The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children

by Alison Gopnik

Preschool teachers and child-care workers tend to have something more like a “gardener” model: kindergarten, after all, was traditionally supposed to be just what it says—a garden for children that was different from school. But they are currently caught in a kind of pincer movement between two groups who assume the “carpenter” model. One group includes the parents who want to shape their three-year-olds into Harvard freshmen. The other group includes the policy makers who want to be sure of “outcomes” in the form of high test scores. Both these groups tend to take an instrumental carpenter’s approach to preschool. One New York mother sued her child’s preschool because the children were just playing instead of preparing for tests. You can even see this in the way the word “preschool” has replaced “child care” in these discussions, as if caring for children is less valuable than schooling them.