Welcome Please help yourself to some refreshments and

Welcome! Please help yourself to some refreshments and take a seat with your group

Today’s Lesson 2: 00 pm Welcome and Introduction 2: 10 pm Presentation of Material 2: 20 pm Small Group Discussions 2: 30 pm Presentation of Material 2: 40 pm Small Group Discussions 2: 55 pm Class Discussion 3: 05 pm Post-Assessment Meet the team and the topic History and theories Practical reality When should school start? To be completed by 3: 10 pm

Seminar Goals By the end of this seminar, participants are expected to ● Be able to identify the most salient pros and cons of government programs for young children ● Have used both theoretical and practical applications of government involvement in early childhood development within group discussions ● Produce an answer to the question, “When should school start? ” using the knowledge obtained during the Seminar

History ● Early ideas of child development ● Noah Webster and nationalism in education ● “As children learn the standard American language, they will also learn to think, believe, and act as Americans” ● Horace Man and the Common School ● Public, common schooling as an instrument of the American republic ● Mass industrial production ● Late 19 th century, some states had mandatory attendance laws ● Decline in academic performance ● Head Start program enacted in 1965 ● School Readiness Act, 1997

Theories and Theorists ● Montessori ● Piaget ● Both divided child development into stages ● Children develop/understand things differently than adults

Montessori ●Sensitive Periods Piaget ●Sensorimotor (0 -2 years) ● Order (0 -3 years) ●Preoperational (2 -7 years) ● Details (1 -2 years) ●Concrete Operational (7 -11 ● Hands (18 months-3 years) ● Walking ● Language years) ●Formal Operational (11 years- adulthood) ●Accommodation ●Assimilation

Montessori’s Sensitive Periods

Head Start Act: 1965, 1998, 2007 ● (1) in a learning environment that supports children’s growth in language, literacy, mathematics, science, social and emotional functioning, creative arts, physical skills, and approaches to learning. ● (2) through the provision to low-income children and their families of health, educational, nutritional, social, and other services that are determined, based on family needs assessments, to be necessary.

School Readiness Act: 1997 A state-funded initiative administered by the Department of Education that develops a network of school readiness programs to: ● Significantly increase the number of spaces in accredited and/or approved programs for young children to provide access to high quality school readiness programs; ● Significantly increase the number of full-day, full-year spaces to meet family needs; and ● Shared cost for school readiness and child-care programs among the state and its various agencies, the communities and families.

Group Discussion Do you think theories of child development are taken into account when school-related legislation is passed? Are educational specialists involved in the creation of these acts?

Pros of Early Childhood Education ● Economic Benefits ● Good ECE programs positively impact the child’s cognitive and social development. ● Higher Graduation Rate ● Smaller child/teacher ratio offers best results ● Young Adult outcomes from the Abecedarian Project: ● Starting children in Preschool vs. Kindergarten ● MELF (Minnesota Early Learning Foundation): ● Trying to find the best option for children to advance in learning

Cons of Early Childhood Education Dr. Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, states that although “the conventional wisdom is that naturally intelligent children should have their intellect fed and stimulated at a young age, so they are not held back, " he believes that “young children’s run-away intellect actually needs to be slowed down in the early years if they are not to risk growing up in an intellectually unbalanced way, with possible life-long negative health effects. ”

Cons of Early Childhood Education ● Prof Howard Friedman, a psychologist at the University of California, analyzed the progress of "early starters" (4 and 5 year olds) over 80 years and found that “early school entry was associated with less educational attainment, worse midlife adjustment and, most importantly, increased mortality risk. ” ● A 2005 study from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class than other kids.

Group Discussion Given the data arguing for and against early education, which side do you believe to have more substantial evidence? Does ECE provide economic benefits, or does it negatively effect the health and well-being of children, especially intelligent ones?

When should school start?