Readying Schools For Young Children Polemics and Priorities
1994; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 76; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Early Childhood Education and Development
ResumoAs the nation increasingly focuses on making young children for school, attention must be given to making schools and communities for children. To do so, Ms. Kagan suggests, means confronting the polemics raised by past and present reform efforts, shedding ambivalence regarding the role of schooling in American society, and dealing head-on with action priorities. SOMETIMES things work. During the past five years, calls to increase support for young children and their families have reverberated through the White House, state houses, and houses on Main Street, USA. Presidents, politicians, and parents have been alerted to the importance of the early years. And folks seem to be catching on; there is hardly a legislator on Capitol Hill who doesn't know that, for every dollar invested in early intervention, x times the amount is saved later on; there are few parents who do not recognize the importance of the early years to their children's later development; and the first of our national goals for education focuses on young children: by the year 2000, all children will start to learn. More than simple recognition, however, real action on behalf of young children is taking place. In the public arena there have been significant (though not necessarily sufficient) increases in the number of children's services funded at federal and state levels.(1) Schools and districts throughout America have modified their programs to accommodate young children and their families.(2) In the private arena, families are seeking more information and better services for their children. Even in the for-profit sector, bookstores teem with volumes on to parent, toy stores feature scores of items dubbed developmentally appropriate, and, in late summer, gift shops stock So you're going to kindergarten greeting cards to mark children's entry to school. Efforts to meet the needs of young children have taken hold; the early care and education movement is on the march. As attention to young children intensifies and as calls to do more on their behalf mount, America has become concerned with readiness. Most of the attention has focused on what readiness means and on how to identify children deemed for school.(3) However, other perspectives on readiness warrant equally serious consideration, including the pivotal roles that schools and communities play in creating contexts that are for young children. To that end, my purpose in this article is to focus on the ready school -- and on the polemics and priorities that need to be considered as schools and their communities themselves for young children and their families. I suggest that a nascent early care and education movement exists and that, by harnessing that movement along with other current social movements and the lessons from the long history of reform, we can create ready In doing so, I acknowledge that the pressures being brought to bear by today's various social and education reform movements -- including the early care and education movement -- create formidable and often competing demands for scarce resources: time, money, personnel. And I tackle the serious question of how America can make its schools truly for young children in light of the multiple responsibilities placed on schools. I focus first on the nature of the early care and education movement and on several allied movements. Second, I place these reform movements within the historical context of efforts to change the schools. Third, I discuss the pros and cons of enhanced involvement in meeting the diverse needs of children and families -- offering priorities for thinking and action regarding how schools might reasonably accommodate society's challenges and, in so doing, themselves for young children. Current Reform Movements And the Polemics They Present A nascent early care and education movement. …
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