We have suggested that the key to intelligence is how you learn, how you adapt knowledge, and how you process what is going on around you. Yet there is tremendous pressure today to look more at what children know rather than at how they know and learn it. Eighty-year-old Aunt Babe makes this point crystal clear. Every time she saw 4-year-old Josh for their weekly card game, she asked him to recite the ABCs. She also marveled that he could name the numbers on the cards when they played War. This was a brilliant child because he could "perform". We do this all the time to our children : "Sing that song you learned in school for your grandmother." "Teddy knows how to write his name. Want to see him do it?" If a child wants to give a show and tell, there is nothing wrong with performing. We just need to understand that showing what they know does not give an indication of their intelligence. It tells instead about their achievements.
This confusion between intelligence, broadly conceived, and achievement is abundant and can have some serious consequences. Being able to do a limited task is not the same thing as being able to use your knowledge intelligently. For example, many are excited that in the United States, the issue of early childhood learning has finally reached the front burner. At both state and national levels, children are finally being recognized as our greatest natural resource, and educators and policy makers are working to ensure that we have quality programs and schools for the young in which they actually learn. President Bush's early childhood initiative Good Start, Grow Smart and the related No Child Left Behind are well-intentioned. They are designed so that the underprivileged children in our society get enough information when they are young to make them competitive learners in a global society. These initiatives will help our preschools teach what children need to learn and assure that our children are growing intellectually and socially as a result.
To increase accountability at the national level, it has been mandated that every Head Start child be tested twice a year and that progress be monitored in 13 areas, including assessments in vocabulary; print concepts (such as which way book opens); awareness of the sounds in rhymes and words; and number knowledge. On its face, this is a good idea, but many experts fear that testing achievement in this way will force teachers to teach to the test and will divert attention from curricula that foster intelligence and problem solving. Sure, children need to know their letter names. But this, as an end in itself, would be a narrow achievement. Mary Ann, a teacher of 4-years-olds in Portland, Maine, worries, "I will have to spend much of my day teaching letters and numbers rather than reading books and giving the children time to paint."
Scholars in the areas of literacy, language, mathematics, and social skills agree. Author Kathy Hirsh-Pasek coconvened a recent meeting at Temple University in Philadelphia to discuss these issues at length. The scientists present reaches remarkable consensus. They concluded that the current assessments of children's progress are culturally biased and too focused on outcome (read that as "achievement") rather than on process. Young children need to learn how to learn and to think. If we test only how many words they know and not whether they can link them into story lines and narrative, we won't know if we have prepared them for reading. If we look only at whether they know the names of the number symbols, we will have no idea about whether they have a concept of more or less and whether they realize that adding and subtracting are related. If we test only surface markers of achievement, we will never know if we are fostering intelligence. And if we test only language and mathematics, we will not even consider the developing social skills that are so important to children's growth.
In recommendations to the government, the scholars who met in Philadelphia applauded the move to look at how children learn and at their growth over the course of a year in preschool. Such information will be critical to how we design our preschool curricula. But, they cautioned, we must look in the right places if we want to have an accurate barometer of progress. Of the myths we harbor as parents, policy makers, and professionals, one of the deepest held is that fact learning is equivalent to intelligence; that achievement and intelligence are synonymous. This is a dangerous conclusion that can have serious consequences for how we teach our children.
This confusion between intelligence, broadly conceived, and achievement is abundant and can have some serious consequences. Being able to do a limited task is not the same thing as being able to use your knowledge intelligently. For example, many are excited that in the United States, the issue of early childhood learning has finally reached the front burner. At both state and national levels, children are finally being recognized as our greatest natural resource, and educators and policy makers are working to ensure that we have quality programs and schools for the young in which they actually learn. President Bush's early childhood initiative Good Start, Grow Smart and the related No Child Left Behind are well-intentioned. They are designed so that the underprivileged children in our society get enough information when they are young to make them competitive learners in a global society. These initiatives will help our preschools teach what children need to learn and assure that our children are growing intellectually and socially as a result.
To increase accountability at the national level, it has been mandated that every Head Start child be tested twice a year and that progress be monitored in 13 areas, including assessments in vocabulary; print concepts (such as which way book opens); awareness of the sounds in rhymes and words; and number knowledge. On its face, this is a good idea, but many experts fear that testing achievement in this way will force teachers to teach to the test and will divert attention from curricula that foster intelligence and problem solving. Sure, children need to know their letter names. But this, as an end in itself, would be a narrow achievement. Mary Ann, a teacher of 4-years-olds in Portland, Maine, worries, "I will have to spend much of my day teaching letters and numbers rather than reading books and giving the children time to paint."
Scholars in the areas of literacy, language, mathematics, and social skills agree. Author Kathy Hirsh-Pasek coconvened a recent meeting at Temple University in Philadelphia to discuss these issues at length. The scientists present reaches remarkable consensus. They concluded that the current assessments of children's progress are culturally biased and too focused on outcome (read that as "achievement") rather than on process. Young children need to learn how to learn and to think. If we test only how many words they know and not whether they can link them into story lines and narrative, we won't know if we have prepared them for reading. If we look only at whether they know the names of the number symbols, we will have no idea about whether they have a concept of more or less and whether they realize that adding and subtracting are related. If we test only surface markers of achievement, we will never know if we are fostering intelligence. And if we test only language and mathematics, we will not even consider the developing social skills that are so important to children's growth.
In recommendations to the government, the scholars who met in Philadelphia applauded the move to look at how children learn and at their growth over the course of a year in preschool. Such information will be critical to how we design our preschool curricula. But, they cautioned, we must look in the right places if we want to have an accurate barometer of progress. Of the myths we harbor as parents, policy makers, and professionals, one of the deepest held is that fact learning is equivalent to intelligence; that achievement and intelligence are synonymous. This is a dangerous conclusion that can have serious consequences for how we teach our children.
