physical and cognitive development in the preschool years

PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN THE PRESCHOOL YEARS

CHAPTER 7

Learning Objectives

Physical Growth

Growing Body•By age 2, 25 to 30 pounds and close to 36 inches tall•By 6 years old, about 46 pounds and 46 inches tall

Individual Differences in Height and Weight

• Averages mask great individual differences in height and weight

• Gender differences

• National and global economic differences

Changes in Body Shape and Structure

• Bodies vary in height, weight, and shape

• Toddler fat burns off

• Internal physical changes occur

Internal changes

• Book says the Eustachian tube “which carries sound from the exterior part of the ear to the inner part” changes position

• Under normal circumstances, the human Eustachian tube is closed.

• SO book’s statement is idiotic as well as wrong.• Two basic functions:

– Equalizing pressure between middle ear & atmosphere.

– Also drains mucus from the middle ear.

ERROR

More Changes

• Muscles bigger and stronger• Bones less flexible and stronger• Characteristics of face change

– Lose “baby fat” – Proportions change

Nutrition: Eating the Right Foods

Slower growth = less caloric requirements•Children can maintain appropriate intake of food, if provided with nutritious meals•Inappropriate encouragement to increase food intake beyond an appropriate level may cause obesity•Inappropriate dietary restrictions can be harmful

• Low cholesterol => creates neural growth issues• Low salt => correct balance of body fluids, acid-based

balance, neural conduction• Low protein => damage to muscles, brain, organs• Low sugars => malaise, muscle weakness

Avoiding a Butter Battle

Good nutrition w/o adversarial situations occurs by:•Providing a variety of foods, low in fat, and high in nutritional and iron content and Vitamin D

•Allowing development of natural preferences

•Exposing children to a wide variety of foods

•In cold climates fats provide a very large % of energy used to maintain core body temperatures.

Health and Illness

• Majority of US preschoolers are reasonably healthy

• 7 to 10 colds and other minor respiratory illnesses in each of years from age three to five– Depends on family size & exposure to other kids– Strongly relate to vitamin D levels.

• Minor illness permits children to understand body better, learn coping skills, and develop empathy for others who are sick– Rationalization for large group exposure– But is require to ‘train’ immune system

Pill-Popping Preschoolers?

• Increasing number of children being treated with drugs for emotional disorders such as depression

• Use of drugs such as antidepressants and stimulants has grown significantly

No SSRI has been tested or approved for kids. Antidepressants modify brain structure in kids!

Injury During the Preschool Years

• Accidents are greatest risk of death• Danger of injuries

– “High levels” of physical activity– Curiosity – Lack of judgment

• Individual differences– Gender– Cultural– Socioeconomic

2,400 children die every day because of injury and violence(That’s 876,000 per year – REALLY?!

Children in the United States have a 1 in 3 chance every year of receiving an injury that requires medical attention.

The statistics are just awful…

• One study found that the most common accidental causes of injury and death among preschool-aged children were drowning, falls, impact and bites.

• Or • Childhood Unintentional Injuries: Factors Predicting

Injury Risk jpepsy.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/4/2734Motor-vehicle crashes, drowning, fires, and burns were the leading causes of death of preschool children (National Safety Council, 2001).

• Your tax dollars at work…

Presumably the ‘burns’ were not caused by ‘fires’

Injury by location

• National statistics confuse “rural” and “farm”

• Such comingling makes it appear that

– Farm kids are undernourished

– Farm kids have a higher rate of accidental death

– Farm kids have poorer physical health

• Rural stats dominated by areas we would think of as

– Small towns

– Non-farmers

– High population density like SE and NE states

– “Unincorporated” would be a better term for their rural

– My neighborhood has ~ 2 humans per section

Range of Preschool Dangers

Misleading ChartNOT equal %s

Silent Danger: Lead Poisoning

• Some 14 million children are at risk for lead poisoning (Centers for Disease Control)

• U.S. DHHS calls lead poisoning most hazardous health threat to children under the age of 6

• Nearly 100% of risk is from children with poor nutrition consuming lead based paint (cribbing).

• Nearly 100% is aging inner city housing but…– Some industrial exposure– Some residual fuel additive exposure

True or False?

Children in poverty are more susceptible lead poisoning

Yes

Poor children are particularly susceptible to lead poisoning, and the results of poisoning tend to be worse for them than for children from more affluent families.

Because poor nutrition:• Cause them to ingest lead containing products (sweet)• Lack of vitamins & nutrients means no bio-competition

Data skewed so it appears minorities more affected

Even tiny amounts of lead can permanently harm children.

Just give kids free vitamins

Effects of Lead Poisoning

• High levels of lead are linked to higher levels of antisocial behavior in school age children– Aggression– Delinquency

Does this explain Chicago?

No one knows because government will not fund research.

Growing Brain

Grows at faster rate than any other part of the body•Increase in interconnections among cells and myelin•Corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain

• Corpus callosum becomes thicker• 800 million individual fibers

•Two year-old’s brain ~75% the size & weight of adult brain. •Five year-old’s brain 90% average adult brain weight. •Five year-old's total body weight 30% average adult weight

Growing Brain

• Lateralization is the process in which certain functions are located more in one hemisphere than the other.

• Lateralization increases during this period

Left Hand, Right Hand: Looking into the Brain

• This set of PET brain scans illustrates that activity in the right or left hemisphere of the brain differs according to the task in which a person is engaged.

Ya gotta hand it to him…or her!

Gender-related lateralization differences•Boys

– Greater lateralization of language in left hemisphere– Higher autism incidence (Baron-Cohen's theory)

OR – gender predisposition to functioning differences

•Girls– Language is more evenly divided between two

hemispheresOR

– Verbal abilities emerge earlier in girls because girls receive greater encouragement for verbal skills than boys

Brain Growth and Cognitive Development

Growth spurts•Myelin increases

•Cerebellum and cerebral cortex connection growth

Reticular Formation & Hippocampus

• Attention– Reticular Formation attention & concentration– Myelination completed about age 5 – May be associated growing attention spans

• Memory– improvement may also be associated with myelination – myelination completed in hippocampus, by age 5-6

Cerebellum & Cerebral Cortex

• Cerebellum controls balance and movement• Cerebral cortex responsible for sophisticated information

processing• By 5 years: • Significant growth in nerves connecting them together • Growth related to significant advances in motor skills as

well as to advances in cognitive processing

So…does brain development produce cognitive advances or do cognitive

accomplishments fuel brain development?

Good Question

• Direction of causality not known. • Gee, could it be interactive?

Significant Gross Motor Skills in Early Childhood

By age 3 children can jump, hop on one foot, skip, and run

Potty Wars: When-and How-Should Children Be Toilet Trained?

Few child-care issues raise so much concern among parents as toilet training•Brazelton

– Suggests flexible approach– Advocates waiting until child shows signs of readiness

•Rosemond– Suggests rigid approach– Advocates for early and quick training

American Academy of PediatricsCurrent Guidelines

• Dry at least 2 hours during day or after nap

• Regular, predictable bowel movements

• Indications that bowel movement or urination is about to occur

• Ability to follow simple directions

• Ability to get to bathroom and undress on time

• Discomfort with soiled diapers

• Asking to use toilet

• Desire to wear underwear

• Begin only when children are ready

Normal Parent Guidance

• Impossible for child to be potty trained until nerves are myelination

• Is possible for parent to be trained• Myelination time varies• Some kids are interested - some are not• Boys often enjoy being dirty girls usually don’t• Your mileage will vary – a lot!

Oh, you CAN drive your kid nuts or your kid can drive you nuts.

Most kids figure it out. So chill…

Fine Motor Skills

At the same time that gross motor skills are developing, children are progressing in their ability to use fine motor skills•Involve more delicate, smaller body movements•Require much practice•Show clear developmental pattern

•Strongly affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Handedness

How do preschoolers decide which hand to use?•Early preference for some young infants

•Preference shown by many by end of preschool years

•No scientific basis of myths that suggest there is something with being left-handed•(I was taught left handedness was caused by minimal brain damage probably at birth – really!)•Sinister – evil, untrustworthy, even criminal.•Lots of lefty kids were emotionally and physically harmed

Handedness

• 90% of western population right handed• More boys left-handed• Brains of left-handed people are shaped differently than

those of right-handed people.• Right-handers usually have asymmetric brains; their left

cerebral hemispheres tend to be larger than their right hemispheres.

• Broca's and Wernicke's areas, two regions involved with language, are likely to be much larger in the left hemisphere than in the right.

• left-handers generally have more symmetrical brains, with similarly sized language centers in each hemisphere.

Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development

Vaccination Schedule

Let's take a quick look at Table 7-1 for current vaccination schedule recommendations

Vaccination Schedule

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

PIAGET- A Quick Review

Knowledge is product of direct motor behavior•All children pass through series of stages

– Universal– Fixed order

•Preoperational Stage lasts from age of two years until around seven years

What does Piaget tell us?

• Quantity and quality of knowledge changes

• Focus on change in children's understanding

Preoperational Thinking

Preoperational Stage 2-7•Characterized by symbolic thinking

• mental reasoning and use of concepts increase•Still not capable of operations

• organized, formal, logical mental processes that characterize school age children.

•Use of operations appear at end of stage

Relationship Between Language and Thought

Symbolic function:•Ability to use symbols, words, or object to represent something that is not physically present

Language allows preschoolers to:•Represent actions symbolically•Think beyond present to future•Consider several possibilities at same time

Centration: What You See Is What You Think

Centration

The process of concentrating on one aspect of a stimuli & ignoring others•Is key element and limitation of preschool thinking

•Involves inability to consider all available information

•Dominated by superficial, obvious elements within sight

•Clearly preschoolers should not be witnesses in court

Which Row Contains More Buttons?

When preschoolers are shown these two rows and asked which row has more buttons, they usually respond that the lower row of buttons contains more because it looks longer.

They answer in this way even though they know quite well that 10 isgreater than 8.

Do you think preschoolers can be taught to answer correctly?

Common Tests of Children's Understanding of the Principle of Conservation

Why is a sense of conservation important?

Few adults do this really well

About half or so adults do this well

Some adults have problems

Incomplete Understanding of Transformation

Preoperational children•Unable to envision successive transformations•Ignore middle steps

Figure 7-10 The Falling PencilChildren in Piaget's preoperational stage do not understand that as a pencil falls from the upright to the horizontal position it moves through a series of intermediary steps. Instead, they think that there are no intermediate steps in the change from the upright to horizontal position.

My First Grade teacherDidn’t understand this.

Transformation

• The process in which one state is changed into another. • Adults know that if a pencil that is held upright is allowed

to fall down, it passes through a series of successive stages until it reaches its final, horizontal resting spot.

• In contrast, children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or recall the successive transformations that the pencil followed in moving from the upright to the horizontal position. If asked to reproduce the sequence in a drawing, they draw the pencil upright and lying down, with nothing in between. Basically, they ignore the intermediate steps.

Egocentrism

• Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from their own

• Egocentric thought takes two forms– Lack of awareness that others see things from a

different physical perspective– Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts,

feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs

Some adults are stuck in the Preoperational Stage. This is how you identify them

Egocentrism Consequences

• Egocentrism lies at heart of several types of behavior during the preoperational period.

• Preschoolers may talk to themselves, even in the presence of others, and at times they simply ignore what others are telling them.

• Such behavior illustrates the egocentric nature of preoperational children's thinking: the lack of awareness that their behavior acts as a trigger to others’ reactions and responses.

• Consequently, a considerable amount of preschooler verbal behavior has no social motivation but is meant for the preschoolers’ own consumption.

Emergence of Intuitive Thought

• use of primitive reasoning and avid acquisition of world knowledge

• Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide variety of questions sought

• Often act as authorities on particular topics feeling certain that they have the correct—and final—word on an issue.

• Leads preschoolers to believe that they know answers to all kinds of questions, but there is little or no logical basis for this confidence

Late Stages of Intuitive Thought

• Slowly certain qualities prepare children for more sophisticated forms of reasoning

• Begin to understand the notion of functionality –the idea that actions, events, and outcomes are related to one another in fixed patterns.

• Begin to show an awareness of the concept of identitythe understanding that certain things stay the same, regardless of changes in shape, size, and appearance.

•

Evaluating Piaget's Approach

Positive•Masterful observer•Useful way to consider progressive advances in child cognition

Negative•More recent experimental work suggests higher child performance on tasks involving conservation, reversibility, transformation, and ability to count•Contentions about continuity of development as theorized in Piaget's stages

INFORMATION PROCESSING APPOACHES TO COGNITVE DEVELOPMENT

Focus of Approaches

• Changes in kinds of “mental programs” that children use when approaching problems

• Changes analogous to way computer program becomes more sophisticated as a programmer modifies it on basis of experience

Often Used Research Approaches: Understanding Numbers

Gelman suggests that preschoolers•Follow a number of principles in their counting•May demonstrate a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of numbers, although their understanding is not totally precise

1, 2, 3, 7…11-T-hundred!

How can we tell when a preschooler knows how to count?

•Preschoolers follow a number of principles in their counting. They know they should

– assign just one number to each item – each item should be counted only once.

Understanding is not totally precise.

By age 4, most are able to carry out simple addition and subtraction problems by counting and they are able to compare different quantities quite successfully.

You must remember this…maybe!

• Recollections of events are sometimes, but not always, accurate – Typically accurate responses to open-ended questions – Partly determined by how soon memories are assessed – Affected by cultural factors

• Autobiographical memorymemory of particular events from one's own life, • Largely inaccurate before age 3• Not all last into later life

• Are cultural differences• Chinese: social roles & unspecific • US: Emotional & specific events

Why are some preschool memories inaccurate?

• Preschoolers’ memories of familiar events often organized in scripts– Scripts are broad representations in memory of

events and the order in which they occur.

• Scripts become more elaborate with age

• Frequently repeated events meld into scripts

• Particular instances of scripted event are recalled with less accuracy than those that are unscripted in memory

Any other causes of inaccuracies?

• Difficulty describing certain kinds of information, such as complex causal relationships, may oversimplify recollections

• Repetition of common events melded togetherblurring details

Information Processing Summary

• cognitive development consists of gradual improvements in the ways people perceive, understand, and remember information.

• With age and practice, preschoolers process information more efficiently and with greater sophistication, and they are able to handle increasingly complex problems.

Information Processing Criticism

• Focus on single, individual cognitive Processes– Leaves out important factors like social & cultural – Loses the forest for the trees– Never provides a broad comprehensive picture/theory

And the response is…

• Information processing model of cognitive development has the advantage – of being precisely stated – capable of leading to testable hypotheses.

• far more research supporting their approach than there is for alternative theories of cognitive development.

• In short, they suggest that their approach provides a more accurate account than any other.

• Of course

Information Processing in Perspective

Vygotsky's View of Cognitive Development

• Cognition result of social interactions in which children learn through guided participation

• Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own because of assistance that adult and peer partners provide – present new ways of doing things– provide assistance, instruction, and motivation.

Culture and Gender Influences

• Nature of the partnership between developing children and adults and peers determined largely by cultural and societal factors

• Societal expectations about gender play role in how children come to understand world

Zone of Proximal Development

• Cognition increases through exposure to information that is new enough to be intriguing, but not too difficult

• Greater improvement with help = greater increases in zone of proximal development

• Zone of proximal development is the level at which a child can almost, but not fully, perform a task independently, but can do so with the assistance of someone more competent.

• When appropriate instruction is offered within the zone of proximal development, children are able to increase their understanding and master new tasks.

Scaffolding

• Support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth

• Aids in development of overall cognitive abilities

• This lead me, albeit somewhat indirectly, to the realization that all humans are wired up to be teachers.

• This reflexive behavior is reinforced in childhood and again in parenting.

• Note that “funny feeling” you get when you see someone doing something wrong or awkwardly – it’s a reflex.

Cultural Tools

Actual, physical items or intellectual and conceptual framework for solving problems•Language

•Alphabetical and numbering schemes

•Mathematical and scientific systems

•Religious systems•Toys•Access to adult tools (an axe or a bike for example)

Assessing Vygotsky's Perspective

Broad concepts such as the zone of proximal development are not precise and they do not always lend themselves to experimental tests.

GROWTH OF LANGUAGE AND LEARNING

Language Development

During preschool years:•Sentence length increases at a steady pace

•Syntax doubles each month

•Enormous leaps in number of words used through fast mapping•Language blooms so rapidly between the late twos and the mid-threes that researchers have yet to understand the exact pattern. •Syntax (ways in which children at this age combine words and phrases to form sentences) improves.

What is fast mapping?

New words are associated with their meaning after only brief encounter•By age 6, the average child has a vocabulary of around 14,000 words

•Vocabulary acquired at rate of nearly one new word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day

Appropriate Formation of Words

Even though no preschooler—like the rest of us—is likely to have ever before encountered a wug, preschoolers are able to produce the appropriate word to fill in the blank (which, for the record, is wugs).

(Source: WORD, Journal of the International Linguistic Association)

Preschool Language on the Grow

• By age 3, Use plurals and possessive forms of nouns

• Employ the past tense

• Use articles

• Ask, and answer, complex questions

• Extend appropriate formation of words to new words

Learning what is not said…

• Preschoolers also learn what cannot be said as they acquire principles of grammar

• Although they still make frequent mistakes, 3-year-olds follow principles of grammar most of time and are correct in their grammatical constructions more than 90 percent of time

• Grammar is the system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed

Do you ever talk to yourself?

What I learned in grad school about talking to yourself:It’s OK to…

Private Speech

• Private speech, originally termed egocentric speech (Vygotsky, 1962/ 1934), is speech that is self-directed and used for the purpose of emotional, psychological, and behavioral regulation.

• It is traditionally studied in children because • private speech is externally voiced until around age 8• after which point it becomes internalized

• (Diaz & Lowe, 1987).

Private Speech in older Kids & Adults

• Humans continue to use private speech through adolescence and into adulthood [as a means of self-regulation ?] (John-Steiner, 1992).

• Researchers distinguish between three kinds of private speech (Berk, 1986): • task-irrelevant

(thinking about what to cook for dinner)• task-relevant, non-facilitative

(thinking about how frustrating the task at hand is);• task-relevant, facilitative

(figuring out how to best solve a problem).

Private Speech in Kids

• In children, the 3 kinds of private speech predict• performance on tasks • emotional adjustment• reactions to challenging situations

• (Manning, White, & Daugherty, 1994).

I’m not talking to YOU…

Private Speech of Children•Speech by children that is spoken and directed to themselves

– Performs important function. – Serves to try out ideas, acting as sounding board– Facilitates children's thinking and helps them control

their behavior – Serves an important social function

What about practical communication?

Pragmatics •Relates to communicating effectively and appropriately with others •Helps children to understand the basics of conversations

– Turn-taking– Sticking to a topic– What should and should not be said, according to the

conventions of society– Use of different language in various settings

Social Speech

Before the age of 3:•Speak only for their own entertainment•Apparently unaware if anyone else can understand

During preschool years:•Begin to direct their speech to others•Want others to listen•Become frustrated when they cannot make themselves understood•Begin to adapt their speech to others through pragmatics

Piaget & Speech

• Piaget contended that most speech during the preoperational period was egocentric:

• Preschoolers were seen as taking little account of the effect their speech was having on others.

• However, more recent experimental evidence suggests that children are somewhat more adept in taking others into account than Piaget initially suggested.

Poverty and Language Development

Heard home language has profound implications for future cognitive success

•Hart and Todd Risley (1995) landmark study

– Affluence of the parents = more speech to children.– More affluence => more speech

– Parents professionals spent almost twice as much time interacting as parents on welfare each hour

– By age 4, children in families that received welfare assistance exposed to 13 million fewer words

– Language used home differed among various types of families.

– Welfare children hear more prohibitions (“no” or “stop”) twice as frequently as those in professional families

Different Language Exposure

What do these findings suggest?

• Cannot be interpreted in terms of cause-and-effect• But clearly suggest importance of early exposure to

language.• Intervention programs

– Are they a substitute?– Do they work?

• Consequences related to poverty & family income for– children's general cognitive development – behavior

Book Says

• Poverty not only reduces the educational resources available to children• How?• Doesn’t public education ensure equality?

• Poverty has such negative effects on parents that it limits the psychological support they can provide their families. • Or does parent’s behavior lead to poverty?

• Consequences of poverty are severe and they linger.

Learning from the Media

Television

• Potent and widespread stimuli• Average preschooler watches > 21 hours of TV a week• > 1/3 of households with children 2 to 7 years of age say

that television is on “most of the time” in their homes• Preschoolers spend three-quarters of an hour reading on

the average day• Where is effects of poverty?

Computers

• Becoming influential in lives of preschoolers• 70% of preschoolers between the ages of four and six

have used a computer• 25% of them use one every day for an average of an

hour a day, and the majority use it by themselves. • With help from their parents, almost one-fifth have sent

e-mail • Too early to know effects of computer usage—and other

new media such as video games—on preschoolers• Where is effects of poverty?

Saying No to the Show

American Academy of Pediatrics•Recommends that exposure to television should be limited

• Base on what?

•Suggests that until age of 2, children watch no television, and after that age, no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming each day

• Based on what?

What are the limits of preschoolers’ “television literacy”?

Preschool children •Often do not fully understand plots (esp. longer shows)•Unable to recall significant story details •Make limited and often erroneous inferences about motivations of characters•Difficulty separating fantasy from reality•Not able to critically understand and evaluate advertising messages

Is Big Bird a Good Bird?

Sesame Street is the most popular educational program for children in the United States•Child viewers

– Have significantly larger vocabularies – Read more books– Perform significantly higher on several measures of verbal

and mathematics ability at ages 6 and 7 • Almost half of all US preschoolers watch • Broadcast

• in almost 100 different countries • in 13 foreign languages

• Child viewers have significantly larger vocabularies than those who watched other programs or those who watched little television

Or a Bad Bird?

• Frenzied pace at which different scenes are shown makes viewers less receptive to traditional forms of teaching (oopse)

• BUT…careful evaluations of program find no evidence that viewing Sesame Street leads to declines in enjoyment of traditional schooling

•So…would you let your young child watch?

Why or why not?What programs did you watch as a child?

Care Outside the Home

107%

Taking the pre out of preschool

• Increasing number of children in out-of-home care• Some benefits to educational activities before formal

schooling– Cognitive and social benefits from high quality

preschool experiences– Careful! Evaluations based on expected outcomes

Varieties of Early Education

• Child care centers• Family child care programs• Preschools

– Montessori– Reggio Emilia

• School-age child care

How effective are early education programs?

Children in EE programs •Are more verbally fluent, show memory and comprehension advantages, and achieve higher IQ scores than at-home children•Are more self-confident, independent, and knowledgeable about social world in which they live than those who do not participate •Show intellectual development that at least matches that of children at home, and often is better.•Other studies find that early and long-term participation in child care is particularly helpful for children from impoverished home environments or who are otherwise at risk.

Why then do nearly all studies show no detectable effect of Head Start by 3rd or 4th grade?

Any downside?

Not all outcomes of outside-the-home care are positive•Children in child care:

– Are found to be less polite, less compliant, less respectful of adults, and sometimes more competitive and aggressive than their peers

– Have a slightly higher likelihood of being disruptive in class extending through the sixth grade (when spending 10+ weeks)

– Poor programs actually may harm children

Much higher rates of injury and illness

What makes a good program great?

Why does the US lag behind?

No coordinated national policy on preschool education•Decisions about education have traditionally been left to states and local school districts

•No tradition of teaching preschoolers

•Status of preschools in United States is traditionally low

What do you know about Head Start?

Does Head Start Truly Provide a Head Start?

• HS graduates show IQ gains, but these increase do not last

• HS participants are better prepared for future schooling and less likely to be in special education classes or be retained

• HS graduates show modest gains in academic performance at the end of high school

Are We Pushing Children Too Hard and Too Fast?

Elkind•U.S. society tends to push children so rapidly that stress and pressure occurs at a young age

•Academic success largely dependent on factors that parents cannot control (inherited abilities and rate of maturation)

•Children require developmentally appropriate education practice

Why then do we constantly hear about how poorly American kids perform compared to fording kids?

Once Upon a Time

Establishing a routine of reading with children before the age of two seems to lay the groundwork for enhanced language development•Self-reinforcing relationship between reading and language established

•Exposure to print media helps develop variety of literacy related outcomes

•Language, reading, and spelling abilities throughout preschool and childhood years and beyond are positively impacted

Stuck in the Past?

• Are our educators testing for skills that are old fashioned?• Why aren’t Googling skills tested?• Do adults actually read anymore?• What jobs require workers to read?• What KIND of reading is done?• Requiring kids to type may also be out of date.• Like military planners preparing for the previous war I

suspect educators are teaching for the previous generation’s society and jobs.

• Never-the-less we seem to muddle on.