Editorial | Tutoring Tots Kids' stuff: Let 'em play

Once upon a time in a breathless land, some parents mistakenly saw education as a competition to be won. To them, it was not enough to start their children's schooling in kindergarten or even preschool.

They sought outside tutoring for their 3- to 5-year-olds. So tutors began to hire themselves out at high prices to drill these tots on academics.

The anxious parents in this breathless country said, "This is good. Our children surely will get into an Ivy League school."

That was the day that the idea of kids being left alone to play nearly died.

Too bad this is not just a fairy tale. As a recent Education Week report detailed, tutoring of very young children is an American trend. It's one that may do them more harm than good.

Of course parents want to see their children succeed. But common sense needs to prevail, not the hyper-competitiveness of Type A adults who are as driven to "succeed" as parents as they are in the workplace. Young children and their love of learning need to be nurtured, not drilled rigorously into some shape pleasing to adults.

"There is plenty for young children to learn about the world before they are introduced to formal instruction. They are not wasting their time playing," said David Elkind, a child development professor at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and author of The Hurried Child. "This whole approach is economically driven and fueled by parental anxieties."

SCORE! Educational Centers (a subsidiary of Kaplan Inc.), Sylvan Learning Center, and Kumon North America aren't evil. They are businesses responding to a market demand they accurately perceive. They charge parents anywhere from about $100 to more than $300 per month for their product - giving preschoolers an academic edge before they reach kindergarten.

In their programs, children do work on literacy and numeracy skills, on computers or in table work, for up to an hour. They try to make the exercises fun and interactive. But the goal is still to teach literacy and numeracy.
Richard Bavaria, Sylvan Learning Center's vice president for education, sounds perfectly reasonable when he says, "If a child is ready to learn to read, if a child is motivated to learn to read, why would we not teach that child to learn to read?"

Here's one reason: Because what can be done is not always the best thing to do. No studies have shown that this tot tutoring is good for kids' long-term development.

Young children certainly have the capacity to learn. But not every topic is in sync with the brain development of young children.

The brains of 3- and 4-year-olds need more stimuli than what comes from sitting down at a table or in front of a computer. They learn best from activities that are age appropriate and encourage play-based learning.

Parents need to adjust expectations that their children should go directly from diapers to diplomas.

"You can't teach a 5-year-old calculus because the brain is not ready for it, said Max Wiznitzer, pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. "You can try to force certain skills in, but you probably won't get anything more meaningful than parroting - you don't get a true understanding."

Most 4-year-olds' brains just aren't ready for concrete operations. Parents shouldn't take that as a sour judgment on their children or their parenting. It's just biology.

The biggest growth spurt in the brain occurs in the first two years of life. Regions of the brain continue to mature by neurons forming connections with other neurons. The more and the stronger the connections, the better the brain develops.

For kids at ages 3 or 4, it is play - which engages the imagination, the body and all the senses - that stimulates the pathways between neurons and helps those connections to form.

Pathways that are not adequately stimulated get pruned. In fact, playing with blocks or messing around in a sandbox with playmates does more to help young children learn than filling out a worksheet. And play doesn't burden kids with anxiety about pleasing demanding parents.

Kindergarten teachers, echoed by child development experts, say the skills their young charges most need to succeed are the emotional and social ones, such as taking directions and getting along with others. Kids don't need to have mastered letter or number recognition when they get to the schoolhouse door; most will get those skills soon enough.

Here's the main point for parents: You can do more than any tutor ever could to help your child learn and love learning. Sit him on your lap and read to him every night. Play games of pretend with her. Take them outside to explore tree bark and mud puddles.

Count the chocolate chips in a cookie or the autumn leaves on the ground together. Toss a ball and stress the "b" sound.

Above all, teach that learning is a joy, not a grim competition.

The loss of Childhood play is one of the saddest effects of a society that seems to have more of every kind of meaningless gadget and less time for what makes life truly meaningful.

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer. Sat, Nov. 26, 2005