Dana’s Reviews > Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child's Education > Status Update

" You do not need to force learning upon a child; learning is an inherently feature of being a human being."

Paraphrased "the best time is not the least time...would rather see children develop fully and naturally than be hurried."

Premature teaching often results not only in damage to the child but also in an enormous amount of wasted effort by parents and teachers who feel compelled to teach skills or facts too early.

Probably the greatest single goal of early childhood education should be to build in children a sense of their own worth as persons. The child must learn to feel that he is needed and valued by those about him. His value system is built best through sharing family responsibilities from his earliest years.

...small child's need for freedom to be by himself, just to be himself. Yet one of the young child's greatest needs is for solitude. He must have time alone to work out and act out his fantasies.

To be truly sociable means to have a concern for others, to know how to practice the golden rule and be willing to serve.

"I believe that we should do everything in our power to strengthen and support family life rather than supplant it in any way. ... But we should be wary of those who suggest that centers or experts are intrinsically superior to home settings."

"[Children] receive a better foundation for future development and learning from a secure and responsive home environment in which understanding parents are the teachers."

"But he now questions providing day care for 'all' children simply because it is needed by the disadvantaged. He asks if we would give methadone, the drug cure, to all adults simply because it is needed by addicts."