When I think of child development...

I am now in the last week of my second MSED course, Early Childhood Development.  I want to share a few quotes and ideas I think are important when thinking about child development.

"Free the child's potential and you will transform him into the world." ~Maria Montessori

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." ~Frederick Douglass

While Frederick Douglass was not a child development expert, he was a man who saw the best and worst in humanity.  Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1818, but, with the help of friends, was able to escape to freedom in Pennsylvania around the age of 20.  He knew something about good people and bad people.  I believe this quote from him is very relevant to the importance of proper love, nurturing and education of children.  

Finally, the video below talks about how the science of early childhood development is showing the importance of early intervention in early childhood.

InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development (Video)

The Whole Child

In today's academic environment, when it comes to evaluating children, the mostly widely used method is the standardized test.   Standardized tests measure a child's knowledge in a certain subject.  This is fine in theory, but in reality the methods for testing are unreasonable and the results are questionable.  Standardized tests do not take into account students learning styles or test taking abilities.  Instead all children are expected to perform at the same level regardless of aptitude.  And are these tests measuring success of the child or the school?  Generally, the school.  How this is supposed to measure a child's true potential and success is a mystery to me.  If we are to give standardized tests, then should they not be given at the beginning and end of the year to measure what is known against what they learn throughout the year?  Teaching to the test has taken priority over teaching to standards.

One teaching method that has been recently developed is Whole Child Approach.  Launched in 2007, the Whole Child Initiative is an effort to change the conversation about education from a focus on narrowly defined academic achievement to one that promotes the long term development and success of children (The Whole Child, 2013).  The approach integrates the individual social, cognitive and emotional needs of learners into daily teaching. Seeing the child as a whole person with faceted needs and abilities, not just a student to be taught facts and figures to, is what is needed in our education system today.


In Taiwan, junior high school students prepare to take high school entrance exams in hopes of scoring high enough to be admitted to a prestigious high school, and then prepare for national university entrance exams so they can attend four year university.  If they don't score high enough, they can't apply to these schools (Huang, n.d.).  That is much different in the U.S. where entrance exams are not taken until applying for college and entrance exams are required, but students are not precluded from applying to most colleges by their scores.


References:

Huang, K. (n.d.).  Taiwan and U.S. education comparisons.  Retrieved from    http://sitemaker.umich.edu/huangk.356/standardized_testing

The Whole Child. (2013).  The whole child approach.  Retrieved from http://www.wholechildeducation.org