In this Educational Era..We Wanted:

In this Educational Era..We Wanted:

Parents as gardeners, not carpenters
Today’s parents were not raised with the experience of caring for young children, Gopnik says, and so they come to parenthood after extensive education and work, and approach parenting like another subject to be mastered: “Get a book, take a course, and things will come out well.” Parents, she says, believe that if they can just learn the right techniques and do the right things, the child will turn out the right way: well-educated and prepared for success.

Drawing on her own and others’ cognitive research, along with evolutionary theory and philosophy, Gopnik concludes that children were not meant to be “molded” in the way parents are molding them today. Babies and young children should be raised in safe spaces protected by adults, but they are wired to be “explorers” of information and their environment in order to become efficient and innovative in adulthood. They need their freedom protected and made safe in order to mess around.

Babies and toddlers are keen observers of their world, actively and accurately interpreting what people and objects do and why they do it—like little scientists. Preschoolers use words to investigate their world. One study found that preschoolers can ask 75 questions per hour, not as bids for attention but to “extract” information from the adults around them. And through imaginative and pretend play, young children experiment with their understanding of people and objects, preparing them for engagement in their social world later..