The Greatest Evidence of Childhood Success is Not in the Data
Yesterday, my four-and-a-half-year-old son wrote the word “March” on a scrap of paper, and proudly shared it with me. Needless to say, I was amazed and greatly impressed. Entirely independently, he had spelled it out loud, reciting each letter in sequence, and written each character with painstaking care. The “M” was capitalized, the “arch” lowercase (“a” reversed), the size and spacing on point. Without ado, praise was lavished, photos were snapped and sent to relatives, and the fridge was adorned with this evidence of academic rigor and achievement. I called my mom to commend the preschool he had just begun attending for its educational merits.
Yet later, as I looked upon this scrawled accomplishment, it struck me that this was in fact, not part of his preschool curriculum. Perhaps he was learning to write his own name, I ascertained from the lined sheets of paper he brought home each day, and undoubtedly he was learning about the month of March during calendar time, as he gleefully sang in the bath each night about “thirty-one days,” but actually spelling the word and writing it were not skills that anyone was explicitly teaching or evaluating.
What my son had been given was not a battery of measurable, observable skills, but instead a desire to learn, to assume responsibility for his own learning. Earlier this week, he had asked me to write the word on a sheet of paper for him, and he carried it off to his bedroom, calling off the letters over and over again. Several times he approached me to show off, reciting “M…A…C…R…H,” and persevering through frustration when I gently corrected him, again and again.
How far do we have to go down an increasingly convoluted path before we are completely lost in a woods of developmentally inappropriate expectations, breaking the hearts of the parents of “underachieving” children, and frustrating even the most diligent young students with ever-increasing demands? The dictatorial emphasis on data collection, evidence, on proving our worth — and theirs — through quantitative means is gradually removing us entirely from what we are actually here to do! We have forgotten that greatest evidence of a successful early childhood education is not in the data. The greatest success we can experience is giving our children the will and desire to continue their own learning. To instill in them a love of acquiring knowledge, of reading, of exploring the world around them, is the only way to ensure that their education will extend beyond the classroom, that their joy and success will follow them out into the world and allow them to continue to grow and live meaningfully.
As a speech-language-pathologist in an early childhood setting, I am well versed in developing and tracking measurable, observable, achievable goals. I can determine baseline levels, document gains with binary tracking systems, and report progress periodically to various stakeholders with percentages and other quantitative statements about objectives mastered or not.
As a parent, sitting before a team of staff tasked with facilitating my own child’s growth, none of that means anything to me. A week ago, my son was in a different preschool program, and I had feared he would not be “ready” for Kindergarten, not because of his lack of knowledge or skills, but because of his emotional maturity and behavior. For months, I had received reports of him hitting, kicking, biting, resisting adult direction, and generally exhibiting defiance. At home, he told me he was an idiot. I took him to a counselor, who identified in him numerous indicators of ADD, a diagnosis she declined to officially pin on such a young child.
Yet for the last five consecutive days, despite quite a significant transition to the new program, with unfamiliar teachers, peers, and schedules, it was as if I had exchanged this child for another, as faculty agreed that he was polite, alert, and mostly cooperative, if stubborn at times. He was even napping again, a phase I thought we had officially grown out of. How could we measure this change? You could measure the frequency, intensity, and duration of his meltdowns, but how redundant that would be, compared to the compliments I gratefully accepted from his teachers, and even from the cashier at the grocery store, who observed that my usually bouncy, agitated child was actually sitting in the cart during our afternoon shopping trip. You could measure his academic growth, but he already knew his colors, shapes, letters, numbers (rote and with 1–1 correspondence), so again, that data would tell us nothing.
That he had sought out knowledge outside of the classroom, that he had practiced and rehearsed when nobody was listening, and that he had demonstrated the intrinsic desire to achieve a goal that he had set for himself: that is the real evidence of success, and the best indicator of future success. That he is learning to LOVE TO LEARN is more valuable to all of us than all the damn data in the world.
