Thanks to Jim Curran for flagging up this excellent article in the 'American Educator' from 2006 and, of course, which remains totally topical (see the Reading Reform Foundation message forum at
www.rrf.org.uk for many topical threads):
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducato ... Neuman.pdf
How We Neglect Knowledge— and Why
By Susan B. Neuman
Several years ago, in collaboration with Kathy Roskos, I was studying the ef- fects of a literacy-related activity that made use of a pretend “office” in a Head Start center (Neuman and Roskos, 1993). Using a task developed by Lomax and McGee (1987), I asked 4-year-old Terrell to identify several objects and to describe their use.
This brings to mind the scenario in England as it has evolved over the years about 'learning through play' and 'following children's interests' - fine if the children already have rich language and interests which they bring into the early years settings from their home environments - but not so fine when children have impoverished language and home-experiences.
In England, we went through a 'post-its' culture in our early years settings - by this I mean that adults were trained to use 'post-it' notes to provide evidence of their observations for each child in the various domains. This became a ludicrous, unnecessary (in my view), burdensome requirement and you were more likely to see the adults in an early years setting holding their clip boards taking notes whilst watching the children rather than interacting with the children themselves.
Our early years settings need to at least match the language-rich, knowledge-rich homes when we have the privilege of looking after other people's children - or we need to make up for the shortfall of language and experiences within our early years settings.
I was long-since concerned in England when the culture and ethos in England became dominated by formal observations and recording of children's activities - at the expense, it seemed to me, of putting in lots of rich experience and language.
My overarching view is that of course children need masses of play opportunities - but that they also need masses of adult input based on specific topics and themes and general language and conversations to model language.
Ironically, whilst I, and people with similar views to me, protested vociferously about the post-its culture in England, some early years professionals enjoyed the extra sense of 'professionalism' that this appeared to bring to the early years - and thrived on this regime.
It just goes to show that we are all different in our interpretation of our provision - and in the interpretation of the expectations placed upon us by different people in authority.
I would suggest that children's play is enriched by the level of language and knowledge - and skills - that we bring to children explicitly.
