Erika Christakis

This book is surprisingly difficult to read - meandering, full of jargon, and often swinging back and forth and back and forth on an issue ("This is a serious problem. But is it really a problem? Yes, and this is why it's a problem. But here's how it's not really a problem. Actually, I'll address why this is both problematic and not problematic in Chapter 4" - not an actual quote, just me exaggerating her style).

Still, there are some great points here and I'll quote them so you don't have to go hunting for them:

"If all this sounds confusing, it's because it is confusing. We have neither a coherent system nor a standard language to describe the early learning experiences of children..." (xxii)

"...in a high-quality [preschool] program, adults are building relationships with children and paying a lot of attention to children's thinking processes and, by extension, their communication. They attend carefully to children's language and find ways to make them think out loud." (13)

"The average daycare worker lives on the edge of poverty... In some parts of the country...the care of dead people in funeral homes is more tightly regulated than the oversight of living children in early education and care settings." (15)

"Any educator will tell you that a parent is a child's first and best teacher. And it's really true." (19)

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I wanted to love this book, and not just because the author is another Erika-with-a-k.

The central premise is that children learn best through interacting with their environment through play. We should not push preschool and kindergarten age children into dictated, dully academic materials. We should give children rich environments where they can be guided at their own pace, not lead, through whatever catches their fancy.

This book advocates for finding a happy medium between highly structured environments and completely chaotic ones. Children need the freedom to explore an environment that has been structured for development and adults who can help them when they get stuck. This doesn't require fancy teaching packages. The most important thing is having teachers who are willing to let the students have some control over the curriculum who at the same time can direct the flow of their interests into productive channels. What this requires is the activity most important to early childhood learning: conversation (not dictation).

In addition to emphasizing relationships and environment, Christakis also discusses the importance of helping children develop emotional intelligence: self-control, interacting with others, understanding their own emotions, etc. These skills provide a better foundation for learning standard pre-academic skills like letter recognition or having specific vocabulary. (And, as the author points out, a rich learning environment does better at both skill sets than an environment that focuses on the pre-academic skills in a sterile, boring way.)

What keeps me from rating this book higher, however, is that it sometimes ranting and rambling. The author made good use of research findings and anecdotes, but occasionally would go off on some particular aspect of early childhood education in a way that was neither useful nor well founded. The chapters tended to be repetitive, making the key points about environment, relationships, slowing down, and conversation over and over again through slightly different lenses.

Overall, a good read, but it probably would have been even better with a third less pages.… (more)

The Importance of Being Little is a thorough, carefully considered, and enlightening exploration of America's preschool worlds and options. I know very little about the topic, so I can hardly critique what I read as any kind of expert, but I did find a great deal that jibed with my experiences as a children's librarian and an aunt and a person who was once a child, herself.

Christakis' take is empowering and encouraging even as it picks apart the fallacies and delusions and failures that persist in weakening our efforts in early childhood education and care. Her reasoning wobbles a bit in the take-action chapter---perhaps understandable when one is attempting to present solutions to very complex problems---but overall I felt her representation of what matters in, and to, children and how adults can foster those needs to be nuanced and hopeful and compelling.

I especially found it interesting to consider how my library fits into those needs...and how, too, it falls prey to the same fallacies and delusions and failures as the rest of the country's educational systems. I may not be able to change that, but The Importance of Being Little has certainly broadened my sense of how to make a difference where I am, with the children I meet and come to know.… (more)

"When young children become so unused to the magic of childhood that they lose the will to dawdle and dream, our society will be in serious trouble."

"The Importance of Being Little" is a must-read for parents, caregivers, educators, policy-makers, or anybody concerned about the well-being of our collective society. Christakis tackles an oft overlooked subject, how to embrace and even celebrate the importance of young childhood, with aplomb and wry humor. Much of her observations and cited research seem to confirm many truths that I have already felt nagging the back of my mind. I highly applaud her chronicling the necessity of unstructured play and the undervaluing of sleep, as well as her rejection of many of the rote methods of instruction that inherently follow after accepting that children must be thrust ever-younger into a rigorous--yet ultimately ineffective-- academic machine. Children are not small adults and in fact have such a voracious appetite for learning, wonder, whimsy, and adventure it's nothing short of a tragedy when they are expected to behave as though they are.… (more)