Too Much, Too Soon?: Early Learning and the Erosion of Childhood (Early Years)

Too Much, Too Soon? tackles the burning question of how to reverse the erosion of childhood by nurturing young children’s wellbeing and learning capacity. Children’s lives have been speeded up by commercialization, adultification, and government programs such as No Child Left Behind and the “nappy curriculum”― a controversial program in the Britain that requires children to hit a series of sixty-nine targets by age five―aspects of which “schoolify” early learners and push quasi-formal learning too soon. Twenty-two hard-hitting chapters by leading educators, researchers, policy-makers, and parents advocate for alternative ways for slowing childhood, better policy-making, and, most important, the right learning at the right time in children’s growth, when they are developmentally ready. CHAPTERS PART I: Policy Making and the Erosion of Childhood: The Case of the Early Years Foundation Stage 1. The EYFS and the Real Foundations of Children’s Early Years – Penelope Leach 2. Challenging Government Policy-making for the Early Years: Early Open EYE Contributions – Margaret Edgington, Richard House, Lynne Oldfield, and Sue Palmer 3. Against the Government’s Grain: The Experience of Forging a Path to EYFS Exemption – JOHN DOUGHERTY 4. The Impact of the EYES on Childminders – Arthur and Pat Adams 5. A Parent’s Challenge to New Labour’s Early Years Foundation Stage – Frances Laing 6. The Tickell Review of the Early Years Foundation Stage: An “Open EYE” dialogue – The Open EYE Campaign PART II: The Foundations of Child Development and Early Learning: Perspectives, Principles and Practices 7. The Myth of Early Stimulation for Babies – Sylvie Hétu 8. Current Perspectives on the Early Childhood Curriculum – Lilian Katz 9. Physical Foundations for Learning – Sally Goddard Blythe 10. The Unfolding Self –The Essence of Personality – Kim Simpson 11. The Democratization of Learning – Wendy Ellyatt 12. The Steiner Waldorf Foundation Stage –