All Work and No Play... How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers

Subjects:

• Psychology » Child Psychology
• Education » Childhood & Elementary Education

Reviews:

• This exemplary anthology highlighting the importance of childhood play responds to what editor Sharna Olfman describes as the current, destructive reform conversations related to the topics of 'standards, accountability, testing, and technology.'...The volume under review does an excellent job of reviewing extensive and impressive research that goes beyond the initial research noted in the 1983 Nation at Risk and explains why the U.S.'s competitive edge will not be retained or attained by the current reform initiatives....This book is highly recommended for a wide readership, especially those in charge of developing and implementing legislation related to early childhood education. Highly recommended. All levels.
  —Choice June 2004

• Endorsement From Douglas Sloan, Professor of History and Education Emeritus
  Teachers College, Columbia University: Exposes the fraud of the so-called educational reform movement that now has schools everywhere in its grip. The book shows vividly the damage being done to millions of children by this 'reform.' The 'reform's' rigid, one-sided emphasis on standards, accountability, testing, and educational computerization at every age level, has been accompanied by a near total sacrifice of early childhood play, body movement, oral story telling, handwork, the arts, and warm human relationships, all shown by extensive research to be crucial to healthy child development, including intellectual development. This book is desperately needed, essential reading for parents, teachers, and educational policy makers at all levels of our troubled society.
• Endorsement From William Crain
  Professor of Psychology, City College of New York
  author of Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society: An extremely timely and valuable collection of essays on the importance of childhood play--and how play is endangered in an educational world dominated by standardized tests, early academic pressures, and technological fads....This book is must-reading for educators, psychologists, and parents--indeed, for anyone who cares about the healthy development of children.
• Endorsement From Peter Sacks
  author of Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It: Americans have been duped into believing that young children are like little machines who can be plugged in and ordered to start marching to the drumbeat of academic standards, standardized testing, and computerized teaching. As the contributors to this book so bravely and dramatically show, these tools of the modern school accountability movement make for dull children, de-humanizing schools, and an impoverished future for us all.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Sharna Olfman
• The Power of Play in Early Childhood Education
• The Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education by Joan Almon
• A Role for Play in the Preschool Curriculum by Dorothy G. Singer, Jerome Singer, Sharon L. Plaskon, and Amanda E. Schweder
• Early Childhood Education: Lessons from Europe by Christopher Clouder
• Wired Classrooms/Wired Brains
• Cybertots: Technology and the Preschool Child by Jane Healy
• Hand-Made Minds in the "Digital" Age by Frank R. Wilson
• Building Blocks of Intellectual Development: Emotion and Imagination
• Imagination and the Growth of the Human Mind by Jeffrey Kane and Heather Carpenter
• The Vital Role of Emotion in Education by Stuart Shanker
• A Mental Health Crisis among Our Children: The Rise of Technologies and Demise of Play
• Attention/Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder in Children: One Consequence of the Rise of Technologies and Demise of Play? by Thomas Armstrong
• Play and the Transformation of Feeling: Niki's Case by Eva-Maria Simms
• Pathogenic Trends in Early Childhood Education by Sharna Olfman

PDF Catalogs:

Praeger Health and Wellness Spring 2008.pdf