Even assuming the possibility of greater knowledge among responsive young children of a mass media age, it is questionable whether... an increase in verbal knowledge and expression has much effect on the capacity for understanding in depth or on the style of behavior of children with no more than five years of living and growing behind them.... The drawings of contemporary fives are no more complex, the capacity for judgment no sharper, the feelings of helplessness when they get sick or into trouble no less painful than they have ever been, as far as we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nevertheless, no school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children's b...est interests. Parents have every right to understand what is happening to their children at school, and teachers have the responsibility to share that information without prejudicial judgment.... Such communication, which can only be in a child's interest, is not possible without mutual trust between parent and teacher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read...: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls' Nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Adults understandably assume that the level of verbal proficiency a five-year-old displays represents his level of proficiency in ...all areas of functioning--if he talks like an adult, he must think and feel like one. However, five-year-olds,... belie the promise of adult-like behavior with their child-like, impulsive actions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Helping children at a level of genuine intellectual inquiry takes imagination on the part of the adult. Even more, it takes the co...urage to become a resource in unfamiliar areas of knowledge and in ones for which one has no taste. But parents, no less than teachers, must respect a child's mind and not exploit it for their own vanity or ambition, or to soothe their own anxiety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and... interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children's failures.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Parents must begin to discover their children as individuals of developing tastes and views and so help them be, and see, themselv...es as thinking, feeling people. It is far too easy for a middle-years child to absorb an over-simplified picture of himself as a sloppy, unreliable, careless, irresponsible, lazy creature and not much more--an attitude toward himself he will carry far beyond these years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child ...relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved in... what to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child's pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The middle years are ones in which children increasingly face conflicts on their own,... One of the truths to be faced by parents ...during this period is that they cannot do the work of living and relating for their children. They can be sounding boards and they can probe with the children the consequences of alternative actions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »