In this article, Thomas Armstrong considers what is developmentally appropriate for educating children.
Thirty-five years ago, when I was at the beginning of my teaching career, Piaget was all the rage. We read his books and puzzled over how observation of children interacting with real-life situations could enable us to understand the development of their minds. We also were able to catch the tail end of interest in the work of Freud and saw how children’s early struggles with issues like autonomy, jealousy, and initiative could affect their ability to emotionally manage the ups and downs of life later on in development.
Read the rest of Armstrong’s article here
It appears that teacher training programs have de-emphasized child development for the past decade or more. That means that a large number of teachers and school administrators don’t have a clue about what is developmentally appropriate. What else could explain the mindless application of canned curriculum to whole classes of children, then testing and failing them over material they cannot possibly comprehend.