"Tools of the Mind" Versus Good Ol' Fashioned Dicipline

A recurring theme in early childhood development news had dealt with the problem of children not being prepared do begin school. And I am not referring to the forgotten brown bag lunch. "Tools of the Mind" is an early childhood education Program designed to assist children in regulation their own emotional and social behavior. Believed to be an important foundational skill set, this curriculum is based on the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky.

The curriculum is laid out as such:

From the website http://www.mscd.edu/extendedcampus/toolsofthemind/

1) "Teachers systematically scaffold children's moving along the continuum of self-regulation from being regulated by others to engaging in "shared" regulation to eventually becoming "masters of their own behavior."

2) Children gain control of their social, emotional, and cognitive behaviors by learning how to use a variety of "mental tools."

3) Teaching of early literacy and mathematics emphasizes building underlying cognitive competencies such as reflective thinking and metacognition.

4) Children practice self-regulated learning throughout the day by engaging in a variety of specifically designed developmentally appropriate self-regulation activities.

5) Children learn to regulate their own behaviors as well as the behaviors of their friends as they enact increasingly more complex scenarios in their imaginary play in preschool and in learning activities in kindergarten."

It certainly differs from the "Go outside and play!" method of early childhood development that my parents used with me. I tend to be skeptical of any new and "revolutionary" method of anything. From the Aitkin's diet to child development guru, Dr. Spock, I have been disappointed. While any well intentioned effort to improve education should be welcomed, I pause to wonder that if Dr. Vygotsky's research were as important as touted, why did it take thirty years for this method to catch on? His book about the psychology of play was published in 1978. I believe that in 1978 Freud's theory of "penis envy" was still accepted thought. For me in any case, the jury is still out.

In my personal experience helping to raise my nine year old step daughter, I have developed some unique opinions on this subject. For the first seven years of her life, she was raised and educated in a very poor town in Brazil. The schools there are so different than what I, as an American, was accustomed to, it was a shock. As I believe "Tools of the Mind" seemed to be focused more on the lower income student, at least this is what I gathered from the research, my perspective is a little unique, if anecdotal.

My step daughter seems to be one of the most emotionally mature little girls I have ever known. She is more mature than almost all of the other girls of similar age in my family. From what I have noticed, this emotional and social self regulation that is taught by "Tools of the Mind" was instilled in my step daughter from a different cultural system than we have here in the U.S.A. And it is quite simple, really. Adults expect to be respected and listened to by children, not only by the parent, but by any adult. In addition, children are expected to pitch in will little chores that they can handle. This added responsibility seems to cause the children to want to emulate the adults. If they try to act like an adult, then learning the behavior of emotional and social self regulation would seem to follow.

And while I do not purport myself to be an expert in child development, I am going to hold off on this one. I think I will stick with "Respect your elders" and "Go outside and play!"