Instead of offering a curriculum for lifelong learning, schools are governed by a turnstile mentality. To help students become wiser education consumers requires intensive dialogue about problems, cases, and controversial issues. Educational reforms that fail to focus on teacher-student and student-student interaction or on sharpening critical…

Contrasts two fourth-grade teachers' treatment of a student's robin eggshell. One teacher continues with a conventional, text-based science lesson; the other asks what the eggshell means and helps students devise research questions to be pursued in the library and in art class. Also, seven provocative questions are posed for would-be education…

Teachers generate magic when they step out of their pedagogical roles and realize they are human beings possessing expertise in narrow fields and scant knowledge about everything. Students can be excellent teachers. Energy comes from the struggle to master something new. Teachers are not exempt from this process. (MLH)

Introduces a special section forecasting problems, delineating issues, and proferring strategies that should prove helpful as early childhood policies and programs are crafted. Today's programs are grounded in research that verifies the efficacy of early intervention, particularly for low-income children. School restructuring will play an…

Restructuring is this era's main contribution to improving America's schools. Teachers, parents, and communities must become more involved in school decision-making, and children need more choice in curricular decisions. Ten "commandments" for successful early childhood collaborations are presented. Care and education are inseparable. Includes 10…

True educational reform will come about only when we replace the reigning psychometric educational psychology with a developmentally appropriate one. The developmental approach is superior regarding its conception of the learner, the learning process, the information to be acquired, and educational goals. Includes 14 references. (MLH)

A developmentally appropriate curriculum can never be standardized in a multicultural community. Thoughtful teachers can use child development principles to make the new context of school meaningful, to attach new kinds of learning to what children have already achieved, and to safeguard children's growing self-image and self-confidence as their…

Changes in services to handicapped children have served as a legislative wedge for eventually providing services to all children. This article reviews recent federal legislative provisions and principles pertaining to young children, including the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and the Education of the Handicapped Amendments of 1986.…

Practices surrounding the assessment and retention of young children have been driven by: (1) mandates and symbolic messages from policymakers and the public; and (2) educators' coping behaviors and supporting beliefs. The time has come to devise and test alternative ways to enhance young children's success at school. Includes seven references.…

With annual salaries for Head Start and other nonpublic school child care programs in the $11,000 to $15,000 range, it is impossible to recruit and retain qualified teachers. This article discusses the rationale for improving and appropriately financing all early care and education programs. Includes nine references. (MLH)

In Europe preschools are viewed as providers of both child care and early education. Preschool programs there are optional, universally available, and designed to further children's social and cognitive development. In the advanced industrialized world, only the U.S. and Great Britain are still debating differences between care and education.…

To address early care and education challenges, this article outlines some concrete strategies illustrated by several programs, including ALERTA (a multicultural, bilingual approach), the Maryland Certification-Accreditation Project, the High/Scope training of Teacher-Trainers System, a Florida community collaboration project, and the Kennedy…

A recent "Kappan" Survey of 276 elementary, middle, and senior high schools found that between 25 to 35 percent of the 22,018 students surveyed are seriously at risk. Teachers and other staff dealing with at-risk students lacked confidence and information concerning students' lives. Grade retention practices proved detrimental to students.…

Born in rural Tennessee, 15-year-old Billy Charles Barnett is proficient enough at hunting and fishing to support himself by teaching his survivalist skills to others. His economic well-being is threatened by required school attendance. Given the impoverished state of American education, society would not necessarily benefit from a lower dropout…

In round two of a debate begun in November 1988, this article again reemphasizes the poor quality of Jeanne Chall's experimental phonics research and reporting inaccuracies that invalidate her conclusions. The basic flaw might lie in Chall's belief system. Includes 57 references. (MLH)