Getting ‘rigor’ right in preschool, or avoiding rigor mortis in 4-year-olds

With more funding for preschool comes more scrutiny. In Michigan, state funding for preschool has more than doubled, with 56 percent of eligible four-year-olds now in the high-quality Great Start Readiness Program. With federally-funded Head Start, 67 percent of eligible “fours” in the state get high-quality preschool.

With more funding for preschool comes more scrutiny. In Michigan, state funding for preschool has more than doubled, with 56 percent of eligible four-year-olds now in the high-quality Great Start Readiness Program. With federally-funded Head Start, 67 percent of eligible “fours” in the state get high-quality preschool.

The good news is that legislators, policymakers, educators, and parents want to ensure that resources are used effectively: Children deserve the best. The bad news? This attention may have an unintended impact. Teaching strategies questionable even for older children may compromise preschool quality.    

A case in point is around the concept of “rigor.” In the best light, rigor is one of the new three Rs, along with relevance and relationships. Spurred anew by a national wave of third grade reading laws, though, the relevance and relationships that temper short-sighted interpretations of rigor get short shrift. Rigor rules the day. Educators, parents, and students rue the day.        

Today kindergarten is the new first grade and preschool threatens to become the new kindergarten. Play is being force-marched out of childhood. Many schools have taken a recess from much of the recess time children used to get. Heavy doses of skill-and-drill reassure adults unfamiliar with the science about how young children learn. Play and playful learning do not seem, well, very rigorous.   

Unknowing adults may think small children have small minds and that teachers should dispense instruction in pellets without wider purposes that children understand. While this may make sense to well-intentioned but misguided grown-ups, it literally does not make sense to children. Unlike pigeons, children learn best in real-life situations and playful application. The human brain fires on connected learning, and little children have not been on earth long enough to learn in any other way. As the caterpillar needs the chrysalis, young children need meaning. Denying this clips children’s wings.

Ironically, the wrong approach undermines what career- and college-readiness standards prize: Agile thinkers who problem-solve. Especially for young children, decontextualized instruction hurts comprehension and curiosity. This is ominous, because an informed sense of wonder fuels initiative, not to mention the human spirit. It manifests as willpower fueled by hope, compelling learners to answer questions. Even young children are capable of curious persistence, perhaps more capable than older children dispirited by education estranged from meaning.

Michigan lawmakers whose decisions affect how teachers teach must understand that young children learn differently. Rigor for four-year-olds does not look the same as rigor for nine- or nineteen-year-olds, though all involve critical thinking. Partners from the developmental sciences offer insight about how to optimize young children’s learning.  

One insight is that playful learning is “brain food.”  Play is texturized. Children “grab on” and climb higher. They use their most complex language and thinking in playful interactions that include an aspect of pretend or imagination, the first form of abstract thought. Moreover, high-quality student engagement looks suspiciously like play.   

Playful learning leverages self-regulation. Children are motivated to self-regulate not just behaviorally but cognitively in play. If one’s role is to be the mother, one strives “to mother,” even if it would be fun to wail loudly with the “babies.” When friends act out a story, they must sequence the action. Playful attempts to self-regulate are not just child’s play but drive learning.

Indeed, human development is about growth in self-regulation and corresponding benefits: Greater self-efficacy and school success, better jobs and wages, closer relationships. Play, a species behavior for adaptive learning, scaffolds human progress. Like exercise develops the physical body, playful learning develops the intellect.   

Adults must be rigorous about providing playful learning that engages children. High-quality preschool is intellectually lively and transcends academics. The Michigan State Board of Education’s standards of quality for prekindergarten make rigor real. Teachers need time to deeply implement these standards, especially to change the growth trajectories – futures – of our most vulnerable young learners.  

Rigor must be understood as adults being ready. A great strength of the Michigan standards is that the onus is on adults for children’s active construction of knowledge. Educators must know and policymakers must respect these standards. Being ready also means paying teachers a living wage with benefits to reduce turnover. Turnover is particularly troubling in early education, because young children learn primarily through their relationships with teachers. Staffs that stay are staffs whose skills can be systematically developed.  

Early education is at a crossroad. Increased funding can make positive differences for more children. However, as the conversation shifts to return on investment, policymakers need the science of child development. More is known now than ever before about how children learn, but as a society, we seem to be going backwards, treating children like miniature adults. The last time this happened, the result was child labor laws. If we get this wrong, children will suffer. Indeed, perhaps not only early education but childhood itself stands at this crossroad.