The Right Way To Read

When you walk through the brightly colored door of the Roseville Cooperative Preschool in northern California, you're entering a magical, pint-size world where 3- and 4-year-olds are masters of the universe. At the science table, they use magnifying glasses to explore piles of flowers, cacti and shells. In the smock-optional art area, budding da Vincis often smear blotches of red, blue and yellow directly on the table. (It's wiped off with a damp cloth when the next artist steps up.) There are ropes for climbing and two loft areas: one carpeted and filled with books and a dollhouse, and the other with a clear Plexiglas floor, perfect for keeping an eye on the activities below. There are no letters or numbers on the walls to distract from this focused play. The only rule, says director and founder Bev Bos, is that the kids are in control. "I tell other teachers, 'Forget about kindergarten, first grade, second grade'," she says. "We should be focusing on where children are right now."

Sounds like an idyllic preschool learning environment, right? Wrong, according to a growing number of early-education researchers. Until quite recently, Bev Bos's philosophy was the standard at preschools around the country, and there are still lots of teachers who passionately defend the idea that they should be helping kids feel secure and learn to play well with others, not learn the three Rs. But researchers now say the old approach ignores mounting evidence that many preschoolers need explicit instruction in the basics of literacy--the stuff most of us started to learn in first grade, how words fall on a page and the specific sounds and letters that make up words. New brain research shows that reading is part of a complex continuum that begins with baby talk and scribbles, and culminates in a child with a rich vocabulary and knowledge of the world. While some children acquire the literacy skills they need by osmosis, through their everyday experiences, many don't. Most at risk are children of poverty, who are twice as likely to have serious trouble reading. But studies have also shown that at least 20 percent of middle-class children have reading disabilities and that early intervention could save many of them from a lifetime of playing catch-up.

Earlier this month the increasingly fractious schoolyard brawl--between old-style educators who fear kids will be pushed to read and the new guard who fear they won't be pushed enough--became even more heated when President George W. Bush rolled out his early-childhood-education plan. Bush put himself squarely in the early-reading camp when he proposed retraining all 50,000 Head Start teachers in the most effective ways to provide explicit instruction in the alphabet, letter sounds and writing--whether through responsive reading to kids, early writing experiences or carefully designed group projects. He also wants Head Start to use a detailed literacy-screening test and asked for an unprecedented $45 million for preschool-reading research. Bush's domestic-policy adviser, Margaret Spellings, says preschool teachers shouldn't be afraid of these changes. "This is not about putting little kids in desks at age 3," Spellings says. "This is about doing things right from the beginning of life. It's the social-emotional plus the cognitive."

That hasn't reassured many preschool teachers, nor the National Head Start Association, which has vigorously attacked the Bush plan. "There's far more to children's development than just reading," says Cynthia Cummings, executive director of Community Parents Inc., a Head Start program in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. "We have children who come in who are not potty trained, who don't know how to sit down in a chair, who have difficulty following a routine, who may have some other types of delays that will affect their language. You have to address those." This holistic approach could get a boost this week, when Sen. Ted Kennedy, a longtime supporter of Head Start, is expected to introduce legislation that would create a comprehensive early child-care system, with reading readiness--the main focus of the Bush plan--as just one component.

Both sides in this debate agree that young children learn best when their five senses are engaged, when teachers and parents provide hands-on ways to master important language skills. But teachers like Bev Bos worry that making the ABCs a top priority will mean "drill and kill" instead of rich language experiences. "I'm afraid kids won't have any childhood," Bos says. Preliteracy advocates admit there's a danger that the new ideas will be incorrectly implemented. They say teacher training will help, and they stress that in the most effective preliteracy programs, there is no "reading hour" or all-group instruction, no teacher with a pointer at the head of the class. The goal isn't to get all kids actually decoding words at 4 or 5--though some may be ready to do that--but rather to expose them to the basics. The kids think they're just having fun when they play word games with blocks, although their teachers know better.

At the Children's Village Child Care Center in Philadelphia, nearly 200 children, many from non-English-speaking homes, spend much of their day engaged in activities specifically designed to develop pre-reading skills. There are lots of alphabet puzzles and games, as well as reading and writing areas full of books, crayons, pencils and paper. The school's library includes bilingual Chinese-English children's books because many of the parents are Chinese immigrants. "We want to encourage parents to read to the children, no matter what the language," says director Mary Graham.