Swedish Preschool, Linguistic Immersion, and Baby College.

Swedish elementary school begins when kids are 7 years old and there's no real formal structure to preschool except "socialization". What do they teach in preschool? Not ABC's, Counting, and Colors...How "To be a good friend and to believe in their own abilities." But that structure offers individual learning plans for each student and lots of linguistic immersion: always talking. The best predictor of human capacity, according to University of Chicago Economist, James Heckman, is linguistic encounters at an early age.

Check out the Edutopia article from last year.

Check out James Heckman's article Technology and Neuroscience of capacity formation.

Also check out Paul Tough's book on Geoffrey Canada's Baby College in Harlem, Whatever It Takes.

Finally for a related but interesting audio report on this, listen to This American Life's "Going Big". I'm warning you though, it will make you cry.

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Comment by Tamas Lorincz on August 12, 2009 at 12:59pm: Thank you for this great collection.
I always believed that early schooling is more damaging than beneficial. Children need time to discover as much of the word as possible in order to be able to question what the traditional school presents as unquestionable facts. But traditional school doesn't like students who have questions. We prefer students who sit and listen and venerate the knowledge flowing freely from the teacher. Well, with those days gone, now we just limit their opportunities to reveal how little their teachers give them that they can't get otherwise at their own space, in the packaging they want it.
I know I am coming down hard on schools and I am aware that there are great numbers of fantastic schools and teachers who do an amazing job, but the mainstream still think that teaching is about going to class like the same time last year and do the same thing as ten years ago.
I would have pre-school clubs for children, just for the sake of learning socialisation, communication strategies etc. I think KG teachers would enjoy giving children time and opportunities to socialise before imposing curriculum standards. I have said and will say it many time that the problem with curriculum standards is that they are designed for the average. The problems is that the average does not exist. Students are either below or above it, so we're not really teaching anyone properly is we are teaching towards standards. I might not be right but it always scares me when someone tries to tell me what a child should be able to do at a certain age when no one really bothered to find out what that child is capable of.
Thanks for the post. Got me thinking - obviously.....
If you want to find out even more about my opinion about teaching, visit: http://tamaslorincz.edublogs.org

Comment by Mike Palmquist on August 12, 2009 at 1:07pm: I once was Director of a Before and After School Latchkey Program at an elementary school. Teachers would bring students in and say "he needs to do this homework before he plays" or "He should be put on a time out" Of course, I refused. My only rule was "you need to be doing something". I was reprimanded several times by the principal for not having a curriculum for AN AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM!

About Sweden, this early socialization is very cultural too in that at university, school is organized very differently than in the states. You sign up for Economics in the fall semester and from 9-5 M-F the Economics Department owns you. There's way too much work for any one person to do it on their own so for survival you must be able to work in groups, dividing up the readings, producing summaries for everyone else in your group, organizing study sessions... etc.

Thanks for the reply Thomas.