Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7628 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 special education classes, or her teachers may be penalized or even fired. It is hard to see how an education based on fixed standards and high- stakes testing can help children achieve their full humanity. As an early-childhood educator I am most concerned about the Common Core standards for the kindergarten age, since these seem espe- cially ill-matched to children’s development. They require that over ninety skills be achieved by the end of the kindergarten year. Some of these skills are sensible enough, but many others are far better suited to later grades. To meet the standards, teachers increasingly rely on long periods of teacher-led instruction, worksheets, homework, and tests. As a result, they can provide little time or support for child-initiated play and hands-on exploration, both of which prepare children for an active, creative life. The Common Core standards are said to be evidence-based, but the evidence for what is now expected from kindergartners is slim. The kindergarten goals heavily emphasize short- term gains, many of which disappear after a few years. In the end, we have arbitrarily created a new pathway of development for young chil- dren, and concretized it with official standards and high-stakes tests. Many teachers see how inappropriate this new pathway is, but do not have the freedom to make necessary changes. As a result, children may unconsciously begin to think of themselves in mechanistic terms. They feel inferior to the computers they are taught to handle before they learn to handle themselves or the world around them. They hear us say that the brain is like a computer, but they don’t realize that the brain came first and the computer is an imitation. They hear us praise artificial intelligence, but do not understand how pale it is compared to the human intelli- gence that combines heart and mind. We hand young children our phones and tablets, forget- ting to offer them our lullabies and nursery rhymes. We should not be surprised, then, if they increasingly look to machines for comfort and companionship. Without realizing it, we are shaping children to fit a mechanized world, not raising them to inhabit a human world. What do young children really need? From birth onwards, they carry a deep drive to grow and learn. They want to find their way in the world using their bodies, emotions, and minds. They have a sense of their own path of devel- opment, what they should do next, and how they should do it. How else does a one-year- old know it is time to walk or a two-year-old to speak? No one tells young children to do this. From deep within, they know what they need to master next, and they watch others doing it. Then they develop the ability to do it for themselves. Children cannot become mature human beings by themselves. They experience our love and warmth as a cocoon that protects them from harm. They need us to set appropriate Courtesy of Community Playthings