EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOM

Early Childhood Classroom

Early Childhood Classroom

Introduction

As today's young learners are undoubtedly challenged by an increasingly fast-paced and technologically-characterized environment, it has become the weighted responsibility of the early childhood educator to counter such obstacles through progressive, whole-child methods of teaching, thereby decreasing anxieties and increasing the likelihood of knowledge retention. The quintessential philosophy for the multicultural, democratic classroom, progressivism allows for young students to learn through hands-on experience and social interaction. By establishing the learning environment as founded upon both comfort and creativity, the early childhood educator can effectively facilitate pedagogically-appropriate learning.

Progressivism

Birthed from the ideals of John Dewey during the late nineteenth century, progressive education seeks to cater to the child's needs as a whole being, rather than simply a brain. In his text entitled American School Reform: Progressive, Equity, and Excellence Movements, author Maurice Berube asserts, "The buzz-words of progressive education were self-expression, creativity, and individualism. The aim was for schooling that could develop the child's total personality" (1994). By extension, the twentieth century has allowed progressive education to become increasingly definitive of school reform, allowing students to learn through hands-on experience rather than via traditional lecture and textbook methods.

Indeed, progressivism is a truly essential philosophy for the early childhood classroom, as it provides an invaluable opportunity for young learners to experience their world and develop crucial critical thinking skills at an early age. A true alternative to simple knowledge acquisition, progressive education allows students to discover the material, thus significantly increasing the ability to retain new information. By allowing creativity to permeate all subject areas, both inside and outside the realm of humanities, the early childhood educator can ensure that his or her students are truly receiving a comprehensive, pedagogically appropriate education.

Particularly in today's changeable political climate, educational progressivism is becoming increasingly, and indeed unfortunately, challenged. Author Mary Eberstadt writes in her journal article entitled "The Schools They Deserve" that "educational progressivism, in practice and in theory, is fast losing ground. For almost two decades, in fact, that particular set of ideas - grounded in Rousseau, transplanted in America by John Dewey and his followers... - has suffered what must only appear to the faithful as one ignominious setback after another" (1999). The most recent and formidable opposition to progressivism was undoubtedly the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which acted to devastate the schooling experience for millions of young learners, and also the teaching experience for hundreds of thousands of public school educators, as true learning was forcibly replaced with superficial knowledge acquisition for the sole purpose of assessment testing.

Though the NCLB has been largely recognized for the failure that it was, progressive school reform has yet to take place in the twenty-first century. Thus, the role of the early childhood educator becomes weighted with the responsibility to instill the progressive philosophy into his or her classroom, providing students with the opportunity to learn as a whole being, rather than simply a statistic for federal fund allocation. However, as the American academic climate begins to shift, progressivism ...