THE KEY IDEAS BEHIND OUR STARTER CURRICULUM
These are the central concepts used to design of our Starter Curriculum:
YOUNG STUDENTS CAN LEARN - We make the same assumption most parents make; that their student can learn. We assume they can learn, even if they can't currently read or write well. We assume that the student's innate ability to learn, to understand, and to explore can be expanded upon and used to the student's benefit.
LITTLE OR NO READING - We feel strongly that a student in this age group can be grossly stigmatized by an inability to read. (The author of these courses and creator of our curriculum was almost entirely unable to read until age 7, and he understands very well how this can make the student appear "slow", an "early failure", "remedial", and all the other nasty names which are applied to such "problems". He has also been a professional author from age 17.) It is certainly critical for anyone intending to survive in the modern world to develop real literacy skills, but that does not mean that literacy is the prerequisite for all other learning, and that with no or limited literacy, a young student is doomed to some grim, perpetual remedial purgatory. We simply do not agree on the overwhelming emphasis being placed on the very young reading.
We're not in any way minimizing the importance of reading and writing skills, and if a child gravitates toward reading easily, that's a wonderful thing! Literacy skills are essential survival skills, today. But a five year old should not be concerned with survival.
We also feel that when the student wants to learn to read and write, he or she probably will.
Our Starter courses are "pre-literate". This means that they require little or no reading or writing skills for the student to get the desired results. Starter is intended to be done simultaneously with a reading program of the student and tutor's choosing. However, at no point should the student be asked (or forced) to read as a part of any of our courses. The only exception we make is in Creative Writing, where the student occasionally is asked to read what he has written, with whatever assistance is needed.
EXPERIENTIAL - So, if a student isn't reading, what IS he doing? "Starter" curriculum is largely based on the concept that children this young need more than to be told (or to read) that something is so; they actually need to experience it as so. Starter Curriculum is built so the student is up, on his feet and moving and doing things every single lesson, actions which will help make vital concepts fun and understandable.
TUTOR-BASED - Starter Curriculum is tutor-intensive. What this means is that a student aged 4 to 6 will work very closely with a tutor, who will read each lesson plan step by step and direct the student through it.
NO TESTS - Starter is "non-test based". There simply are no tests built into the four streams of courses for this age group. We believe that if a student is learning at this young age, the world will see it. We feel that "measurements of progress" at this age are either demeaning or stigmatizing. The "bright student" is pressured toward accelerated learning and "genius" at an age he or she should "smell the flowers". The "average" student is stigmatized as "not bright". And the "slow" student is assigned all sorts of pejorative, embarrassing titles, and "help" he truly may not need.
Tests require scoring and grading, the results of which are potentially degrading for people of any age, but particularly for young children. Since all test scoring is comparative, determining if you did as well as John or Beth, or even all the Johnnies and Beths in the world, testing forces children to compete from a ridiculously early age. This can only result in a fairly large percentage of very young "losers", who simply did not score as well as some other children. It also can stigmatize the parents! "You're child is ____. " (You fill in the blank. Among other answers, you could use "slow", "a genius and in need of special programs", "antisocial", "illiterate", "scoring badly in our very important tests", "in need of drugs", "showing a unique aptitude for underwater basket weaving", etc.) These are disgusting and repulsive educational "results". This sort of thing actually has nothing to do with education, or it should not.
And what are most tests but proof a student can memorize and spit out memorized information on cue? They rarely prove a student actually understands the information studied, and they hardly ever ask the student to use the information he's learned as proof of expertise.
In curriculum for older students, it's important to discover what the student did or did not learn so that he can restudy targeted information he didn't totally understand. But to do this to a child of ages 4 to 6 is to place unnecessary pressure on very young and fragile shoulders. Education at this age should be about first exposures, discovery of the world, and the unveiling of one's own abilities and insights. It should not be about evaluation of those abilities and insights. Allowed to flower, the student will. Critiqued, they will rarely realize their potential. Testing today is a form of institutionalized "critique", and very rarely anything else. This leads us to our next point.
NO CRITIQUE - Starter Curriculum is also "non-critique based". In line with our "no test" concept, we ask that tutors and others please allow children to experience their own ideas and insights without outside "help", "acceptance", "rejection", "guidance" or "qualification". Possibly one of the best and most desired results of education would be a self-assured child who feels that his own creativity and insight is valuable and deserves to be explored and expressed. This result becomes impossible to achieve when a child's education is darkened by other people's opinions of his work and of his opinions.
Unless a student is unusually thick-skinned, most children's image of themselves and their abilities are profoundly colored by the "commentary" and "aid" offered by parents, teachers, and other adults they look up to. A single critique of a child's creative effort can push the child out of an entire area of the arts for life, and we at First Step have seen this to be precisely the case on many occasions. As an adult, you may be able to recall being interested at one time in something, and being persuaded not to follow up on it for any one of many silly reasons. These might have included (you can fill in the blanks) "____ is a rough and competitive field, too competitive for you"; "You're not ____ enough to succeed at ____"; and "You seem to be struggling at ______. Perhaps we should try something easier?"
Critique is deadly at any age. At the age Starter Curriculum is intended for, ages 4 to 6, it can be fatal to the student's future interests and efforts. We avoid it at all costs, and ask that you to do the same as you work with these courses and your student(s).
ONE STUDENT, OR A GROUP - We understand that you may have a lone student who needs to work without other children. We also know that you may have two or more students in this age range to work with. Every lesson plan is designed so that it can be done by a single student, or by a group of two or more, even up to classroom-sized groups. When specific actions need to be done to make an exercise work for a single student or a group, these are specified.
FULLY SCRIPTED LESSON PLANS - We do not ask that you, the parent or teacher or tutor, write curriculum. We assume that's why you came to us. Accordingly, every step in every lesson plan is "scripted", asking the tutor to say and do very precise things, in order to achieve very precise results. We also often provide "prompts" that the tutor can use if the student is struggling with a specific exercise. These prompts are built directly into the exercise, in Starter Curriculum. We in fact hope you will simply "follow the script" without comment or critique, and let your student enjoy the experience. We hope that you will also have fun, and we believe you may.
FAMILIES AND TEACHERS COUNT - At this young and formative age, we believe that the student should be able to count on those closest to him for assistance and guidance. One can never have enough people love and support their efforts, and this is obviously never truer than during our youngest and most vulnerable years. As we mentioned, the young student looks up to those adults around him, and these have a profound effect on his or her future. First Step Starter Curriculum is designed to be done by a trusted adult in close and good communication with the student. The two hours per day, five days a week needed to do the curriculum successfully, should be seen as "quality time" with the student. It is.
