ret the meaning of their behavior. Similarly, the younger the children, the less able they are to articulate their ideas, needs, and feelings, and the greater the burden on teachers to make accurate inferences about what the children are thinking and feeling.
In the years before they are ready for formal learning, early childhood education fills a crucial gap, and this need cannot be met by simply scaling down some version of the elementary school curriculum for smaller hands and younger minds.
Although all human beings progress through a series of developmental steps, learning, as it were, to crawl before they walk, this progress is individual. Therefore, early childhood education must take into account the peculiar nature of early development and the progress of the individual child through these stages of development. Learning during this period involves the whole child. Young children must be participants in the process, not passive receptors; Paula Span observes, "One of the most important forms of early learning stems from what researchers call 'response-contingent experience' - the baby performs an action, and something happens in response." As Hilda L. Jackman writes, "Growth is a sequential process, . . . children pass through stages of development, and . . . children learn through their play and by actively participating in the learning experiences offered."
Individuality is also inherent in the child's cultural heritage and ethnicity. The individual child arrives in the classroom already influenced by the family's "values or beliefs, language, patterns of thinking, appearance, and behavior." Socialization is part of the early education process - that is, acculturation into the mainstream ways of behaving. Yet teachers must also remain sensitive to the individual's differences; education should become a process of adding to the child's understanding of and reaction to the world, not a means of taking awa...