Have you listened to CBC’s Ideas lately?  The last two Monday nights, they’ve been playing a series criticizing the current trend towards earlier and earlier academic instruction.  They’ve taken apart Baby Einstein, blasted schools that eliminate recess, disparage the practice of filling our preschoolers with factoids rather than allowing them the freedom to learn the way they’re designed to.

I was very impressed in the first week, when they quoted from Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn-Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less.  Not only quoted from, but actually interviewed with the author.

This week they’ve drawn from the classic book The Hurried Child
by David Elkind.  I confess I haven’t read this one, I’m going to add it to my reading list though.

I also will confess that I haven’t listened with 100% rapt attention to the entire broadcast.  I’m finding it’s mostly information that I am already aware of — thanks to having already read these books, or from my research into unschooling, and my forays into the ‘free range kids’ internet subculture.  This isn’t news to me.  In fact, it still makes me a bit annoyed and angry to think that a program like this has to be made, that it is still news to a great many parents out there.  It’s just so much… common sense.

But I try to be understanding, because I was there once, myself.  Just as I once fed my first child cereals and purées for his first foods, and how I kept him in diapers until he was 3, and yet baby-led finger-food solids and going diaper-free are just so obvious and common sense to me now.  Oh, and how about the fact that I thought slings were “too hippie” when my first was an infant?  We all have to start from where we are in our society’s paradigm and our own biases, and go from there.

So I am BEYOND ecstatic that this scathing rebuke of our educational myths is being played on mainstream radio.  And in such a rational, calm, non-sensationalist, investigative and factual manner.  I can only hope that it begins to clear the rubble in the minds of a few listeners, starting them down this path to “academic enlightenment” for their children.

If you missed it, don’t panic — you can listen online at the CBC website.

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Digg This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post