Bureaucracy at Age 4

NPR ran a piece last week about a special school/program of educating children. The researchers noted that in old style play (read pre-1980) the children would get together and design their play time such as you be the mommy, I'll be the daddy, and Jake will be the dog. Then the children would have to role-play those things which means they would have to follow the "rules" for mommy behavior if they were the mommy and so forth. This apparently teaches then "Executive Function" which helps them regulate their behaviors as they grow up (such as not punching out Tom's lights when he runs off with your ipod). Sounds good so far right? The Researchers further noted that the more modern childhood experience is lacking in a lot of these so called Executive Function learning play since kids spend their time watching TV or playing video games. They wanted to create a school program to fill in the blank. Still sounds okay, right?

So this school does things like requiring the children to fill out play play forms where they have to describe the play activity, draw it, and so forth before they can. That's right, at age 7 we are teaching them/enforcing bureaucracy! They interviewed a teacher who said that when she first came into a second grade class that had been following this program she was astonished at how well behaved they children were. She then explained that they weren't acting like normal second graders, but instead were working and talking quietly in groups.

I don't know about you, but this gives me Orwellian flashbacks. Or maybe Huxley. Hell, even the movie Demolition Man. Maybe The Dead Poets' Society is a better example. Either way this seems kind of scary and ominous to me. the problem is that class performance also goes up and that is a good thing. Usually. But I'm not sure about the cost here. Do we want children to be trained from early years to be bureaucrats and robots?

I should also note that other activities seemed less ominous such as a game similar to Freeze except you didn't just freeze when the music stopped but you had to assume a specific pose shown on a card displayed by the teacher.