Education Reform: Why do we trust politicians with your child's education?

I used to say that I wasn't interested in politics.  The thing is, that politics affect all of us; and as a parent or a teacher the rumblings of Washington are very significant to us.  


Early educators everywhere are being called to push math and science and literacy.  So my question is, what exactly do they presume that we are doing? Playing, I guess.  However, if the education system is failing, if the education system is getting worse- isn't it time to turn around from the direction educational politics are taking us and perhaps ask someone who knows how to educate children?  Isn't it time to ask teachers?  


Why are we asking business men how to best educate our children?  Why are we asking politicians, lawyers, and anyone but teachers how to educate our children? Do you think that business men, lawyers, and political- science students studied child development in depth? 


Take writing.  Children cannot write until they have the proper hand development to do so (this usually happens at about 4), and until the have the fine muscle coordination to do so.  They have to through 5 stages of scribbling to be able to write.  If they are never allowed to scribble because it is "playing,"  how then, are can they ever learn to write? Furthermore they need to have an understanding of words and how they are used, that letters are part of words, and words are used to communicate.  They need to understand the connection between printed and spoken word.  

"Many people today struggle and give up communicating with others because their linguistic foundation is weak." -Bev Bos  

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but the bottom line is, in a DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CLASSROOM children are learning what they need to, when they need to.  Expecting a child who as not gained the proper experiences to read and write (after only having been on the planet for three years) is like teaching a seventh grader, who has not yet mastered even algebra (let alone trig or geometry), calculus.  It might be possible, but it makes no sense and what important mathematical discoveries did he or she miss?  I'll go one more: it is like cutting of his or her hands and expecting them to play catch.  


Example One:  When children are playing, they are learning.  Playing in a sensory bin of mixed beans they may (and probably will) practice sorting, practice counting, examine and label colors and more. 

Example Two:  Using pipettes with runny paints on a paper towel canvas put on an easel allows develops fine motor skills that they need to write and cut.  It also allows them to mix colors and see what happens.  They can also observe absorption and the effects of gravity.  In the words of Bev Bos children need "experiences to attach words to," (Turning Over the Page, Bev Bos).  An activity like this and a billion others that are happening in preschool rooms all over the country, and the world, everyday.  

Here are blog entries from other people that really should be read:

Let the children play: they play but do they write?

Teacher Tom's Blog: Habits

Janet Lansbury: 4 Reasons to Ditch Academic Preschools

Not Just Cute: Play vs. Academics: A False Dichotomy

Books:  

Turning Over the Page:  A Rant For Children's Play, Bev Bos

The Power of Play, David Elkind

Play = Learning, Singer, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek 

Questions the teacher can't answer

Do you ever start out planning an activity in order for your children or students to learn or experience something and what they walk away with is something that you never expected?  It happened to me just yesterday.  Let me tell you what my class took away from the activity and then I will tell you how we got there.  My class has come to the conclusion that all our toys are made in china. 
The activity was simple.  I wanted to create a literacy game, so I asked the children to look around the room for toys that had words on them- a scavenger hunt.  They would find the words on the toys and I would race around the room on their heels writing down every word they could find. (Books were not to be included in this scavenger hunt lest they demand that I transcribe every story in our room). Now, what I was expecting was to find were words like "zoo" that is on a duplex man's shirt, or the words "wrong way" on one of our miniature road signs, the word "crayola," and "brown" on one of our markers, "Nemo" on a puzzle, "Little Tikes" on our tool set, etc.  We did find all of these word and more (we literally found hundreds of words).  We also found things like "patent pending," "ages 3+," "not for individual sale" and codes like "0XXI25LP," and signs of the person who donated them like "B.M.C.," and "this belongs to Ryan." The thing that I did not expect, (though perhaps I should have), was that the most common group of words on our toys was "made in China."  Nearly EVERYTHING that had a "made in" label said China.  Once, I was excited because I saw "Ohio" on a plastic clamp, but underneath OHIO, it said "Made in China."  We found two things that said "made in the USA"- one was part of a castle set, and the other was a puzzle.  
After we had found many of these "made in China" words, one of the children asked me, in a somewhat exasperated tone, "Why are all our toys made in China?"  Half the class looked at me waiting for an answer when she said this, and I had to say "I don't know."  
The truth is, I might have a vague idea about why, but I didn't think I should tell them that to my understanding, one of the biggest reasons was that toy companies that started here went to China where they could pay people very little, expect them to work long hours, and long work weeks, with little if any vacation time so that these companies could make more money from the toys that they sold.  I grant you that this is a complicated issue, that few people, (including myself), entirely understand.  Still, I have to wonder, what this says to young minds that grow up being read and reading "made in China" on some of the things they love the most? 
This made me question further; We are being told that our schools have to become factories because Chinese test scores are better than ours, but why does this matter and what are we trading for this choice?  Will having higher test scores make us more competitive in the job market?  I suppose it depends on what jobs you are referring to- but I wouldn't want the job of a Chinese toy manufacturer- many of them face inhumane work conditions.  In the mean time, we are sacrificing the quality of education to get these mystical "jobs" that I suppose will come from having higher test scores than a child in China who is forced to specialize in his/ her education at a young age and made to study like an adult working on a master's thesis. 
In the end, I don't know; I don't know the answers to my own questions, and I don't know the answer to the national question of "why is everything here made in China?" and "how do we fix it?"  However, I do know that I am not willing, personally, to sacrifice the development of the WHOLE child in the interest of manufacturing test takers like the Chinese manufacture "all of our toys."