[xmca] Playing to Learn

["Peter Smagorinsky" <smago@uga.edu>]

MY Times Op-Ed Contributor

Playing to Learn 

o 

 

By SUSAN ENGEL

Published: February 1, 2010 

New Marlborough, Mass.

THE Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the
success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on
those assessments. It's great that the administration is trying to undertake
reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to
overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach - and the
testing that is driving it - is completely at odds with what scientists
understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and
has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike. 

In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators
should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science:
developmental precursors don't always resemble the skill to which they are
leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help
children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during
toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school
is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking
and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on. 

So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave
elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story
and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply
numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an
opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage
in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students
mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in
high school and college.

Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry
list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was
devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.

In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories
read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and
reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being
immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment;
the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is
given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more
time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become
good readers. 

Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual
meaning to them - stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons,
letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and
to communicate, rather than to get a good grade. 

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of
time each day practicing computation - adding, subtracting, multiplying and
dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to
turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science:
devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting
things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities
children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way. 

What they shouldn't do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical
formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter
much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting
experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don't
swallow it. 

Along the way, teachers should spend time each day having sustained
conversations with small groups of children. Such conversations give
children a chance to support their views with evidence, change their minds
and use questions as a way to learn more. 

During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has
shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the
material or activity they are learning. Play - from building contraptions to
enacting stories to inventing games - can allow children to satisfy their
curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also
help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable
hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else's perspective and
thinking of alternate solutions.

A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to
collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or
reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to
one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at
the corners of the day.

The reforms suggested by the administration on Monday have the potential to
help liberate our schools. But they can only do so much. Our success depends
on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing,
computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration - a
curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.

Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the
teaching program at Williams College.

 

Letters

Using Talk and Play to Develop Minds 

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Published: February 7, 2010 

To the Editor:

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Eleanor Rudge

Re "
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02engel.html?scp=1&sq=playing%20t
o%20learn&st=cse> Playing to Learn," by Susan Engel (Op-Ed, Feb. 2):

I agree that our schools should try to develop our children's ability to use
their minds constructively rather than trying to fill those minds with facts
they will never use. But there's a problem. 

It's hard to test thinking skills, and education needs tests. Without them,
it cannot be managed. Teachers cannot tell how well students are doing.
Principals cannot tell how well teachers are doing. And governments cannot
tell how well schools are doing. 

So, until we develop good tests to measure student thinking skills, our
schools will probably continue to try to fill their students' memories with
facts. Perhaps the Department of Education could do some constructive
thinking about that. Peter Kugel

Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 2, 2010

.

To the Editor: 

"Playing to Learn" is simply one of the best opinion articles ever to appear
in The New York Times, at least during the 50-plus years I've been reading
it. It is smart, succinct, powerful and vitally important.

Anybody with authority over elementary school systems, classrooms or
children should commit to doing everything needed to put it into effect
without delay. Those in authority who don't agree should tell us why, with
substantive explanations, not excuses or fingerpointing. Penn Rhodeen

New Haven, Feb. 2, 2010

The writer, a lawyer, is a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center. 

.

To the Editor:

As a Bank Street College graduate, I agree with many of the points Susan
Engel makes in her essay, especially regarding play, literacy, children
constructing knowledge, and the importance of collaboration and cooperation.
But I fear that much is missing from her proposed curriculum. Her goals are
simply too few and too narrow.

Most important: social studies! Where is it?

In addition, in any mathematics curriculum, including early childhood,
children are capable of learning much more than the four basic operations.
Where are geometry and early algebra? What about logic, measurement and
estimation?

Yes, let us make elementary education less tedious and more engaging, but
there is no need to constrict the curriculum as drastically as this.

Deborah Dunnell

Alstead, N.H., Feb. 2, 2010

The writer is a retired early childhood educator.

.

To the Editor:

As the debate about education reform rages on, I appreciate Susan Engel's
vision. But I do see some problems with her processes and prescriptions.

A main challenge we face is preparing students for their future. That future
includes an increasingly technological workplace where science, technology,
engineering and math opportunities will predominate.

The short shrift given math in Ms. Engel's schema is emblematic of why the
United States is lagging behind many countries in math and so many
technology jobs are leaving this country.

Curriculum is something that should be developed by teachers, not imposed on
them. No one knows a student's needs better than his or her teacher. 

What should be determined from on high is the standards - in other words,
what students should know and be able to do. Leave it to the teachers to
figure out how to get there. Sam Jones

Westport, Conn., Feb. 3, 2010

The writer is a math teacher.

.

To the Editor:

I agree with Susan Engel's suggestion that elementary school curriculums
should emphasize, among other things, class discussion and verbal
expression. Far too often teachers and administrators regard their primary
task as managing children as a group, rather than engaging them
intellectually as individuals.

The results for intelligent children often include chronic boredom and
disdain for the very adults who vaunt their authority.

Educators of young children frequently underestimate, and sometimes seem to
fear, their own students' critical and analytical faculties.

Gregory J. Shibley

North Palm Beach, Fla., Feb. 2, 2010

.

To the Editor:

As an educator and the mother of a child in her final year of elementary
school, I found Susan Engel's essay to be powerful and insightful. 

Another crucial area of play about which too many schools forget is time at
home. Despite solid research showing that homework in elementary school,
apart from reading, offers no benefits and can, in fact, be detrimental,
children arrive home exhausted and with too much homework.

They are left with little time to partake in nonacademic activities that are
also necessary for their development, much less what we all need and no
child should be without: relaxation.

Jennifer Trachtenberg

Wynnewood, Pa., Feb. 2, 2010

The writer is a high school guidance counselor.

.

To the Editor:

In "Playing to Learn," Susan Engel imagines her ideal third-grade class, in
which students spend lots of time reading, writing and playing, and a little
time on math. As a third-grade teacher for the past 10 years, I agree that
third graders certainly need all of these experiences.

But nowhere does Ms. Engel acknowledge that children universally crave
learning about something - whether it's sharks, World War II, China, fossils
or baseball.

Children want and need knowledge of the world they live in, and not just
skills.

Miriam Sicherman

Brooklyn, Feb. 2, 2010

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