"The fact that the newly introduced Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 'curriculum' encourages you 'to teach children through play' succinctly sums up all that's wrong with it," Richard House says.

"The very idea that it is appropriate to have a 'curriculum' for young children is absurd and represents a totally inappropriate encroachment of a schooling ideology into the lives of young children."

A report in The Guardian points out that the Open Eye (early years education) campaign has the support of notables such as childcare guru Penelope Leach and the author Philip Pullman.

Last July, following a letter signed by a number of such notables, the government agreed to review the two most controversial of the 69 targets of the EYFS curriculum (which came into law in England this month). These were: 

• that by about age five, most children would be able to use phonics to write simple regular words and attempt more complex words; 
• that they would be able to write their own names and begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation.

House isn't satisfied with these goals, or indeed with the other 67 which, he says, "affect the whole mentality that teachers have. They'll be thinking about Ofsted and pressure from their local authorities to meet targets."

House's work as a psychotherapist has led him to the conclusion that "most of the problems adults have have their roots in childhood experience".

"What can we do to lessen the possibility of children growing up with neurotic conditions?" he asks.

In the early 1990s, House discovered the Steiner movement, along his own talent for working with young children. It was the Steiner training that made him worry about Labour's early childhood education policies - the first of which, in 1998, did not even mention play.

The Steiner philosophy opposes "waking children up" from their dreamlike, childish state before they are developmentally ready, around age six-and-a-half or seven. Little children learn unconsciously, through experiences, and should have opportunities to do real things like baking bread and planting a garden, rather than having their play harnessed to external learning goals.

"Young children are extraordinary beings. You only have to watch a young child seeing something for the first time to see the extraordinary wonder and reverence young children have for the world. It should be nurtured and not intruded upon."

Today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum," according to House.

The Open Eye campaign is holding a policy seminar in London next month. This will be followed by an international conference next year. House hopes the seminar will provide a chance for opposing parties to find common ground.

"There's been very little listening going on, and maybe that applies to us as well," he says.

He also wants to clarify Open Eye's position.

"We've been labelled as an anti-EYFS campaign. We are anti certain clearly defined aspects of the EYFS." However, its welfare regulations are "sensible and very child-centred", House adds.
(Source: The Guardian)