What each one believes about a child, what a day actually looks like, how it assesses — and the criticisms each has to answer.
Every recognised system on this page agrees on one thing, whatever else it disputes: in the early years you assess a child by observing them at their ordinary work, over time — never by sitting them down for a test.
A child has an inbuilt drive to become independent, and passes through 'sensitive periods' when a particular learning comes easily. The adult's job is to prepare an environment and then get out of the way.
Read → 1945, in a town rebuilding after the warThe child has a hundred languages — drawing, clay, movement, music, words — and school's task is to keep all of them alive. Learning is a collaboration between children, teachers and parents.
Read → 1919, for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria factory in StuttgartChildhood has distinct seven-year phases, and in the first the child learns through imitation, rhythm and imagination rather than instruction.
Read → 1962, with the Perry Preschool Project in Ypsilanti, MichiganChildren learn best through active participation that they themselves plan. Adults are partners, not directors.
Read → 1837 in Germany; he coined the word 'kindergarten' in 1840Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood — not a break from learning but the form learning takes.
Read → 1916, New YorkDevelopment and social experience are inseparable: children build understanding by acting on their real world and talking about it with others.
Read → the 1950s; spread to Britain from 1993Regular, repeated sessions in a natural space, in all weather, with the child leading and taking managed risks.
Read → the 1920s in Gujarat and MaharashtraTeach through play, story and the child's own language and surroundings — and take early childhood seriously as education, not as minding.
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