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All Work and No Play... How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers
Sharna Olfman
ISBN: 0-275-97768-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97768-9
224 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 10/30/2003
List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £34.95)
Discount Price: $24.98 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Childhood in America
Description: Educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.

Testing and technology has become a mantra in American schools, reaching down as far as kindergarten and preschool as politicians and policymakers aim to ensure that our country has a competitive edge in today's information-based economy. But top educators and child development experts are battling such reforms. Here, educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.

This book also spotlights a program at Yale University that, in response to the dearth of play in preschool curricula, emphasized learning through play for youngsters. Children who participated scored significantly higher on tests of school readiness. In addition, an internationally recognized expert explains why—in striking contrast to U.S. policies starting academics in preschool—several European countries are raising the age when they begin formal schooling to 6 or 7.
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
About the Author: SHARNA OLFMAN is Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at Park Point University, where she is also the founding director of the annual Childhood and Society Symposium. Olfman is the editor of the Childhood in America book series for Praeger Publishers. She is a partner in the national Alliance for Childhood, a group of academics, professionals, teachers, and parents who work together to raise and remedy concerns about children's welfare in light of current cultural trends.
LCC Class: 372
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