to hear the word "boredom" attached to play, probably for the first time in human history. It was an odd concept to tag on to the single activity children loved best, but there was a growing nervousness about what was going on (or not going on) in kindergarten. The "academic kindergarten" was offered as the antidote to boredom and, further confusing our logic and commonsense, children labeled "at risk," who often had less opportunity for play and talk at home, were allowed less time for these activities in school as well.
At educational conferences in the nineties, kindergarten teachers continued to defend play, even as they had to allow more and more paperwork to clutter the tables and walls. Some teachers tried to recapture the certainties of the past by collecting antique block sets and doll-corner cribs, ancient dolls, and little wooden cars and trains, resisting anything that came in a catalogue. But we overlooked the real villain in our midst. It turned out to be not so much the "academics" we were adding but the time we subtracted from the children's fantasy play that would begin to make the difference.
Having not listened carefully enough to their play, we did not realize how much time was needed by children in order to create the scenery and develop the skills for their ever-changing dramas. We removed the element—time—that enabled play to be effective, then blamed the children when their play skills did not meet our expectations.
Although we feared the influence of television, we were cutting down on the one activity that counteracts the mindlessness of cartoons. We blamed television for making children restless and distracted, then substituted an academic solution that compounded restlessness and fatigue. The children may have been the only ones capable of making sense of the confusion, and they did so when-ever the schedule was cleared so they could play.
The misplaced academics of kindergarten affected the first grade as well. When kindergarten was the place for pretending school, first-grade teachers could take their time beginning formal lessons. It was always assumed that there would be ordinary children, without exceptional handicaps, who benefited from extra time to grow into academic areas. We called it maturation, and it was an important concept when we talked about children. Is it maturation or personality, we would ask when a child did not adapt to our activities? We were more inclined back then to look for fault lines in the curriculum than in the child.
We now have reversed the order of events. It is generally believed that the earlier we begin to train a child in reading and writing skills, the better off everyone will be. In many classrooms, the "pretend writing" of fours and fives looks real enough to begin keeping progress records. By the nineties a "chicken-and-egg" dilemma became apparent to me. Since the earlier we begin academics, the more problems are revealed, were the problems there waiting to be discovered or does the premature introduction of lessons cause the problems?
This conundrum does not exist in the abstract. Expectations for incoming first-graders are quite precise, and the tension begins even before the teacher and student meet. The potential for surprise is largely gone. We no longer wonder "Who are you?" but instead decide quickly "What can we do to fix you?"