Wanda London
March 17, 2015
Assignment 4-04 early childhood education
AC1500230

Teachers in the primary grades have known for some time that children are entering school lacking the experiences upon which our educational expectations are built. We have assumed that children have spent their first years engaged in play at home but observation of four and five year olds in classrooms make it clear that many are unfamiliar with toys as basic as blocks. While leaders in the education field have finally recognized that children are starting school with deficits in language development, in fact, the deficits extend to virtually all areas of development including play. Societal changes are evident as many urban children are not permitted to play outdoors due to the violence in their neighborhoods. Further, parents respond to the techno-toy industry by investing in Nintendo instead of old-fashioned toys such as blocks. Children describe spending their time watching T.V. and playing video games. They are passive receivers of fleeting images on a screen which are not of their own creation. A vast majority of Kindergartners have not used scissors or crayons before entering school. As a result, they do not bring a repertoire of insights, a visual bank, to school built on personal experiences gained through play with objects and in places imagined or real. Children come to urban schools in observable states of shock, veterans of the war of poverty and violence. Ideally, the classroom becomes a haven of hope where we have a brief opportunity to restore the childhood lost.
Current discussions at the federal level regarding educational reform emphasize the need to focus on early childhood issues. However, not all administrators or teachers take these issues seriously nor do they subscribe to developmental theory which promotes the value of learning through play. However, this