Reprint of Boston Globe Op-Ed by Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane E. Levin

THE PROPOSED common core national education standards for K-12 — which will impose higher academic standards on younger children — contradict decades of early education theory and research about how young children learn best and how to close the achievement gap.

The imposition of one-size-fits-all standards on young children can’t solve the problems of an education system that is fundamentally unequal. Children in wealthy school districts receive many times the resources that children in poor communities do. The United States stands out in sharp contrast to the many countries that take a central and equal approach to school funding. Our unequal funding only adds to the disadvantages, such as hunger and lack of health care, that so many children bring to school resulting from the widening income disparities in our nation.

The proposed standards focus exclusively on teaching isolated reading and math skills starting in kindergarten. Academic learning is separated from social, emotional, and physical growth. But theory, research, and experience tell us that meaningful learning in young children does not come from rote skills. Children build knowledge through hands-on experience with materials, peers, and teachers in meaningful ways that relate to what they already know, to their developmental levels, and their interests.

If adopted, the national standards will lead to more rote learning by all young children, but especially our poorest young learners who are in overcrowded classrooms with less qualified teachers who will have to resort to more direct instruction rather than hands-on, experiential learning. Even if we did see better test scores after an implementation of national standards, it’s unlikely that children would be able to apply the skills learned by rote to real-life situations, use them to solve new problems, or discover the satisfactions inherent when learning is meaningful. This will set young children up for school failure later on when transfer of knowledge and self-motivation become crucial to school success.

The increase in teacher-directed instruction that has resulted from No Child Left Behind has already pushed play out of the curriculum in kindergartens countrywide. This is a far greater problem than many realize. Play is the cornerstone of social, emotional, and cognitive learning and healthy development. It is through play that children develop the foundation for cognitive concepts, problem solving skills, and critical thinking which is essential for later academic learning. Play generates imagination and creativity, planning and self-regulation. It helps children develop a love for learning.

The No Child Left Behind Act, with its high-stakes testing beginning in 3rd grade, has led many schools, especially in poor communities, to start the drill and testing regime in kindergarten. This shift, even before the release of the new standards, has eroded the foundation young children need for school success.

We won’t make genuine progress in closing the achievement gap in our nation’s schools until we address the underlying inequities that are its root cause. Imposing more standards and tests is a misplaced, misleading, even harmful approach. If these standards are imposed, we will see a continuing achievement gap and new levels of stress and failure among young children. Worst of all, we will have missed an opportunity to give our nation’s children the best possible education, the one they deserve and the one our future depends on.

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University, is author of “Taking Back Childhood.’’ Diane E. Levin, a professor of education at Wheelock College, is author of “ So Sexy So Soon.’’

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© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Dear Secretary Duncan,

I am writing to voice my concerns about the deeply misguided route down which you are taking early childhood education in the United States.

I feel this more strongly now than ever having just returned from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I took Wheelock College students on a service learning program looking at the reconciliation efforts currently underway in schools.

My students, all of whom will be working with children and families when they graduate, were amazed to learn that the new curriculum for Northern Ireland, which aims to promote tolerance and decrease violence, has an increased focus on play in the early grades. The teachers there are eagerly embracing this shift because they see the positive effects of this new curriculum in their classrooms—children are better problem solvers and are more engaged with educational activities and each other.

Over and over again, my students commented on how self-regulated, engaged, and competent the children they observed were, beginning as young as 3-years-old. This was especially striking when they saw 75 children ages 5-6 happily playing for 30 minutes on an asphalt playground with no equipment or play materials—and not one obvious instance of adult intervention was needed.  In contrast to the one-size-fits-all model so often used in the U.S., they saw classes busy with diverse activities like writing and drawing.  And, as the teacher circled the room to work with individuals, they witnessed how the children helped and shared with each other.  The teachers said they believed that the emphasis on play nurtured these vital life skills, a conclusion which is supported by a growing body of research that focuses on the educational value of play.

Mr. Duncan, my students voiced distress that your proposed Common Core Educational Standards for children as young as kindergarten in the United States is going in the opposite direction from the model they experienced in Northern Ireland. They are worried that these new standards will undermine play and put more focus on testing, which will ironically doom your admirable goal for introducing the standards—reducing the achievement gap between the black and white, rich and poor children.

My students began trying to answer an important question.  Why do the Northern Irish educational policymakers understand young children’s needs so well, while you and your policymakers here in the U.S. refuse to understand and promote young children’s optimal learning and wellbeing?  One key factor at the heart of your current misguided effort seems to be that policymakers in Northern Ireland listen to early childhood educators, the experts in the learning and development of young children, when determining educational policy. You, Mr. Duncan, do not seem to be doing so.  Only one member of the group creating the new U.S. standards has any clearly identified early childhood experience.

Now, more than ever, I believe that U.S. children are doomed to miseducation and worse if you do not heed the voices of those best trained to foster the wellbeing and education of young children—early childhood educators. It is not too late.* Listening to the advice of leading early childhood educators in the U.S. is your best hope for creating policies that will reverse the disastrous course on which you are currently taking our young children and their teachers.

*Please see the Official Position Statement of the Alliance for Childhood voicing grave concerns about the new standards.  This statement has been signed by leading early childhood educators from around the country.

As a relationship advice columnist for Teen Vogue, I get a lot of mail from girls in “no strings attached” relationships. The girls describe themselves as “kind of” with a guy, “sort of” seeing him, or “hanging out” with him. The guy may be noncommittal, or worse, in another no-strings relationship. In the meantime, the girls have “fallen” for him or plead with me for advice on how to make him come around and be a real boyfriend.

These letters worry me. They signify a growing trend in girls’ sexual lives where they are giving themselves to guys on guys’ terms. They hook up first and ask later. The girls are expected to “be cool” about not formalizing the relationship. They repress their needs and feelings in order to maintain the connection. And they’re letting guys call the shots about when it gets serious.

My concern led me to Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus by sociologist Kathleen A. Bogle. It’s both a short history of dating culture and a study of the sexual habits of men and women on two college campuses. Hooking Up is a nonjudgmental window into the relational and sexual challenges facing young women today. It’s also a fascinating read.

Bogle opens with some downright cool history: In the first decade of the twentieth century, a young man could only see a woman of interest if she and her mother permitted him to “call” on them together. In other words, the women controlled the event.

Cut to a hundred years later: in today’s hook up culture, physical appearance, status and gender conformity determine who gets called on, and Jack, a sophomore, tells Bogle about party life at school: “Well, talking amongst my friends, we decided that girls travel in threes: there’s the hot one, there’s the fat one, and there’s the one that’s just there.” Er, we’ve come a long way, baby.

Like the girls who write to me at Teen Vogue, most of the women Bogle interviewed crammed their dreams of a boyfriend into casual connections determined entirely by the guys. Susan, a first year student, has a typical story: “…We started kissing and everything and then he never talked about…having it be a relationship. But I wanted…in my mind [I was thinking] like: ‘I want to be his girlfriend. I want to be his girlfriend.’….I didn’t want to bring it up and just [say] like: ‘So where do we stand?’ because I know guys don’t like that question.” Susan slept with the guy several times, never expressed her feelings, and ended the “relationship” hurt and dissatisfied.

Bogle’s interview subjects cope by using mental tricks like denial and fantasy to rationalize their choices, even going so far as to “fool themselves into believing they have a relationship when this is actually not the case.” They try to carve out emotional attachments within relationship categories determined by guys – “booty calls,” “friends with benefits,” etc. You can pretty much guess how that ends up.

According to Bogle, in the “dating era” (just the use of the word “era” tells you where college dating has gone), men asked women on dates with the hope that something sexual might happen at the end. Now, Bogle explains, “the sexual norm is reversed. College students…become sexual first and then maybe go on a date someday.”

So what’s the deal here? Is a world in which guys rule the result of the so-called man shortage on campus?  Fat chance. More likely, we’re enjoying some unintended spoils of the sexual revolution. As authors like Ariel Levy and Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin have shown, the sexualization of girls and young women has been repackaged as girl power. Sexual freedom was supposed to be good for women, but somewhere along the way, the right to be responsible for your own orgasm became the privilege of being responsible for someone else’s.

Which is exactly what’s playing out on today’s college campuses. College men, Bogle writes, “are in a position of power,” where they control the intensity of relationships and determine if and when a relationship will become serious. In case you haven’t caught on yet, us liberated girls are supposed to call this “progress.”

To be sure, although it may be a form of “enlightened sexism,” the hook up culture kicks it old school when it comes to the sexual double standard. Bogle writes that the system is “fraught with pitfalls that can lead to being labeled a ‘slut.’” Hook up with too many guys in the same frat, or go too far on the first hook up, drink too much, act too crazy, dress revealing…you know the drill. It’s high school with a better fake ID. Women who went too far and hit the trip wire were “severely stigmatized” by men. Liberating indeed.

Now, just to be clear, I’m all for the freedom to hook up. But let’s face it: despite our desire to give women the freedom to plunder the bar scene and flex their sexual appetites, it would appear a whole lot of them are pretty happy playing by old school rules, thank you very much. Incidentally, one of the women smart enough to figure this out just sold her 5 billionth book, or something like that.

Does that make me a right-winger? Can I still be a feminist and say that I’m against this brand of sexual freedom?  I fear feminism has been backed into a corner here. It’s become antifeminist to want a guy to buy you dinner and hold the door for you. Yet – picture me ducking behind bullet proof glass as I type this — wasn’t there something about that framework that made more space for a young woman’s feelings and needs?

What, and who, are we losing to the new sexual freedom? I realize a guy buying you dinner is not the only alternative to the hook up culture (and I, like Bogle, am not discussing the lives of GLTBQ students here). Still, the question bears asking. Is this progress? Or did feminism get really drunk, go home with the wrong person, wake up in a strange bed and gasp, “Oh, God?”

Worth noting is one of Bogle’s more alarming findings:  young women inaccurately perceive how often and how far their peers are going to hook up. Bogle reports that, despite a 2001 study setting the virginity rate among college students between 25 and 39 percent, the beliefs that “everyone’s doing it” and “I’m the only virgin” are powerful influences on the sexual choices of young women.

Girls are no stranger to hook up culture, as my Teen Vogue readers demonstrate. So here’s my fear: if they get too comfortable deferring to “kind of” and “sort of” relationships, when do they learn to act on desire and advocate for themselves sexually? Will they import these patterns of repressing thoughts and feelings into the more formal dating arrangements that follow after college? Will young women feel pressure not to challenge hook up culture because it appears uncool, unfeminine or antifeminist? (hint, hint: college women, please comment and let me know if I’m off here.)

This book opened my eyes to the need to begin teaching girls to pull back the curtain on the all-powerful hook up culture and deconstruct its terms and conditions. I, for one, am hard at work on lesson plans.

UPDATE: In Which I Get Taken On and Schooled in Mostly Awesome Ways – Don’t miss Salon Broadsheet’s inimitable Kate Harding responding critically to my piece. Nona Willis Aronowitz offers an honest and compelling perspective on the importance of learning hard lessons about sex. I want to make a billboard out of Feministing Community’s Maya Dusenberry’s poetic take on what a feminist’s responsibility is today (it’s the last paragraph).  Amanda Marcotte sends up a searing rebuke. For another challenge, check out blogger Jaclyn Friedman’s post on a recent study that says casual sex does not damage young men or women psychologically. Finally, blogger Per rips me a new one here.

Rachel Simmons is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. As an educator and coach, Rachel works internationally to develop strategies to address bullying and empower girls.

Dear Michelle Obama,

You will soon officially launch your “Let’s Move” Campaign to battle childhood obesity.  Calling it an epidemic that threatens both America’s health and economy, you have identified 4 pillars that will be part of your Campaign:

1. Getting parents more informed about nutrition and exercise
2. Improving the quality of food in schools
3. Making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families
4. Focusing more on physical education

These are certainly appropriate and laudable strategies.  They may even have some impact in reducing the problem of childhood obesity.  For instance, according to the USDA, over 16 million children lived in food insecure households in 2008.  Making healthy food more affordable will make it more possible for these families use their limited food budgets on healthier foods.  Similarly, focusing on more physical education may indeed reduce the extent to which physical education programs are being cut by schools at a time when school budgets are being drastically cut.

But, Mrs. Obama, these 4 pillars are doomed to failure if you do not add an essential 5^th pillar to your Campaign, namely:

5.  Curbing the power of corporations to market junk food to children

Licensed TV characters like SpongeBob SquarePants are often used to sell products to children.

I am sure you know that marketing junk food to children is big business.  A 2008 Federal Trade Commission Report estimated that up to $10 billion was spent annually on advertising food and beverages to children.  A 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that food is the top product advertised to children.  Half of all ads shown during children’s programming are for food.  And 34% of all food ads are for candy.  Is it any surprise that marketing junk food to children has risen dramatically since the Federal Trade Commission lost its power to regulate marketing to children, making the United States unique among industrialized countries in giving free-reign to marketers?

Marketers would not go to all this trouble and expense if they didn’t know what a huge impact their marketing has on children’s consuming and eating habits.  And a 2006 Institute of Medicine review of research found strong evidence that food advertising on television influences children’s food preferences and diets.  The review was especially critical of the practice of using licensed TV characters to promote junk food.

Mrs. Obama, you need to add Pillar 5 to your campaign.  Please do not ignore what we know to be one of the greatest reasons why childhood obesity has increased to epidemic proportions in the past decade—just as the time children spend in front of a screen viewing ads has soared, as has the amount of money spent marketing junk food to them.  Please do not put the whole burden of solving the problem of childhood obesity on parents and schools at the same time that the single biggest factor that would help them do their job and promote the health of children is ignored.

If you really want have an impact on the epidemic of children obesity, it is time to give the Federal Trade Commission back its powers to regulate marketing to children. It is time to put protecting the interests of children and families above the greed of marketers.

The election of Republican Scott Brown to the US Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy made last week a very bad one for Democrats, Obama and a new political agenda.  And appallingly as it turned out, when Brown made his acceptance speech, it also became a very bad week for girls and young women.  During his speech, Brown’s two college-age daughters, Ayla and Ariena, were by his side and dressed to kill.  He introduced them and enthusiastically said, “Yes, they’re both available,” to a huge gale of laughter from the crowd.  What does Brown’s comment tell us about this father’s relationship with his daughters and how he thinks about them?  What does the audience’s response tell us about what has become a normal and acceptable way for men to relate to girls and young women and fathers to daughters?

If this were an isolated, albeit very public, incident, it would be disturbing enough.  But it really reflects a disturbing attitude toward girls that has become increasingly normalized in the new sexualized childhood.  Rather than being valued for what you do and how you behave, girls are judged by whether boys view them as “available” because they look and dress right. More and more, from a very young age, girls learn that popularity and “success” comes from being attractive and available for boys and men.  And more and more boys and men learn to judge girls and young women based on having the “right” body and wearing the “right” sexy clothes.

Seeing one’s daughter as an available sex object does not bode well for father-daughter relationships or for men’s attitudes toward women and girls in general.  Nor does it bode well for the lessons girls will learn about themselves.

Have you seen men react to young girls this way?  What do you think it meant to the girls?  Did it affect them over time?  What did you do or wish you’d done?  What can we do about these issues now?

Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes (which inspired the movie “Mean Girls”) just published her first novel for teens.  Hear her impetus for writing the novel and the healthy messages she hopes to share with readers in this video, or check out her interview on the Today Show.

I recently was happy to be interviewed by Annie Fox, an educator and online guru for empowering youth.  You can hear our conversation on her “Family Confidential” podcast series here.  I’d love to know your thoughts and reactions after you’ve had a listen!

Tickle Me Elmo Barbie is one product of many that inserts sexiness into childhood.

Many early childhood directors are worried about the ways they see young children trying to be sexy, and have bought copies of So Sexy So Soon for their resource libraries. They hoped that parents in the school community would read the book and discuss how they could improve the problems created by sexualized childhood.

They weren’t prepared for the response they often got when parents saw the book—“Phew, I’m sure glad I don’t have to read this until my child is older.” And this view often came from parents of the children in their classroom who had the most sexualized appearance and behavior.

Here are a few examples of what teachers have seen:

• Four-year-old boys and girls walk around the play yard holding hands “on dates.” A conflict occurs over which boy will get the “prettiest” girl.

• Three preschool girls put on fancy clothes in the dress up area, and capture their classmates’ attention as they stick out their chests, wiggle their hips and pucker their lips—doing a “High School Musical” dance.

• In the cafeteria, a kindergartener points out the “popular” table of girls to her teacher.  When the teacher asks her how she knows, she says, “They have the sexy clothes.” [And they do!]

• A five-year-old boy tells a classmate, “I want to have sex with you.” The boy is sent to the school counselor in preparation for suspension because of the school’s “Zero Tolerance” policy. The counselor asks the boy what he wants to do to the girl. He cries, “I want to kiss her, I like her!”

You have probably heard about the sexiness pushed by commercial culture on ‘tweens and teens, an age when the effects are more obvious. But, as the above stories show, this issue really is about young children too.  Sexualized behavior among young children is often seen as “cute,” but foundations built in early years influence later ideas about gender roles, relationships and sexual behavior.

The earlier you notice and take action on this issue, the more you will help children to have healthy social, emotional and sexual development. You will also be better prepared to deal with situations like those described above when they do occur!

I want to thank professionals who are initiating work with parents on sexualization issues and to ask you to keep trying. And, if you’re not already involved, I urge you to think about how you might begin.

What are your concerns about how sexualization is affecting young children? How have you dealt with your concerns and how do you feel about your efforts? Please share your ideas about how more parents and teachers can get attuned to what’s going on and to what they can do about it!

More resources:

CCFC

Shaping Youth

New Moon

T.R.U.C.E.