There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

Part of the explanation can likely be found in education reforms that have increased the academic requirements for kindergarten beginning in the 1980s and further exacerbated by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and, most recently, the Common Core State Standards, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Childhood. Although child-centered early education models can be found in the US through the Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia approaches, “teacher-led instruction in kindergartens has almost entirely replaced the active, play-based, experiential learning that we know children need from decades of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and neuroscience,” the group notes. And now pre-K is suffering from the ripple effects.