Research
What do Children Need to Learn to Become Powerful Players in the World of Tomorrow?
By Anne Flemmert Jensen
An increasing number of research findings show that the trend toward pressuring children to acquire formal academic skills before entering school is strong, and to some degree replaces efforts of actively supporting the development of social, communication, and creative skills on the children’s own terms. This trend is particularly strong in USA, but also increasingly in UK and Germany.
Research conducted by Lego Learning Institute shows that parents are indeed aware that free play holds important learning value. Simultaneously, though, free play activities seem to clash with a late modern lifestyle characterised by increasing time- and performance pressures among parents as well as their children.
Research done recently by LEGO among U.S. moms shows that achievement oriented parents emphasise giving their children the best of everything available in order to guarantee them a successful future. This process often begins even before a child is able to talk or walk.
According to the report, the trend is rooted in the desire to protect against the future by turning out fully prepared, smart children who are ready to live in whatever society may lie ahead. It is triggered by an undercurrent of anxiety, and appears to breed an irrational type of fear in parents: They are afraid that not pushing preschool children will result in their children being left behind academically, thus not giving them a chance to get into those schools that will secure their future.
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