Good things come in small packages.

A small, new, groundbreaking book called simply Crisis in the Kindergarten—Why Children Need to Play in School is currently available in bookstores and on the web from Alliance for Childhood in College Park, Maryland. Every teacher, parent, and educational policy maker should read this book. And they should forward a comment about it to their legislators and to Arne Duncan, our new U.S. Secretary of Education.

The prose in this slim volume is more than cautionary; it is clarion. Listen:

The withering of the imagination in childhood is a looming catastrophe with consequences as profound as global climate change, but much less widely recognized. The very attributes we most want to nurture in our children—creativity, initiative, collaboration, problem-solving, courage—are best developed through imaginative play. Just as decisive action is needed to reverse the process of climate change, we must change course now to restore child-initiated play and learning to our schools and communities.

This book is written with courage, compassion and irrefutable evidence by Edward Miller and Joan Almon, with a foreword by David Elkind and an afterword by Vivian Gussin Paley. It should be a match that helps rekindle the fires of hope for a commitment to a developmental perspective, a commitment that will burn brightly throughout the educational continuum.

As I see it, one exciting way to focus this attention could be for Education Secretary Arne Duncan to convene a conversation on Imagination and Accountability in Education. We need conversation at the highest levels, conversation that should include some of the nation’s best kindergarten and other teachers as well as its best writers and policy makers and government officials. That conversation needs to focus on how to honor and balance standardized curriculum accountability with our ability to recognize the significant role of the imagination in the best education.

Only when we’ve had that conversation can we consider ways to enhance and extend quality school time for intellectual engagement and the pursuit of knowledge in content areas based on student and teacher interest and curiosity. That’s something we must do from the first days of preschool and kindergarten through the most complex research projects of high school.

What great “occasional papers” would emerge from such uncommon conversation? What possible grant legislation? What changes in the lives of our nation’s children?

Please share your thoughts on this crucial topic with your legislators, with Secretary Duncan, and with all of us here on the blog!

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR SECRETARY DUNCAN
Phone
202-401-3000

Address
Arne Duncan, Secretary
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202

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