Are you concerned about current efforts to force academic standards onto little children? Are you concerned about the movement to stamp out play? Do you think that little children should experience childhood before they are subjected to the academic treadmill? Do you think that school can and should be more than a boring progression of test prep and testing?
If so, you will enjoy the Toolkit prepared by a prestigious group of early childhood educators called “Defending the Early Years.”
Defending is the right word these days when the nation’s highest policymakers seem determined to turn little children into global competitors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recently received a report from a company that does market research for educational publishers. It was about the shift toward “major shift” toward academic standards and activities in preschool and kindergarten.
More tests for tots!
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THANK YOU so much for this wonderful link to the bibliography and the group, Defending the Early Years. I feel like I have found my tribe! Modeling creative behavior, as teachers and adults around our children has to be the emergency prescription until we dismantle this terrible top-down policy of squeezing our children’s creativity into test bubbles. THANK YOU!, Debra Frasier, Author & Illustrator
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Thanks for sharing!
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I agree.
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The most interesting thing to me is that if only these “know it alls”, those who have never been there, done that, would get out of the way they would get more of what they want or should want. Like generals in WWI who only knew that “go over the top” was the way to victory, no matter that nothing of consequence resulted except the slaughter of humongous amounts of men and material, that no military advantage was made they just kept on with their ignorant policies. Likewise those now usurping the role of true educators lead us to horrific consequences.
Those in the top CEO in similar kinds of positions think that because THEY have acquired money and fame THEY know what is best for everyone and keep in their myopic mindset despite whatever evidence is available to show the stupidity of their beliefs they press on with counterproductive policies.
People are NOT widgets. One trains animals. We should educate people and education encompasses far more than preparing for the kinds of jobs available at the present moment and which these CEOs think they at present need. People now need the skills and abilities to prepare for a world where they will work at many jobs.
AND
To succeed here, people need people skills, the ability to reason, humanistic living skills, all the things which humanities greatest thinkers have envisioned for the truly educated person over centuries.
As real educators know, this starts at a very young age. Self esteem, love of learning, etc are set in motion early on. Academic achievement is not the same thing as education.
Forgotten are things like integrity, virtue, and the abilities to reason, to seek out those glimmers of truth which require a lifetime of study. Education is a journey, a lifetime journey, not a destination which small minds, uneducated minds, cannot fathom.
The one thing worse than those who know not they know not, are those who know not that they know not but are absolutely certain they know.
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