Ok, seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Who the hell goes across the country compiling a list of the top ten nursery schools? I'm not convinced that such ratings are useful for universities, never mind high schools or lower tiers of education. The concept of a top-ten list of preschools just blows my mind.
(I still think it's great that PG is contributing to this in such a unique fashion, though.)
It's probably not the ideal thread, but this pushed me over the edge on education.
The current education system is a dire sad long term problem that is writing off a large portion of society. I believe something more sensitive and human can grow out of it.
Ken Robinson talks super lucidly about the destruction of creativity in children and the wider problems in schooling. That's great and the problem is now quite well defined. But we now need enlightened individuals to step up with solutions. We need to recognise it's the core problem humanity faces. We can't solve hard problems like energy and environmental degradation without first tackling the social problems perpetuated by Victorian schooling.
Someone with a bunch of cash needs to step up and help get the ball rolling.
- Define the desired outcome (ie. providing space and nurturing for the expression of individual talent)
- Pick the best parts of the existing schooling methods/models (Victorian / Steiner / Montessori / Summerhill / Home Schooling)
- Roll it out. Iterate. Recognise that educational needs are unique and change constantly.
- People will come. I'm a parent of three kids. Almost all our friends (especially teachers!) would run at something - if relatively large scale and supported.
Contact me if interested - maybe it's a startup! I'm really surprised there isn't more concerted action in this space.
I agree that something should be done to improve education, but am not convinced by this proposal.
We want creative adults. The solution is not simply to "nurture expression" in children. Most of the creative output of world history came from adults who were schooled rigorously in the techniques of their field.
Having creative adult mathematicians relies on developing skills and intuitions through rigorous training. You cannot "nurture" a child to do this.
Unsurprisingly, then, having brilliantly creative composers, painters, politicians and business professionals also requires difficult training first.
Our current educational system seems to over-emphasize the motions of developing analytical skills (without necessarily the rigor of showing that your analysis is right) and offers no opportunities to develop spatial skills. I don't mean the touchy-feely "modes of learning," I mean seriously being able to look in front of you and accurately discern the spatial relationships of the objects you see.
So my suggestion would be:
- Arts education beginning with basic drawing courses and branching out into other media. Studying art history to see how artists expressed themselves through styles of iconography, realism, expressionism, etc.
But seriously, there are schools that do roughly what we are both talking about, and the key idea at all of them is to avoid this idea of a messianic administrator to lead them. At really good schools, administrators are just teachers of teachers (like Plato) and the teachers have the full power to do what they need.
I think you're reading something 'go softly' into my comment that is not intentionally present.
I'm all for rigorous and/or difficult training, there's nowhere near enough of that. Nurture does not imply wishy washy formless ness.
This is not about left vs right, liberal vs conservative. That needs looking beyond now, I think many are ready to move on from that now.
Creativity is not just drawing pictures. Creativity is physics, maths engineering, language. It's the spark of self expression and contribution, rather than dead reproduction.
I watched a ted talk recently and while I don't recall it containing any data about the long term effects I was very impressed by the method/process used.
Tangent: I don't know anything about early childhood education, but now I'm interested. (Also, I'm not implying anything of your post; I agree that the rankings can get silly.) Is there any data to suggest that preschool is, in fact, less important than university? It's easy to scoff at the notion that pre-K and K are significant, but I'd guess that some high quality nurturing at this age might be the requisite experience for success. We call them the formative years for a reason, right?
The only paper I've read on this (and I unfortunately can't find it) suggested that students who go to pre-school, as opposed to those who go straight to kindergarten, have a higher rate of behavioral problems. Of course, that's for ALL pre-schools.
The only other information I have is that a lot of these nurseries use tests (like "put the block in the right hole") as part of their admittance exams, and high performance those tests show absolutely no correlation with later success. (Obviously kids who do very poorly might have other issues) That's from NutureShock.
And finally, in New York City these "top" nursery schools are considered feeder schools to the "top" elementary schools, and so on, so regardless of whether the kids in them have been better educated, they might gain an admission advantage to private high schools and consequently university. See the movie "Nursery University." (That's not actually a recommendation, it was completely painful.)
I'm sure early education is very important, yes. But ranking universities is much easier than ranking preschools, for the simple reason that universities are big and few in number while preschools are small and plentiful.
If you ever take your child to a good pre-K school (not a daycare) you will quickly learn it is really adult education- teaching the parents to be better parents, in a hands-on-environment with the kid around.
High-quality nurturing can only be done by the parents (generally speaking).
Actually I think most research shows that the number one influence in the formative years is the state of the household, and by that I mean the family dynamics and the quality of the home and neighbourhood that the child spends his/her time.
My wife is a Kindergarten teacher who has taught in one of the "roughest" cities in the country as well as "middle class suburbia". We've had many conversations about these topics over the years. I don't want to run on forever about this, but I'll drop a few relevant points I've learned over the years.
1) The comment I replied to above is pretty accurate, especially for younger children. The parents and environment the child is in are the largest influence on their academic success. If the culture of the area is not about education and success in learning, you've got a long uphill battle.
Honestly, you could pump all the money in the world into the worst high school in the country and it won't make a lick of difference if the students don't want to learn. Upping the school's finances won't change the outcomes on the level people are looking for. To get those kinds of results you need to change the culture and community around education. However, if a school/community is simply lacking resources, then it could make a huge difference.
2) Sending your child to Pre-K DOES better prepare them for Kindergarten and school in general. How much a difference one could truly make over another is not something I've ever actually asked my wife. Dinner conversation for tonight :-). I would also love to see the paper araneae had read and run that by her as well.
Education wise Pre-K will help your child with basics - colors, shapes, letters and numbers. However, the biggest thing Pre-K will do is help your child learn to socialize and interact with people their own age in a classroom setting. This doesn't sound like much, but it is actually a big deal.
3) Something not often thought about is WHEN to send your child to Kindergarten. Many schools have policies like "If your child will be 5 years old by December 31st", which may give you a choice. It is NOT always best to send your child to Kindergarten as soon as they are eligible to attend. If your child is ready, by all means send them. But if they're truly not ready, sending them is really not going to help them.
You're both off-topic and dead wrong. Don't you know there are tons of successful people who taught themselves everything from basic literacy to advanced sciences later in their life? Not even talking about "late bloomers", rather, people who lived illiterate well into their teens and twenties. How do you explain this ability to learn?
They're outliers? There are physical realities that happen to your brain that make it more difficult to learn as you get older. Now, I certainly recognize that many aspects of the current education system are overblown. But you're going to have a difficult time convincing me preschool is as dispensable as college.
> There are physical realities that happen to your brain that make it more difficult to learn as you get older.
Only if you believe them. Sure, everything gets harder as you get older, including the 'basics' (such as walking). But for some learning was never easy, always hard work. The difference age adds to that is just another hurdle to overcome.
The big trick is to never stop learning.
> Now, I certainly recognize that many aspects of the current education system are overblown. But you're going to have a difficult time convincing me preschool is as dispensable as college.
Attitude is the one thing that is in-dispensable when it comes to learning, all else - including age - can be overcome.
Yup, not to mention that there is more value in 'How to win friends and influence people' than in most 4 year degrees.
Friends of mine joined the accounting club at their university because it had the best hockey pool.
So they end up at the end of the year invited to some wine and cheese thing where the guys from KPMG, et al, are talent scouting. Being the accounting club they are hanging out with a bunch of wall flowers. Started chatting with the guys from KPMG and at the end of the event they all have job offers, so my friend finally says we'd love to accept but we're english majors, they say, don't worry, if you really need to learn accounting we'll pay you to go take it.
Kudos for PG opening another channel for people to talk to a guru. Even if it's a purchased avenue, that can't hurt in the long run.
But on ranking preschools...? That seems to be a stretch. All you parents out there, feel free to correct me. But my vague recollection of preschool consists of running around a playground, finger painting, and a nap.
okeyyyyy.... if you want to be reasonable try compiling a list of successful people who went to a top ten/100/1000 pre-school. If the number is significant then we will agree if not then we will not.
(Btw, I don't think such a list would exist as it really doesn't matter.)
You think that's bad? A year of daycare in NYC for a 1 year old costs about $24K. What's sad is the childcare FSA is indexed to the cost of living (it's only 5K).
Ok, seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Who the hell goes across the country compiling a list of the top ten nursery schools? I'm not convinced that such ratings are useful for universities, never mind high schools or lower tiers of education. The concept of a top-ten list of preschools just blows my mind.
(I still think it's great that PG is contributing to this in such a unique fashion, though.)