. 1, 2014, teacher.scholastic.com/products/early-learning-program/big-day-for-prekindergarten-conversations.htm.
21. Carlsson-Paige, “When Education Goes Wrong.”
22. Pasi Sahlberg and Andy Hargreaves, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? (New York: Teachers College, 2011); Jenny Anderson, “From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 2011.
23. All Finnish children are entitled to heavily subsidized early education and care, starting in infancy, as well as free “pre-primary” education, starting at age six, which is not compulsory but which the vast majority of children attend. Starting the year children turn seven, schooling is compulsory.
24. Marina Vasilyeva et al., “Emergence of Syntax: Commonalities and Differences Across Children,” Developmental Science 11.1 (2008), 84–97.
25. Finland National Board of Education, National Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland. An English version can be found at www.julkari.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/75535/267671cb-0ec0-4039-b97b-7ac6ce6b9c10.pdf?sequence=1.
26. Ibid.
27. There have been many national scandals involving falsified test results, and they are more likely to happen when teachers are the ones scoring the tests that serve as the basis of their own performance evaluation. But subtler forms of “gaming” come from instructional models focused on hypertargeted performance standards such as the hypothetical Martian driving lesson example or in real-life cases such as Mrs. L.’s lesson on punctuation, both described in Chapter Two.
28. Dan Kois, “Vengeance for My Daughter Will Be Mine! Melt Down the Monkey Bars!” Slate, Oct. 15, 2012, www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2012/10/how_dangerous_are_monkey_bars_risky_play_and_the_case_for_banning_unsafe.html, accessed Feb. 11, 2015.
29. I. E. Jones et al., “How Many Children Remain Fracture-Free During Growth? A Longitudinal Study of Children and Adolescents Participating in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study,” Osteoporosis International 13.12 (2002), 990–95.
30. M. L. Waltzman et al., “Monkeybar Injuries: Complications of Play,” Pediatrics 103.5 (1999), E58.
31. A nice description of the importance of physical and outdoor play can be found in Frances Carlson, Big Body Play: Why Boisterous, Vigorous, and Very Physical Play Is Essential to Children’s Development and Learning (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2011).
Chapter Five: Just Kidding
1. A high school teacher in the affluent community of Wellesely, Massachusetts, made headlines in the summer of 2013 for telling the graduating seniors that they were quite ordinary. Amy Quick Parrish, “Advice to High-School Graduates: ‘You Are Not Special,’” Atlantic, May 6, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/advice-to-the-graduates-you-are-not-special/361463/, accessed Dec. 3, 2014; David McCullough Jr., You Are Not Special and Other Encouragements (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).
2. Erika Christakis, “Should We Stop Telling Our Kids That They’re Special?” Time.com, June 12, 2012, ideas.time.com/2012/06/12/should-we-stop-telling-our-kids-that-theyre-special/, accessed Apr. 22, 2015.
3. The idea of “twice-exceptional” students has gained traction in recent years. A description of services for students who meet the criteria for both the “gifted and talented” and “learning disabled” designation can be found at: Montgomery School District, “Gifted & Talented/Learning Disabled,” Montgomery County Public Schools, montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/enriched/gtld/faq.aspx#q5.
4. United States Department of Education, “Archived: 25 Year History of the IDEA,” Office of Special Education Programs (2007), www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/history.html.
5. Richard Adams and Carl Tapia, Council on Children with Disabilities, “Early Intervention, IDEA Part C Services, and the Medical Home: Collaboration for Best Practice and Best Outcomes,” Pediatrics 132.4 (2013), e1078–88; S. L. Odom and M. Wolery, “A Unified Theory of Practice in Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education: Evidence-Based Practices,” Journal of Special Education 37.3 (2003), 164–73.
6. The Bad Seed was a popular book and movie in the 1950s that addressed the nature-nurture question, seeming to come down on the side of nature. The “bad seed” (whose grandmother was a sociopath but was raised in a normally nurturing environment) is seen to revert to her genetic provenance at the end of the story. Maxwell Anderson and William March, Bad Seed: A Play in Two Acts (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955).
7. Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012).
8. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, among others, recommend universal newborn screening for hearing problems. Information can be found at “Early Hearing Detection and Intervention,” Pediatrics, www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/PEHDIC/pages/Early-Hearing-Detection-and-Intervention-by-State.aspx.
9. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Pantheon, 1973).
10. Journalist Judith Warner wrote movingly of these struggles and after years of interviewing families while researching her book, We’ve Got Issues, was forced to recalibrate her own initial skepticism about the shocking degree of psychic and medical distress she observed in children. See Judith Warner, We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication (New York: Riverhead, 2010).
11. Edward Hallowell, “Dr. Hallowell’s Response to NY Times Piece ‘Ritalin Gone Wrong,’” blog post on Dr. Hallowell.com, Jan. 2012, www.drhallowell.com/blog/dr-hallowells-response-to-ny-times-piece-ritalin-gone-wrong/.
12. Ruth Perou et al., “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children—United States, 2005–2011,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 62.2 (2013), 1–35, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 17, 2013, www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6202a1.htm?s_cid=su6202a1, accessed Dec. 6, 2014.
13. Alan Schwarz and Sarah Cohen, “A.D.H.D. Seen in 11% of U.S. Children as Diagnoses Rise,” New York Times, Mar. 31, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/health/more-diagnoses-of-hyperactivity-causing-concern.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&hp&, accessed Dec. 6, 2014.
14. Hallowell, “Dr. Hallowell’s Response to NY Times Piece.”
15. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “CDC Estimates 1 in 68 Children Has Been Identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Dec. 6, 2014, www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0327-autism-spectrum-disorder.html.
16. L. Croen et al., “The Changing Prevalence of Autism in California,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 32.3 (2002), 207–15.
17. Frederick Shic et al., “Speech Disturbs Face Scanning in 6-Month-Old Infants Who Develop Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Biological Psychiatry 75.3 (2014), 231–37. An excellent online introduction to autism from renowned autism researcher Dr. Fred Volkmar, of the Yale Child Study Center, can be found at “An Introduction to Autism, Dr. Fred Volkmar,” YouTube, May 20, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkftukvl79o.
18. Ka-Yuet Liu et al., “Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic,” American Journal of Sociology 115.5 (2010): 1387–434.
19. Claudia Wallis, “A Powerful Identity, a Vanishing Diagnosis,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed Dec. 7, 2014.
20. G. S. Liptak et al., “Disparities in Diagnosis and Access to Health Services for Children with Autism: Data from the National Survey of Children’s Health,” Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 29.3 (2008): 152–60; David S. Mandell et al., “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Identification of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” American Journal of Public Health 99.3 (2009), 493–98.
21. Chris Kardish, “How America’s Overmedicating Low-Income and Foster Kids,” Governing, Mar. 2015, www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-america-overmedicating-poverty.html.
22. R. C. Schaaf and K. M. Nightlinger, “Occupational Therapy Using a Sensory Integrative Approach: A Case Study of Effectiveness,” American Journal of Occupational Therapy 61.2 (2007): 239–46.
23. Anne-Marie R. Depape et al., “Self-Talk and Emotional Intelligence in University Students,” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement 38.3 (2006), 250–60. See also Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley, “Self-Directed Speech Affects Visual Search Performance,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 65.6 (2012), 1068–85.
24. Anna North, “Are ‘Learning Styles’ a Symptom of Education’s Ills?” New York Times, Feb. 25, 2015, op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/are-learning-styles-a-symptom-of-educations-ills/?, accessed Apr. 22, 2015; Harold Pashler et al., “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9.3 (2009), 105–19. Daniel Willingham, “Ask the Cognitive Scientist,” American Federation of Teachers, 2005, www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2005/willingham.cfm, accessed Dec. 9, 2014 .
25. Valerie Strauss, “Howard Gardner: ‘Multiple Intelligences’ Are Not ‘Learning Styles,’” Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/16/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-are-not-learning-styles/, accessed Dec. 9, 2014.
26. Anne D’Innocenzio, “Target Corp to Customers: Your Guns Are Not Welcome in Our Stores, Even Where Allowed by Law,” Associated Press, July 2, 2014, business.financialpost.com/2014/07/02/target-corp-to-customers-your-guns-are-not-welcome-in-our-stores-even-where-allowed-by-law/, accessed Dec. 9, 2014.
27. Antoinette Campbell, “Police Handcuff 6-Year-Old Student in Georgia,” CNN.com, Apr. 17, 2012, www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/justice/georgia-student-handcuffed/, accessed Dec. 11, 2014.
28. Lateef Mungin, “School Drops Sexual Harassment Claim against 6-Year-Old Who Kissed Girl,” CNN.com, Dec. 12, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/us/six-year-old-kissing-girl-suspension/, accessed Dec. 9, 2014.
29. Deborah K. Anderson et al., “Predicting Young Adult Outcome Among More and Less Cognitively Able Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 55.5 (2014), 485–94.
30. P. Shaw et al., “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Is Characterized by a Delay in Cortical Maturation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.49 (2007), 19649–54.
31. Benedict Carey, “Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/health/13kids.html?_r=, accessed Dec. 2014. See also Alan Kazdin, “Why Parents Expect Too Much from Their Kids,” Slate, Nov. 7, 2008, www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2008/11/why_cant_johnny_jump_tall_buildings.html, accessed Dec. 11, 2014.
32. B. Bloom and R. A Cohen, “Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Children: National Health Interview Survey, 2006.” Vital Health Statistics 10.234 (2007), 1–79.
33. United States Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, “Cumulative Percent Distribution of Population by Height and Sex, 2007-2008,” www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0209.pdf.
34. David Francis, “Reducing Accidents Is Key to Lower Child Mortality,” National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/digest/dec99/glied.html. It is also possible to argue that the decrease in teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and high school dropout rates might be connected to the increased oversight of children at home and at school as well. For statistics, see United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Key Data and Statistics—Saving Lives and Protecting People from Injuries and Violence,” Oct. 22, 2014, www.cdc.gov/injury/overview/data.html; and United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Teen Drinking and Driving,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oct. 2, 2012, www.cdc.gov/VitalSigns/teendrinkinganddriving/index.html.
35. Max Roser, “Child Mortality,” Our World in Data, 2014, www.ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/child-mortality/, accessed Dec. 11, 2014).
36. Michael Gurven and Hillard Kaplan, “Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination,” Population and Development Review 33.2 (2007), 321–65.
37. Ibid. The authors report that life may well have been “nasty and brutish” but, for those surviving early childhood, it was certainly not short: “The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional equivalent of an ‘adaptive’ human life span.”
38. Charlotte Alter, “Person Who Left Dolls on Little Girls’ Porches Not a Huge Creep After All,” Time, June 25, 2014, time.com/3033988/porcelain-dolls-porches/, accessed Dec. 12, 2014.
39. Kim Brooks, “The Day I Left My Son in the Car,” Salon, June 3, 2014, www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/, accessed Dec. 16, 2014.
40. Lenore Skenazy, “The Day She Let Her Son Wait in the Car,” Huffington Post, June 9, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/lenore-skenazy/the-day-she-let-her-son-wait-in-the-car_b_5455439.html, accessed Dec. 16, 2014; Lenore Skenazy, “‘America’s Worst Mom?,’” New York Sun, Apr. 8, 2008, www.nysun.com/opinion/americas-worst-mom/74347/, accessed Dec. 16, 2014.
41. Nicholas A. Christakis, “This Allergies Hysteria Is Just Nuts,” British Medical Journal 337 (2008), a2880.
42. S. H. Sicherer et al., “Prevalence of Peanut and Tree Nut (TN) Allergy in the US Determined by a Random Digit Dial Telephone Survey: A Five Year Follow-up Study,” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 113.2 (2004), 1203–7.
43. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Massachusetts ranks behind only Singapore for eighth-grade science outcomes in a comparison of multiple education systems; see Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (2011), nces.ed.gov/timss/results11_science11.asp.
44. Miranda R. Waggoner, “Parsing the Peanut Panic: The Social Life of a Contested Food Allergy Epidemic,” Social Science & Medicine 90 (2013), 49–55.
45. George Du Toit et al., “Randomized Trial of Peanut Consumption in Infants at Risk for Peanut Allergy,” New England Journal of Medicine 372.9 (2015), 803–13.
Chapter Six: Played Out
1. Brian Sutton-Smith, “Dilemmas in Adult-Child Play with Children,” in Kevin B. MacDonald, ed., Parent-Child Play: Descriptions and Implications (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1993), 15–42.
2. Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: A Bold New Way to Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Children’s Confidence (New York: Ballantine, 2001).
3. L. M. Gartner et al., “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk,” Pediatrics 115.2 (2005), 496–506.
4. Howard Chudacoff, “Play and Childhood in the American Past,” Interview, American Journal of Play 4.4 (2012), www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/4-4-interview-howard-chudacoff.pdf.
5. Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
6. Valerie Strauss, “Kindergarten Show Canceled So Kids Can Keep Studying to Become ‘College and Career Ready.’ Really,” Washington Post, Apr. 26, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/26/kindergarten-show-canceled-so-kids-can-keep-working-to-become-college-and-career-ready-really/, acessed Dec. 16, 2014.
7. The research literature is brimming with excellent studies on play, but a good start for the general reader can be found in the following: Kenneth R. Ginsburg and the Committee on Communications, and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,” American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics 119.1 (2007), 182–91; Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Edward Zigler et al., eds., Children’s Play: The Roots of Reading (Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 2004); David Elkind, The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier Children (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Lifelong, 2007); Dorothy Singer et al., Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Peter Gray, “The Play Deficit” Aeon Magazine, Sept. 18, 2013, aeon.co/magazine/culture/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play/, accessed Jan. 21, 2015; Jerome Singer and Mawiyah Lythcott, “Fostering School Achievement and Creativity Through Sociodramatic Play in the Classroom” (2002), in Zigler et al., Children’s Play, 77–93; and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff, “The Great Balancing Act: Optimizing Core Curricula Through Playful Pedagogy,” in Zigler et al., eds., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011).
8. Play theorist Gordon Sturrock, quoted in Penny Wilson, The Playwork Primer (College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009), 3, www.imaginationplayground.com/images/content/3/2/3239/playwork-primer.pdf.
9. Chudacoff, Children at Play, 1.
10. Finland National Board of Education, National Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland. An English version can be found at www.julkari.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/75535/267671cb-0ec0-4039-b97b-7ac6ce6b9c10.pdf?sequence=1.
11. This definition is provided by Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, who paraphrases the work of Bateson, and Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg on play. From Robert C. Pianta, ed., Handbook of Early Childhood Education (New York: Guilford Press, 2012), 260. See also Hirsh-Paseket al., A Mandate for Playful Learning), 23–24.
12. Victoria Clayton, “Should Preschools Teach All Work and No Play?” NBC, Aug. 6, 2007, www.nbcnews.com/id/20056147/ns/health-childrens_health/t/should-preschools-teach-all-work-no-play/#.VMpQjqWRlg0, accessed Jan. 30, 2015.
13. I fell into this trap myself with an op-ed for CNN.com that I wrote with my husband, “Want to Get Your Kids into College? Let Them Play,” Dec. 29, 2010, www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/29/christakis.play.children.learning/. We touted play’s positive effects on social development and the ability to listen to new ideas and contribute to others’ experiences, and we argued that mastery of social-emotional skills is surprisingly important for success in higher education, an argument that is becoming widespread. But we weren’t clear enough that play also has direct, and not only indirect, effects on academic success.
14. Gray, “The Play Deficit.”
15. Chudacoff, Children at Play.
16. George P. Rawick, compiler, “Florida Narratives,” The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, vol. 17 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972).
17. Peter Gray, “All Work and No Play Make the Baining the ‘Dullest Culture on Earth,’” Psychology Today, 20 July 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201207/all-work-and-no-play-make-the-baining-the-dullest-culture-earth, accessed Jan. 21, 2015.
18. Amanda Lenhart et al., “Adults and Video Games,” Pew Research Internet Project, Dec. 6, 2008, www.pewinternet.org/2008/12/07/adults-and-video-games/, accessed Jan. 22, 2015.
19. Richard Solomon, PLAY Project Media Kit (2014), www.playproject.org/assets/PLAY-Project-Media-Kit-Oct-2014.pdf.
20. Megan Smith, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale and director of the New Haven MOMS Partnership, is one of a growing number of public health researchers working to bring data, in real time, to the communities involved in research collaborations with academic medical centers. Information about this partnership can be found online at New Haven MOMS Partnership, newhavenmomspartnership.org/.
21. Carol Copple and Sue Bredekamp, “Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8,” National Association for the Education of Young Children (2009), www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/KeyMessages.pdf.
22. David Sobel, Children’s Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2001).
23. Amy Fusselman, “‘Play Freely at Your Own Risk,’” Atlantic, Jan. 14, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/play-freely-at-your-own-risk/373625/, accessed Jan. 21, 2015.
24. American Academy of Pediatrics, “Managing Media: We Need a Plan,” American Academy of Pediatrics, Oct. 28, 2013, www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Managing-Media-We-Need-a-Plan.aspx. See also Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman, The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006).
25. Anne Collier, “Though Reports About Bullying Are Increasing, the Behavior Itself Is Not,” Christian Science Monitor, June 5, 2013, www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/0605/Though-reports-about-bullying-are-increasing-the-behavior-itself-is-not, accessed May 15, 2015.
26. Richard Louv’s paean to natural childhood is the best introduction to this vast and important topic. See Richard Louv, The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2005).
27. Seong-Hyun Park and Richard Mattson, “Effects of Flowering and Foliage Plants in Hospital Rooms on Patients Recovering from Abdominal Surgery,” HortTechnology 18.4 (2008), 563–68. See also this classic paper on the quasi-experiment of people being randomly assigned to hospital rooms with views of brick walls or trees: R. S. Ulrich, “View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery,” Science 224.4647 (1984), 420–21.
28. Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). See also Gregory N. Bratman et al., “The Impacts of Nature Experience on Human Cognitive Function and Mental Health,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1249.1 (2012), 118–36; J. H. Heerwagen and G. H. Orians, “The Ecological World of Children,” in P. H. Kahn and S. R. Kellert, ed., Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural and Evolutionary Investigations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); Chin Reyes, “Why Child-Nature Connections Matter to the Health and Development of Young Children (and the Planet),” unpublished article, Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, Yale University (2014); and Gregory N. Bratman et al., “Nature Experience Reduces Rumination and Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex Activation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.28 (2015), 8567–72.
29. Sonya Nedovic and Anne-Marie Morrissey, “Calm Active and Focused: Children’s Responses to an Organic Outdoor Learning Environment,” Learning Environments Research 16.2 (2013), 281–95. See also Javier Marco et al., “Tangible Interaction and Tabletops: New Horizons for Children’s Games,” International Journal of Arts and Technology 5.2/3/4 (2012), 151–76.
30. Ingunn Fjørtoft, “The Natural Environment as a Playground for Children: The Impact of Outdoor Play Activities in Pre-Primary School Children,” Early Childhood Education Journal 29.2 (2001), 111–17.
31. Kenneth Grahame and Ernest H. Shepard, The Wind in the Willows (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933).
32. There’s a disturbing mismatch between what we know children can do scientifically, and what actually passes for science instruction in the classroom: “Despite these capabilities, children’s emerging skills usually are not the target of instructional practice in typical early childhood classrooms. In other words, current classroom practices are inconsistent with young children’s abilities and with educational reform documents,” according to Kathy Cabe Trundle and Mesut Sackes, “Science and Early Education,” in Pianta, Handbook of Early Childhood Education.
Chapter Seven: Stuffed
1. “Stuffed-Animal Biodiversity Rising,” The Onion, Apr. 18, 2001, www.theonion.com/articles/stuffedanimal-biodiversity-rising,355/, accessed Jan. 23, 2015.
2. Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
3. Victoria J. Rideout et al., Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010), www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-time-online.html?pagewanted=1&hpw&_r=0.
4. Ibid.
5. National Center for Children in Poverty, “Child Poverty,” Columbia University, www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html, accessed Jan. 2015.
6. In a beautiful understatement, the author of one study that found mildly positive effects from low doses of video games on older children, not preschoolers, cautions that “the small positive effects observed for low levels of regular electronic play do not support the position that games provide a universal solution to the challenges of development and modern life.” A. K. Przybylski, “Electronic Gaming and Psychosocial Adjustment,” Pediatrics 134.3 (2014), 1–7.
7. For a nice chronology of school equipment through the ages, see Charles Wilson, “The Learning Machines,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 2010, query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E2DE153BF93AA2575AC0A9669D8B63, accessed Feb. 2, 2015.
8. Dimitri Christakis et al., “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children,” Pediatrics 113.4 (2004), 708–13.
9. Dimitri Christakis et al., “Overstimulation of Newborn Mice Leads to Behavioral Differences and Deficits in Cognitive Performance,” Scientific Reports 2 (2012), 546, doi:10.1038/srep00546.
10. Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014).
11. Nick Bilton, “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent,” New York Times, Sept. 10, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html?_r=0, accessed Jan. 24, 2015.
12. Sarah D. Sparks, “Class Pets May Help Students with Autism Socialize,” Education Week, Feb. 27, 2013, blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2013/02/class_pets_help_autistic_students_socialize.html, accessed Feb. 2, 2015.
13. Humane Society of the United States, “Pass on the Classroom Pet,” Humane Society of the United States. Mar. 7, 2012, www.humanesociety.org/parents_educators/classroom_pet.html, accessed Jan. 24, 2015.
14. Julie Rovner, “Pet Therapy: How Animals and Humans Heal Each Other,” National Public Radio, Mar. 5, 2012, www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012//09/146583986/pet-therapy-how-animals-and-humans-heal-each-other, accessed Feb. 2, 2015.
15. Marguerite E. O’Haire et al., “Social Behaviors Increase in Children with Autism in the Presence of Animals Compared to Toys.” PLoS ONE 8.2 (2013), E57010.
16. Almost 60 percent of Americans have fewer family dinners than when they were children. Interestingly, families without children at home eat together more often than families with children. Statistics on Americans’ views on the family dinner can be found in a Harris poll at Larry Shannon-Missal, “Are Americans Still Serving Up Family Dinners?” Harris Interactive, Nov. 13, 2013, www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1319/Default.aspx.
17. Researchers at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut are studying ways to enlist preschool teachers in partnership to improve young children’s eating while at school, where some children consume the majority of their daily meals and calories. See, for example, E. Kenney et al., “Practice-Based Research to Engage Teachers and Improve Nutrition in the Preschool Setting,” Childhood Obesity, Dec. 7, 2011 (6), 475–79.
18. Petra Hauf, “Infants’ Perception and Production of Intentional Actions,” Progress in Brain Research 164 (2007), 285–301.
19. Klaus Libertus and Amy Needham, “Teach to Reach: The Effects of Active Versus Passive Reaching Experiences on Action and Perception,” Vision Research 50.24 (2010), 2750–57.
20. Dimitri Christakis, “Interactive Media Use at Younger Than the Age of 2 Years: Time to Rethink the American Academy of Pediatrics Guideline?” JAMA Pediatrics 168.5 (2014), 399–400.
21. Pinker, The Village Effect.
22. Kyla Boyse and Kate Fitzgerald, “Toilet Training Your Child,” University of Michigan Health System, Mar. 2010, www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/toilet.htm, accessed Jan. 24, 2015; T. Schum et al., “Factors Associated with Toilet Training in the 1990s,” Ambulatory Pediatrics 1 (2001), 79-86; E. Bakker and J. J. Wyndaele, “Changes in the Toilet Training of Children During the Last 60 Years: The Cause of an Increase in Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction?,” British Journal of Urology 86.3 (2000), 248–52. See more at www.parentingscience.com/science-of-toilet-training.html#sthash.8PqePMkm.dpuf.
23. Heather Turgeon, “Potty in the USA: Why We’re Slow to the Toilet,” Salon, July 9, 2009, www.salon.com/2010/07/09/extreme_potty_training/, accessed Jan. 24, 2015.
24. J. E. Amburgey and J. B. Anderson, “Disposable Swim Diaper Retention of Cryptosporidium-Sized Particles on Human Subjects in a Recreational Water Setting,” Journal of Water Health 4 (2011), 653–58.
25. Rebecca J. Rosen, “America’s Workers: Stressed Out, Overwhelmed, Totally Exhausted,” Atlantic, Mar. 25, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/americas-workers-stressed-out-overwhelmed-totally-exhausted/284615/, accessed Jan. 25, 2015.
26. Helene Emsellem, 2014 Sleep in America Poll, National Sleep Foundation, Mar. 2014, sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/2014-NSF-Sleep-in-America-poll-summary-of-findings—FINAL-Updated-3-26-14-.pdf, accessed Feb. 2, 2015.
27. Sabine Seehagen et al., “Timely Sleep Facilitates Declarative Memory Consolidation in Infants,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.5 (2015), 1625–29.
28. L. Kurdziel et al., “Sleep Spindles in Midday Naps Enhance Learning in Preschool Children,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.43 (2013), 17267–72.
29. Nancy Trejos, “Time May Be Up for Naps in Pre-K Class,” Washington Post, Mar. 14, 2005, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58706-2004Mar14_2.html, accessed Jan. 22, 2015.
30. Cheryl Ulmer et al., Resident Duty Hours: Enhancing Sleep, Supervision, and Safety (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2009).
31. L. A. Matricciani et al., “Never Enough Sleep: A Brief History of Sleep Recommendations for Children.” Pediatrics 129.3 (2012), 548–56.
32. Meredith F. Small, Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent (New York: Anchor Books, 1999).
33. Avi Sadeh et al., “Sleep, Neurobehavioral Functioning, and Behavior Problems in School-aged Children.” Child Development 73.2 (2002), 405–17.
34. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Richard Howard, The Little Prince (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 2000 [1943]).
Chapter Eight: The Secret Lives of Children
1. Nancy Close, Listening to Children: Talking with Children About Difficult Issues (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002), 49.
2. Daniel Todd Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Knopf, 2006). As Gilbert explains, people remember the part of the experience that is different from the rest, e.g., the last minute of the nature walk when they were hungry and needed to go to the bathroom, rather than remembering the whole experience, which was pleasant.
3. J. Parascandola, “Patent Medicines and the Public’s Health,” Public Health Reports 114.4 (1999), 318–21.
4. Task Force on Dental Care Access: Report to the 2000 NC General Assembly. (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Institute of Medicine, 2000), www.nciom.org/wp-content/uploads/NCIOM/docs/dentalrpt.pdf, accessed Feb. 6, 2015.
5. Bruce Duncan Perry and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
6. Cheryl B. Brauner and Cheryll B. Stevens, “Estimating the Prevalence of Early Childhood Serious Emotional/Behavioral Disorders: Challenges and Recommendations,” Public Health Reports 121.3 (2006), 303–10.
7. Perry and Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.
8. Joy D. Osofsky, “The Effect of Exposure to Violence on Young Children,” American Psychologist 50.9 (1995), 782–88. See also Alicia F. Lieberman et al., “Trauma in Early Childhood: Empirical Evidence and Clinical Implications,” Development and Psychopathology 23 (2011), 397–410; National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Persistent Fear and Anxiety Can Affect Young Children’s Learning and Development,” Working Paper No. 9, www.developingchild.net, accessed June 30, 2015.
9. Anita Hamilton, “After a Disaster, Kids Suffer Posttraumatic Stress Too,” Time, July 21, 2010, content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2004902,00.html, accessed Feb. 2, 2015.
10. Karen Feiden, “Depression in Parents, Parenting and Children,” Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 3, 2010, www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/program_results_reports/2010/rwjf63063. See also National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Maternal Depression Can Undermine the Development of Young Children,” Working Paper No. 8 (2009), www.developingchild.net.
11. Megan Smith, “Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in a Community Sample of Low-Income Pregnant Women,” American Journal of Psychiatry 163.5 (2006), 881–84.
12. Janice L. Cooper et al., Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood, National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, Aug. 2009, academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:126269, accessed Feb. 6, 2015.
13. Bridget Hamre and Robert Pianta, “Self-Reported Depression in Nonfamilial Caregivers: Prevalence and Associates with Caregiver Behavior in Child Care Settings,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 19.2 (2004), 297–318.
14. Jean L. Briggs, Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
15. David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities (Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 2004).
16. Walter Gilliam, “Implementing Policies to Reduce the Likelihood of Preschool Expulsion,” Foundation for Child Development, Policy Brief No. 7, Jan. 2008. fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/ExpulsionBriefImplementingPolicies.pdf, accessed July 14, 2015.
17. Stephanie M. Jones and Suzanne M. Bouffard, Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: From Programs to Strategies, Vol. 26, rep. 4th ed., no. ED540203 (Ann Arbor, MI: ERIC Document Reproduction Service, 2012).
18. W. S. Gilliam and E. Frede, “Accountability and Program Evaluation in Early Education,” in Robert C. Pianta, ed., Handbook of Early Childhood Education (New York: Guilford Press, 2012), 73–91.
19. Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School (College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009), www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/kindergarten_report.pdf, accessed Feb. 6, 2015.
20. Information on RULER can be found at Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, “RULER Overview—How RULER Becomes an Integral and Enduring Part of Your School or District,” Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, June 10, 2013, ei.yale.edu/ruler/ruler-overview/.
21. Susan Rivers et al., “Improving the Social and Emotional Climate of Classrooms: A Clustered Randomized Controlled Trial Testing the RULER Approach,” Prevention Science 12 (2013), 77–87.
22. Jason G. Goldman, “When Animals Act Like People in Stories, Kids Can’t Learn,” Scientific American, Mar. 27, 2014, blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2014/03/27/animals-who-wear-clothes-and-talk-actually-impede-learning/, accessed Feb. 6, 2015.
Chapter Nine: Use Your Words
1. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 276–77.
2. Andrew Meltzoff et al., “Foundations for a New Science of Learning,” Science. 325.5938 (2009), 284–88.
3. Pinker, The Language Instinct.
4. W. M. Weikum et al., “Visual Language Discrimination in Infancy,” Science 316.5828 (2007), 1159.
5. David F. Bjorklund, Children’s Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences, 5th ed. (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2011).
6. Anne Fernald et al., “SES Differences in Language Processing Skill and Vocabulary Are Evident at 18 Months,” Developmental Science 16.2 (2012), 234–48.
7. D. K. Dickinson, “Teachers’ Language Practices and Academic Outcomes of Preschool Children,” Science 333.6045 (2011), 964–67.
8. Ibid.
9. Tara Parker-Pope, “Toddler Twins: Secret Language or Babble?,” New York Times, Mar. 31, 2011, well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/toddler-twins-secret-language-or-babble/.
10. Literacy Partners, “Literacy Facts,” Literacy Partners, www.literacypartners.org/literacy-in-america/literacy-facts, accessed Oct. 12, 2015.
11. The real, nongarbled, text is: “In graduate school, I was surprised to learn that many of my colleagues, all of whom were aspiring or current teachers, had been frustrated by their own reading instruction as children. Some reported that they never read extensively as adults and felt anxious when reading out loud to children in class. I wondered how teachers could be expected to instill a passion for reading, much less be effective teachers, if they didn’t have a solid grasp of these skills themselves. I’m not suggesting they didn’t know how to read adequately, but they didn’t feel comfortable reading, which is equally depressing.”
12. Daniel Willingham, “Reading Instruction Across Countries—English Is Hard,” Daniel Willingham.com, May 7, 2012, www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/reading-instruction-across-countries, accessed Oct. 12, 2015.
13. Philip Seymour et al., “Foundation Literacy Acquisition in European Orthographies,” British Journal of Psychology 94 (2003), 143–47; see also Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (New York: Viking, 2010).
14. Willingham, “Reading Instruction Across Countries,” italics mine.
15. Judith A. Schickedanz et al., So Much More Than the ABCs: The Early Phases of Reading and Writing. (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2013), 17.
16. I’ve seen this example in many contexts, but Alfie Kohn attributes it to Susan Sowers in his book The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 167.
17. Ibid., 162.
18. Ibid., 264.
19. See also: Diane Ravitch, “Critical Thinking? You Need Knowledge,” Boston Globe, Sept. 15, 2009, www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-20759023.html?refid=easy_hf, accessed Apr. 2, 2015.
20. Russell Jackson et al., National Evaluation of Early Reading First, Institute of Education Sciences, 2007, 13, www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/other/readingfirst-interim/readingfirst.pdf.
21. David Dickinson et al., “The Language of Emergent Literacy: A Response to the National Institute for Literacy Report on Early Literacy,” 2009, nieer/pdf/CommentaryOnNELPreport.pdf, accessed Oct. 12, 2015.
22. D. K. Dickinson, “Teachers’ Language Practices and Academic Outcomes of Preschool Children,” Science 333.6045 (2011), 964–67.
23. Douglas Powell and Karen Diamond, “Promoting Early Literacy and Language Development,” in Robert C. Pianta, ed., Handbook of Early Childhood Education (New York: Guilford Press, 2012), 193–216.
24. Jennifer Locasale-Crouch et al., “Observed Classroom Quality Profiles in State-Funded Pre-Kindergarten Programs and Associations with Teacher, Program, and Classroom Characteristics,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 22.1 (2007), 3–17.
25. Motoko Rich, “Language-Gap Study Bolsters a Push for Pre-K,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/language-gap-study-bolsters-a-push-for-pre-k.html?_r=0, accessed Apr. 22, 2015.
26. Powell and Diamond, “Promoting Early Literacy and Language Development,” 194–216.
27. Lauren Fitzpatrick, “No-Homework Policy Improves Home Life for Younger Students at One CPS School—Chicago,” Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 14, 2014, chicago.suntimes.com/?p=178160, accessed Apr. 22, 2015.
28. Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Lifelong, 2006). There is a broad consensus that homework is not useful for young children. For a comprehensive review of the literature, both for and against homework, see United States School Boards Association, “What Research Says About the Value of Homework: Research Review,” Center for Public Education, National School Boards Association, Feb. 5, 2007, www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-At-a-glance/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-Research-review.html.
29. F. Serafini, “When Bad Things Happen to Good Books,” Reading Teacher 65.4 (2011), 238–41.
30. Peter Gray, “The Reading Wars: Why Natural Learning Fails in Classrooms” Psychology Today blog post (2013), www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201311/the-reading-wars-why-natural-learning-fails-in-classrooms, accessed Oct. 12, 2015.
31. An English version of the Finnish National Board of Education National Core Curriculum for Pre-Primary Education (2010) can be found online at Finland Board of Education. “National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education 2010,” http://www.oph.fi/download/153504_national_core_curriculum_for_pre-primary_education_2010.pdf.
Chapter Ten: Well Connected
1. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other (New York: Ballantine, 2004).
2. Laura Ingalls Wilder, These Happy Golden Years (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1943).
3. Harry F. Harlow et al., “Total Social Isolation in Monkeys,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 54.1 (1965), 90–97.
4. Alvin Powell, “‘Breathtakingly Awful’: HMS Professor’s Work Details Devastating Toll of Romanian Orphanages,” Harvard Gazette, Oct. 5, 2010, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/10/breathtakingly-awful/, accessed Mar. 18, 2015. See also Charles A. Nelson et al., “The Neurobiological Toll of Early Human Deprivation,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 76.4 (2011), 127–46; and Charles A. Nelson et al., Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
5. National Association for the Education of Young Children, ”Prevention of Child Abuse in Early Childhood Programs and the Responsibilities of Early Childhood Professionals to Prevent Child Abuse” (1996), www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PSCHAB98.PDF, accessed Mar. 18, 2015; Maria Newman, “Cautious Teachers Reluctantly Touch Less: A Fear of Abuse Charges Leads to Greater Restraint with Students,” New York Times, June 23, 1998, www.nytimes.com/1998/06/24/nyregion/cautious-teachers-reluctantly-touch-less-fear-abuse-charges-leads-greater.html, accessed May 15, 2015.
6. Debbie Nathan and Michael R. Snedeker, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (New York: Basic Books, 1995). I agree with journalist Margaret Talbot, who wrote in the New York Times that “when you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early ’80s. . . .” Margaret Talbot, “The Lives They Lived,” New York Times, Jan. 6, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/magazine/lives-they-lived-01-07-01-peggy-mcmartin-buckey-b-1926-devil-nursery.html, accessed Mar. 18, 2015.
7. Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Martha Coakley’s Convictions,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 14, 2010, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862, accessed Mar. 19, 2015. For an excellent example of how the paranoia about sexual abuse has infiltrated preschool teaching practices, see the example of a teacher being formally reprimanded for responding to a young child with a urinary tract infection in Joseph Tobin et al., Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
8. Colin Moynihan and Joseph Goldstein, “Preschool Intern Accused of Sex Abuse Can Be Kept in Jail, Judge Says,” New York Times, July 3, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/nyregion/preschool-intern-accused-of-sex-abuse-can-be-kept-in-jail-judge-says.html?_r=1, accessed Mar. 19, 2015.
9. Jonathan Cohn, “The Hell of American Day Care,” New Republic, Mar. 25, 2015, www.newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care, accessed May 15, 2015.
10. Child Care Aware of America, 2013–2014 Public Policy Agenda, www.naccrra.org/sites/default/files/default_site_pages/2013/2013-2014_pub_policy_agenda_032013_1.pdf.
11. Geoff Liesik, “Roy Day Care Provider Charged with Child Abuse Homicide,” Deseret News, Apr. 9, 2014, www.deseretnews.com/article/865600587/Roy-day-care-provider-charged-with-child-abuse-homicide.html?pg=all, accessed Mar. 25, 2015.
12. Lylah M. Alphonse, “Would You Leave Your Child with a Male Caregiver?” Boston.com, June 8, 2009, www.boston.com/community/moms/blogs/child_caring/2009/06/would_you_leave_your_child_with_a_male_caregiver.html, accessed Mar. 25, 2015.
13. Thelma Harms et al., “Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R),” Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, ers.fpg.unc.edu/early-childhood-environment-rating-scale-ecers-r, accessed Mar. 25, 2015.
14. A description of the Class Assessment Scoring Scale (CLASS) can be found online at Robert Pianta, “Measures Developed by Robert C. Pianta, Ph.D,” Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, curry.virginia.edu/about/directory/robert-c.-pianta/measures.
15. Walter Gilliam, Development of the Preschool Mental Health Climate Scale: Final Report (New Haven, CT: Yale Child Study Center, 2008).
16. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 2–3.
17. Ibid.
18. Robert Pianta et al., “The Effects of Preschool Education: What We Know, How Public Policy Is or Is Not Aligned with the Evidence Base, and What We Need to Know,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 10.2 (2009), 49–88, 50.
19. Committee on Early Childhood Care and Education Workforce, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, The Early Childhood Care and Education Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities: A Workshop Report (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015). See also David Bradley et al., Losing Ground in Early Childhood Education: Declining Qualifications in an Expanding Industry, 1979–2004, Economic Policy Institute, Sept. 2005, www.epi.org/publication/study_ece_summary/.
20. Edward Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
21. Pianta et al., ”The Effects of Preschool Education,” 50.
22. Atul Gawande, “Personal Best,” New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best, accessed Apr. 22, 2015. See also Elizabeth Green, Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works and How to Teach It to Everyone (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).
23. Bruce Fuller, Margaret Bridges, and Seeta Pai, Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
24. Bruce Fuller, “Preschool Is Important, but It’s More Important for Poor Children,” Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/preschool-is-important-but-its-more-important-for-poor-children/2014/02/09/79ff4ab4-8e96-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html, accessed Apr. 7, 2015.
25. Personal communication with Linda Smith, deputy assistant secretary and inter-departmental liaison for early childhood development for the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at the Yale Child Study Center in 2014. Also personal communication with Professor Walter Gilliam, director of the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, Yale Child Study Center.
26. According to one survey, Latino children have lower rates of preschool attendance because their families lack awareness of preschool options or experience financial and other barriers, not because they don’t see the value of preschool. Pérez and Echeveste Valencia and Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, “Latino Public Opinion Survey of Pre-Kindergarten Programs: Knowledge, Preferences, and Public Support,” April 2006, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED502112.pdf, accessed May 21, 2015.
27. Richard V. Reeves and Kimberly Howard, “The Parenting Gap,” Brookings Institution, Sept. 9, 2013, www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/09/09-parenting-gap-social-mobility-wellbeing-reeves, accessed Apr. 8, 2015.
28. Ibid.
29. A discussion of family involvement in preschool can be found in Christopher Henrich and Ramona Blackman-Jones, “Parent Involvement in Preschool,” in Zigler et al., A Vision for Universal Preschool Education. See also Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2000).
30. Stephanie Coontz, “The Triumph of the Working Mother,” New York Times, June 1, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/coontz-the-triumph-of-the-working-mother.html, accessed Oct. 29, 2014.
31. Sabrina Tavernise, “Visiting Nurses, Helping Mothers on the Margins,” New York Times, Mar. 8, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/health/program-that-helps-new-mothers-learn-to-be-parents-faces-broader-test.html?_r=0, accessed Apr. 8, 2015; Nurse-Family Partnership, “Research Trials and Outcomes: A Cornerstone of Nurse-Family Partnership,” Sept. 2014, www.nursefamilypartnership.org/assets/PDF/Fact-sheets/NFP_Research_Outcomes_2014.aspx/, accessed Apr. 8, 2015.
32. D. L. Olds et al., “Effects of Nurse Home-Visiting on Maternal Life Course and Child Development: Age 6 Follow-Up Results of a Randomized Trial,” Pediatrics 114.6 (2004), 1550–59.
33. Information and current research about the New Haven MOMS Project can be found online at “The New Haven Mental Health Outreach for MotherS (MOMS) Partnership,” Yale School of Medicine, newhavenmomspartnership.org/.
34. Minding the Baby has been recognized as a federal model of excellence for home visiting intervention. Information about the program can be found at Yale Child Study Center, “Welcome to Minding the Baby,” Yale School of Medicine, medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/mtb/.
35. Tracy Vericker et al., “Infants of Depressed Mothers Living in Poverty: Opportunities to Identify and Serve,” Urban Institute, Aug. 2010, www.urban.org/research/publication/infants-depressed-mothers-living-poverty-opportunities-identify-and-serve.
36. Stephanie Schmit and Hannah Matthews, “Investing in Young Children: A Fact Sheet on Early Care and Education Participation, Access and Quality” (Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, 2013).
37. Dr. Sanam Roder, personal communication.
Chapter Eleven: Hiding in Plain Sight
1. Lucy Larcom, “A New England Girlhood,” Primary Sources: Workshops in American History (1889), www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/lowell/docs/larcom.html, accessed Feb. 4, 2015.
2. Wikipedia, “Alfred the Great,” Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great, accessed Feb. 4, 2015.
3. Anne S. MacLeod, “American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century,” in Paula Fass and Mary Ann Mason, ed., Childhood in America (New York: New York University Press: 2000), 89.
4. Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet wrote of child rearing that “diverse children have their different natures; some are like flesh which nothing but salt will keep from putrefaction, some again like tender fruits that are best preserved with sugar.” See Luther Caldwell, An Account of Anne Bradstreet: The Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics (Boston: Damrell & Upham, 1898), Chapter 10, 59.
5. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).
6. B. W. Roberts et al., “It Is Developmental Me, Not Generation Me: Developmental Changes Are More Important Than Generational Changes in Narcissism—Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010),” Perspectives on Psychological Science 5.1 (2010), 97–102.
7. Clara Gowing, The Alcotts as I Knew Them (Boston: C. M. Clark Publishing Company, 1909), 53.
8. Ibid., 52.
9. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., “Academic Preschool: The French Connection,” in Zigler et al., ed., The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 2011), 94–98. A fascinating comparison of the cultural values underpinning early education in the United States and other societies can be found in Joseph Tobin et al., Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
10. A selection of Jefferson’s writings on public education and democracy can be found at Monticello.org, “Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters,” tjrs.monticello.org/archive/search/quotes?keys=&field_tjrs_categorization_tid%5B%5D=2174.
11. Sarah Carr, “Pre-K Teachers No Longer Know How to Teach Pre-K,” Slate, Nov. 6, 2014, www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2014/11/06/teaching_pre_k_higher_standards_not_enough_training_and_the_importance_of.html, accessed Mar. 18, 2015.
12. Attributed to educator Jim Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1982); see also www.trelease-on-reading.com.