What Does It Mean to Cherish Childhood?
The focus in education is about preparing children for the future. However, ideas about what constitutes sufficient preparation for the future may impede children thriving in the present. At The Village School of Louisville, we cherish childhood in that our students are presented with a challenging education that prepares them for adulthood, but we also make sure that this education does not conflict with a joyful childhood. In fact, we believe that fostering the natural gifts of childhood – such as unbridled joy, curiosity, uninhibited experimentation – is the best way for children to prepare for the future.
It is important to note that children are not adults legally until age 18 and perhaps developmentally even later – yet we too often impose adult expectations of them. Between school, homework, and intense enrichment schedules, children frequently have longer days than their caregivers and are thrust into the business of resume building to get to the next step. There is a fear that the right job is only possible with the right college, admission to which requires the right high school and enrichments, which requires the right junior high and enrichments, which requires the same at younger and younger ages. In addition, we have increasingly set academic standards for younger children that are not developmentally appropriate. Kindergartners no longer attend school for a half day with lots of play and learning of letters; they are expected to sit at desks, learn to read and write and attend a full day of school. Our older children are constantly evaluated and measured and exposed incessantly to troubling news, climate catastrophe, drugs, and violence. In sum, collective society has compressed the length of childhood, and transformed minority years into long days, numerous intense extracurricular activities, stressful environments, and, at times, developmentally inappropriate academic expectations.
At VSL, we are matching our academic standards to reflect the broad range of developmentally normal achievement and asynchronous development. We build a range of enrichment activities into our school day so that evenings do not need to be filled with one game, practice, or rehearsal after another. We intentionally do not assign homework to students, so that evenings can be spent in play, discussion, cooking, chores, and fun. We are transitioning to a nontraditional grading system so that students are valued for their effort, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking, not merely for their grades and rankings. And we ensure that there is plenty of time for play within the school day for all students.
Children like to play – they seek out playmates and imagine new worlds, new games, and new adventures. Historically, children have spent substantial time in free play, outdoors, and without significant adult guidance. It is during this free play time with other kids that children develop important soft skills, use their creativity to come up with games and activities, foster resilience, and better their physical and mental health. Specifically, time outdoors provides vital physical and mental health benefits, from reducing anxiety to promoting confidence, curiosity, and physical health. These benefits are clear for children of all ages (and adults too!). It is no wonder Mr. Rogers said, “Play is really the work of childhood.”
In modern American childhood, too many children have insufficient time for play, particularly free play where children are not closely monitored and guided by the adults in their lives. Additionally, much free time is screen time rather than time outdoors or with other children. This physical isolation and screen time was particularly heightened during the pandemic. At VSL, we recognize the physical, mental, emotional and social benefits of free play and time outdoors. Every day, every student at VSL has multiple outdoor breaks (weather permitting) as well as a 30-minute outdoor recess. This is true for our kindergarteners as well as our junior high students. In addition to time outdoors on campus, VSL students spend one half day a week at forest school – studying, learning, and playing outdoors in an urban forest. We know that these routine breaks, time outdoors, and designated unstructured play time will foster the skills, confidence, and an outlook necessary for success, and we hope these routines form lifelong healthy habits for our students.
No one knows with certainty what the jobs of the future will be. Nor can we be naive enough to believe that a particular youth or child will know their future career by college or will not change careers later in life. In sum, a quality education, particularly in the K – 12th grade years, cannot be a path which prepares students for one job only. To succeed in an unknown and uncertain future, individuals need flexibility, creativity, collaboration, resilience to learn from failures, and intrinsic motivation to learn new skills, explore new ideas, and create new products or services. They need a sense of agency to shape their paths.
Children innately do these things – play is trying out new ideas and skills and making changes when things don’t go as expected; kids constantly teach themselves new things because it is useful or interesting; true free play directed by children fosters agency; young people move into new environments all the time – between classrooms, enrichment activities, schools, etc. – while their bodies go through physical change and their brains go through continuous growth. Rather than quash that natural curiosity, flexibility, and innate desire to learn, VSL works to cultivate these important skills. We employ project-based learning, where students can find different points of entry, have a sense of agency about the direction of their project, change approaches based on prototypes and research, and incorporate feedback into their work. Projects may be solo, where students can dive as deep as their curiosity takes them within the boundaries of a schoolhouse or may be group projects, which provide students with opportunities to improve their collaboration and interdependent thinking abilities.
Finally, children know how to be joyful from the moment of their first smile. Joy is important for long-term success because it is important for health and for learning. The biochemicals that are released when joyful are important for long-term memory formation. It is no wonder that the Finns say, “Those things learned without joy you will forget quickly.” Thus, it is vital that we create environments where children can learn joyfully. VSL is a place where joyful learning happens because it is intentionally and thoughtfully prioritized – through time for free play, creative hands-on projects, and a broad range of arts, cultural, and athletic experiences.
For our children to be happy and succeed, we must foster the natural gifts of childhood rather than work against them. We must see our children as agents of their own education rather than receptacles of information. We must value creativity and critical thinking rather than high scores and conformity. We must encourage joyful and diligent work rather than lots of work.
We must value the whole child and not just the academic awards and rankings of a student. By cherishing childhood this way, we are opening the doors to a wider future for our students. The Village School of Louisville is rooted in the belief we must cherish childhood – for the entire range of childhood – if our children are to be successful.