A child’s job
I am currently reading The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik. In the introduction of the book, she gives a definition of childhood (page 10). “What is childhood? It’s a distinctive developmental period in which young human beings are uniquely dependent on adults.”
In my early childhood class at school, I teach 3-4 year olds all day how to be more independent and do things on their own. Every aspect of a young child’s day is learning. They are learning to use the bathroom on their own. They are learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. They are learning how to write the letters of the alphabet. They are learning how to put those letters together to read words. They are learning how to ride a bike and catch a ball and use utensils when they eat. Each aspect of learning builds on the previous learned aspect. Children cannot write an ‘A’ until they know what an ‘A’ is and looks like. They cannot read the word ‘and’ until they know the sounds of each letter ‘a-n-d’. They cannot catch a ball until they know how to hold their hands out in front of them when a ball is tossed their way.
Young children are helpless from the beginning of life. That’s the period of childhood. Childhood is learning and imagination. However, learning takes time. Teachers must start from the very beginning with the basics. They must teach what an ‘A’ looks like, sounds like, and even feels like when beginning the writing process. They must teach what it feels like when a child moves and kicks his feet forward towards a ball.
Adults have adult responsibilities. “Children are protected from the usual exigencies of adult life.” Adults work to make money to feed the family and pay for housing and clothes. They have bills to pay and deadlines to meet. A child’s job is to learn. “When we’re children we’re devoted to learning about our world and imagining all the other ways that world could be. When we becomes adults we put all that we’ve learned and imagined to use” (page 11).
My early childhood students at school have a job to learn all about the letters of the alphabet so they can use those letters to do adults jobs. They have a job to learn all about riding bikes. They have a job to imagine and learn all about animals and dinosaurs and insects so they can become scientists as adults.
Children are the brainstormers. Adults are the production and marketing department (page 11). Children imagine and make discoveries; adults implement those discoveries. Think about teaching a 3 year old how to put his clothes on by himself. He may get one leg in his pants then discover something else on the floor. Now he is more interested in that new discovery and trying to brainstorm ways to use that new thing. Putting on one pair of pants may take 5 minutes for an adult but 20 minutes for a child with all the distractions and discoveries he makes in the process. That is the imagination and learning of childhood.
Learning takes time.
Wow! What a great article on being a child, being an adult, and how they can work together! http://ow.ly/UPQO