There are a bunch of issues tied up in the recent NPR series on “executive function” development and the “serious play” of kids that are bound to be a bruhaha of bloggers-a-buzz with comments, opinions, scientific and anecdotal evidence confirming and denying what preschool teachers have known for a very long time. Play is good. For everyone.
I see these articles fitting into a general shift in consciousness that has percolated up from NCLB and other standards type reforms that, because they are not based on reality, would only work if we had a set of test ready tots. So I am faced with the same disillusionment that I looked at the Yes We Can video. Kids need to play, because of well, a lot of things including executive function. Also, it develops creativity, social/emotional well being, imagination, emergent language and literacy, logical thinking, and the ability to live as a proactive member of society. I have learned that you can develop all of the higher level thinking skills and content knowledge in play.
At the same time the article seems to be bent towards the idea that we should let kids play so that they are more compliant members of society. To borrow an idea from musician and professor, Dr. Kurt Stemhagen, “We need to feed poor kids free breakfast at school because it is the right moral/ethical thing to do, not because it increases test scores.” I feel the same way about play which is why I have a hard time with the following.
According to executive function researcher Adele Diamond, all of these little exercises genuinely do improve the ability of children to control themselves. Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, recalls the very first time she ever set foot in a Tools of the Mind classroom.
“I was totally blown away. The kids were sitting together working quietly. It was like a second-grade classroom instead of a preschool classroom. I couldn’t believe it,” Diamond says.
Later, trying to do another one of those things that researchers love to do, she applies a finding in one area to a problem in another area.
Diamond says there are potential benefits to this training that go beyond improved executive-function scores. She and several other researchers argue that children’s reduced self-regulation skills may be showing up in the numbers of kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
“I think a lot of kids get diagnosed with ADHD now, not all but many just because they never learned how to exercise self-control, self-regulation, the executive functions early,” she says.
So here we are with kids who are diagnosed with ADHD because they didn’t develop self control. Is it possible this is true? Yes, but I hope we don’t just let our kids play because we are afraid they will become ADHD, Or, so that they will pass a test.
