Oct 1 2012: Last sentence of your post, Theodore: AMEN! I retired because I wasn't allowed to teach according to my philosophy of what's best for kids. It's not about child development, it's about money.
Sep 30 2012: I have been a preschool teacher for many years and find that it's easy to plan an entire year of curriculum based on my needs, perceived interest of the kids, and what parents want/expect. But it's so much better for the childen when they have a say in what they are learning. This is sometimes called a "project approach"--actually asking children to express what and how they want to study a topic. I think it would be difficult, as a teacher, to satisfy the interests of an entire class, especialy with a multi-age grouping, but in a modified format, it could work well. The biggest problem I see is in class size. In my Head Start classroom I had 20 children, 3-5 years old, and strict regulations for lesson planning, individual goals for children, and environmental requirements that actually made a 40 hour work week (another regulation) difficult to adhere to. It was frustrating! I did ask parents for input on ideas for curriculum and got some good feedback on that which I incorporated into my weekly plans. I also encouraged parents to participate in class in ways that were meaningful to them and their children.
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A reply on Conversation: Who wants an open source curriculum based Education?
A comment on Conversation: Who wants an open source curriculum based Education?