"Child-Garden" and special needs

In reading Charlotte Mason's Home Education, I was struck with how much her words about "Kindergarten" echoes Joan Goodman's critique of Early Intervention centers in the book When Slow is Fast Enough. After writing the post about my plans for Aidan's curriculum, I went and looked for the book on my parenting/educational shelf.

Here's a quote from Charlotte Mason:

Teachers mediate too much.––There are still, probably, Kindergartens where a great deal of twaddle is talked in song and story, where the teacher conceives that to make poems for the children herself and to compose tunes for their singing and to draw pictures for their admiration, is to fulfil her function to the uttermost. The children might echo Wordsworth's complaint of 'the world,' and say, the teacher is too much with us, late and soon. Everything is directed, expected, suggested. No other personality out of book, picture, or song, no, not even that of Nature herself, can get at the children without the mediation of the teacher. No room is left for spontaneity or personal initiation on their part.

(she goes on to say, talking about Helen Keller's teacher:)

Miss Sullivan had little love for psychologists and all their ways; would have no experiments; would not have her pupil treated as a phenomenon, but as a person.

"No," she says, "I don't want any more Kindergarten materials . . . I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think, whereas if the child is left to himself he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."

Compare this with When Slow is Fast Enough:

When children do poorly a teacher has several options: she can withdrawn her efforts, simplify the objective, or give more help. Teachers, eager to increase children's performances, react to failure by trying to "help" more. ..... The only way teachers can further help the inattentive, error-ridden child who has not responded to coaching or answer-shparing, is to dominate the action..... The problem of teacher play is that when there is no "take" there is also no continuity; the children look impressive only while the teacher dominates the play.

(An example): It is first thing in the morning, and a teacher invites a few children to play with her until the others arrive. She constructs a roadway that goes under a tunnel as it approaches the airport. She has one child zoom an airplane overhead, a second one move a car along the road. Then she has them crash. A third child is instructed to bring the ambulance and take the car passengers quickly to the hospital. The children play out their roles with lots of coaching, and the teacher is animated and enthusiastic; but when she leaves, all the children dispers.

There are many, many more similar examples in the book; all of them seemed almost designed to illustrated the points that Charlotte Mason and Anne Sullivan were making.

One more:

David is asked if an apple is round or squre. He responds, "Apple gives us A," and Austin chimes in, "Apple juice is good for you." Neither child has absorbed the question. On repetition, David says, "Square." This failure is a clue for Stephen, so that whether or not he knows the right answer, he offers the remaining alternative.

This is a bit about "distorting children's intentions":

When Molly leaves circle during "weather," crawls under a table, and removes her sneaker, Teresa (teacher) says to Anita (assistant), "Molly wants you to help her sit." As Teresa knows full well.... Molly wants to be freed from, not helped in, sitting. When Heather "falls out" because Anita stops her from grabbing juice, she yells, "Gimme my juice. I want my juice." Teresa replies, "I guess Heather isn't ready for juice yet. Maybe she will be more ready after some quiet time."

The point is that the teachers want to adopt a friendly, harmonious atmosphere but the method they use is not exactly honest. Goodman also points out that commands are often disguised as compliments: "Good sitting," means "keep sitting, don't get up." Truly, everything is directed; suggested; expected. Goodman goes into more of the reasons WHY this is the case in Early Intervention and how the clash between the expectations of the "kindergarten-readiness" curriculum and the reality of the delayed children's level and needs often lead to these kinds of situations. She does not think that EI is wrong in itself; she thinks that it is too often basically unsuccessful in its methods and that this is because the set-up is based on teaching principles that aren't proven to be sound.