Some Educators Concerned Over ‘Superbaby’ Burnout

See Dick.

See Jane.

See Dick play the violin and recite Shakespeare.

See Jane speak French and correctly identify the Bach flashcard.

Dick and Jane are 3 years old.

For many parents this is not a make-believe story, but a hotly pursued reality--one that greatly disturbs some prominent educators of children.

Teaching methods that would be appropriate for older children, such as rote memorization of reading and math, and teacher-directed instruction, can damage pre-school children, said David Elkind, president of the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children.

“Young children learn differently from older children, even from youngsters just a year or two older,” Elkind said at a press conference here. “With increasing numbers of young children being exposed to these inappropriate teaching methods, there is a real danger that large numbers of children will experience learning problems at an age when, in the past, most children were not even in school.

“Such youngsters face possible stress and educational burnout in elementary school.”

Elkind was joined by Samuel Sava, executive director of the National Assn. for Elementary School Principals, in strongly criticizing the “Superbaby Syndrome.” They spoke before the press during a convention of about 15,000 of the 54,000 members of the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, the United States’ largest professional organization of early-childhood educators, which works with youngsters as old as 8.

There’s No Hard Evidence

Elkind and Sava said they have based their views on their own observations and training, as well as on years of studies, but they were unable to give hard statistics on how widespread the problem is.

USC’s Franklin Manis, contacted in Los Angeles and asked to comment on their views, said he tends to agree with Elkind’s and Sava’s contentions, but he also said that there is a lack of hard evidence on the negative impact of Superbaby teaching techniques on infants and children.

Manis, an assistant professor of psychology, said that there are no studies documenting the ultimate emotional impact of extremely early education on children. In Japan, where children are subjected to early, rigorous and competitive schooling, studies have established no firm link between early pressures on children and a high youth suicide rate, Manis added.

But Manis also noted that studies of accelerated learning “generally show that the gains are real but they fade” over time.

The principals association’s Sava said at the Washington convention, “Unless pre-school produces measurable gains in IQ, or unless young children memorize some information that adults recognize as school-related--the alphabet or a sequence of numbers--some parents dismiss early childhood programs as aimless puttering about.”

“Hence, some foolish and potentially harmful manifestations of the Superbaby syndrome: flashing word-cards at 3-month-olds and Picassos at 1-year-olds, playing classical music to influence fetuses still in the womb and testing toddlers before admitting them to a prestigious nursery school.”

At Marlene Snyder’s Suzuki Learning Center in Atlanta, pre-schoolers--some less than 2 years old--learn to play the violin, speak French and Spanish and learn about art and computer programming. Snyder said she thinks the panic over the Superbaby syndrome may be overdone.

Told of Elkind’s and Sava’s statements about kid burnout, Snyder replied, “There are really no facts to back that up.

Some Rigid Programs

“I know a lot of people are concerned with burnout. It is true there are some very high-pressured places with very rigid programs of rote memorization and flashcards.”

At the Suzuki center, Snyder said the 120 children, aged 3 months to 6 years, have “no pressure. Nothing is shoved down their throats. French (is learned) by hands-on experience, games, stories and songs.”

The Suzuki method involves learning from imitation, and is named for the Japanese teacher who devised it 40 years ago, Shinichi Suzuki. When children learn to play the violin, they learn on a violin that has been scaled to their size.

Those desiring to attend the Suzuki school must first apply and spend a trial day there, but Snyder said that is not to determine if the child has superior intelligence, but to make sure he is comfortable in the setting. “We’re dealing basically with the average child,” she said.

Elkind and Sava said there are good programs for pre-schoolers, citing the Montessori method as one.

Setting Own Pace

The Montessori method, popular in the United States and abroad, allows pre-schoolers to set their own pace, learning such skills and how to work zippers and buttons, how to set a table and how to walk on a line.

They assemble puzzle maps of the continents and learn to count, add, subtract and divide with red and blue wooden rods, beads and cubes.

Elkind and Sava noted that with increasing numbers of women joining the work force, there is a mushrooming demand for pre-school programs that accept younger and younger children, and keep them longer and longer hours.

According to Sava, in the last 15 years the enrollment of 3- and 4-year-olds in formal pre-school programs has approximately doubled from 20% to 40%. Many of these children are offspring of what Elkind labels the “Gold Medal,” “Ivy League” and “Gourmet” parents, for whom nothing less than Olympic stardom, Harvard law school and designer clothes will do.

Many parents from disadvantaged backgrounds want to push their tots too, Elkind said, while the high-achiever parents have a double motive: soothing their guilt over not staying home to care for the child, and trying to pass on their own drive for success.

Ironically this demand for more and better pre-school care comes at a time when fewer people are becoming teachers and day-care workers, due in large part to women’s newfound reluctance to accept and keep low-paying jobs.

Fewer Child-care Workers

“Child-care workers have the highest rates of turnover of all occupations,” Elkind said, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reports. “Care-givers at licensed day-care centers--who are lumped in the same job category as dog groomers, golf caddies and parking lot attendants by the U.S. Labor Department--average significantly less in salary than those occupations, even when they have more education.”

Increasing demand and dwindling supply can mean only one thing: The prize becomes more valuable. Parents become even more determined to secure what they feel is the best situation for their child. This confluence of trends is also joined by well-publicized research claiming babies and small children possess greater cognitive abilities than previously believed.

“The notion developed in the 1960s that a child can learn anything at any time,” Elkind said. “The image of the competent child replaced the image of the Freudian sensual child.

“There is a great deal of competition in society now. Education is perceived as a race. We have to educate parents that education is not a race.”

Try telling that to Stephen Baccus, who graduated from the University of Miami at age 14 and was sworn in as a lawyer in Florida last week, at the age of 17. Baccus can defend a murder suspect, but he cannot buy a beer afterwards.

“I could have waited until I am 18,” Baccus told a Miami reporter, “but I didn’t want to.”

Concern Over Teaching Method

Elkind and Sava are not suggesting that pre-schoolers be kept home or shielded from learning. What they are concerned about is the method of teaching, whether it is creative or stressful. Pre-school children learn best by playing and following their own curiosities, they say, not by being pressured to excel or get good grades.

Teacher-initiated instruction--lectures to kids sitting at desks--thwarts young children’s desire to ask questions and find the answers on their own. Elkind’s greatest concern, he said, is that pre-school programs, pressured by the huge demand, are not taking enough time to develop appropriate methods and are instead using “watered-down third- and fourth-grade curriculum.”

Elkind, who wrote a book about the Superbaby syndrome in 1981 titled “The Hurried Child,” said at the press conference that young children learn best by “solving real problems, such as how to balance a stack of blocks or how to negotiate a zipper, trying a picture puzzle, making mistakes and trying again.”

Parents can determine if their child is inappropriately taught, Elkind said, with a few questions.

“When your 4-year-old goes to school, does she bring home dittoed work sheets or her own artwork?

“Is she being taught lessons or engaged in learning through projects such as making soup or building a puppet theater?

“Is her learning limited to memorizing the alphabet and reciting numbers or is her thinking challenged by being read stories, taking field trips, or planting a garden?”

Hold Off Until 6 1/2

The heated debate about when children should and can learn to read rages on, but Elkind said that youngsters are not ready for phonics and memorizing multitudes of words until age 6 1/2. Before that age, Elkind favors the kind of learning experienced by having stories read to children, having them dictate their own stories and leisurely learn the alphabet. They should not be made to sit in a chair and study words, he said, and certainly should not take tests and receive grades.

“One of the things we’ve noticed,” Sava said, “is that when children are force-fed learning early on, they become turned off to education and it’s very difficult to turn those youngsters back on.”

Elkind said he was “troubled” by pre-schools that teach foreign languages, music, art and drama, because the children “end up being not prodigies, but parodies.”

“Certainly there are gifted children. But in two recent studies on giftedness it was shown that their parents did not push them, that they were allowed to go plunk on the piano but were not urged to.”

Mostly, Elkind and Sava would like parents to calm down and let the little ones set their own pace, at least until first grade.

Elkind said many reading problems come not from starting kids too late but starting them too early. “One 6-year-old told me, ‘I guess I’m a flop in life. I can’t read.’ ”