Tulpen!

Yesterday my friend Louis and I took our bikes to North Holland and spent the day tooling around the vast tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth fields out there.  This cultivation area is near the beach of the North Sea, so we also had lunch and dinner stops at beach restaurants.  Of course, I had heard before about the bulb fields and seen pictures-- but being out there in the middle of them in mid April was quite another experience!  I have never been in the Netherlands at this time of year before.  Photographs cannot convey the intensity of the colors in some of these patches of flowers.  And the smells!  When we rode by large fields of flowers, especially the hyacinths, the perfume was almost overpowering. Imagine the smell of 100,000 flowers coming right at you! The whole day was a sensory experience-- sights, sounds, smells, and oh yes, sore muscles.  We did get lost for a while.  Well, not really lost.  As Daniel Boone, the legendary American frontiersman is reported to have said, "I can't say I've ever been lost. But I was bewildered once for 3 days!"  We finally did get back to where we had parked the car.  To see more flower photos, go to my Picasa site.

What's the deal with helmets?

Commuters riding through the Vondelpark

The Dutch ride bikes more miles per person per year than any other country.  According to one Dutch safety expert, they have the lowest injury-accident rate on bikes than any other country.  With all the people riding, you hardly EVER see someone  wearing a helmet.  They DO crash, sometimes (rarely)-- I have seen it.  They ARE skillful riders.  (When you see the 3 year olds scooting along on two wheel bikes, you understand why!) Yet the safety expert estimates that if all Dutch riders wore helmets, there would be 1,000 fewer head injuries in the Netherlands each year!  So why don't they wear them?  I've heard a number of explanations-- vanity (messes up the hair), doesn't look cool, it's uncomfortable, too hard to manage carrying a helmet around all day when bike is your basic mode of transportation, and "we don't need them because we know how to avoid a serious fall."  The notion of a helmet law has actually been discussed in Parliment.  But I think the politicians are afraid to pass what would be an immensely unpopular and difficult to enforce law!  Maybe what it comes down to is people's sense of individual freedom and not wanting anyone to tell them what they SHOULD do! Part of the Dutch "live and let live" (or in rare cases die!) attitude?

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More about the Pistoia preschools

Three year olds creating with clay and natural objects

Since my time last month in the Pistoia preschools and infant centers I have been thinking a lot about some of the things I saw and talked with people about.  One thing that keeps coming back to me has to do with what we in the USA call "accountability" in early childhood education.  Especially in our “best” early childhood programs like Head Start or university lab schools, we are quite concerned with showing, in a quantified way, that the program is effective or beneficial to children.  This means we typically have some standardized measures of development or school readiness that we administer to all the children, so we can show how much children learned from time 1 to time 2.  On a national level, we do studies to show if a particular program or curriculum is “effective,” meaning it has a significant and measureable effect on learning in a large number of children. 

Documentation panel in the hallway about "Experiencing"

In Pistoia, on the other hand, accountability seems to be more personal and individualized.  Teachers rely on documentation panels like the one here to show parents and others how the children are learning. There seems to be at least a tacit aversion to standardized assessment.  The view I got from the educators was something like, "every child is unique" or "we meet each child where he/she is, and go from there." It is obvious, by observing and listening, that the teachers are thoughtful and reflective about each child and what she is experiencing, and what kinds of learning experiences might be beneficial.   Portfolios or diaries are used to document the experiences and development of each child.  Children with special needs are seemingly served by carefully observing their needs and abilities, having conversations with their parents, and working out the best approach on a day-to-day basis.  (I am sure sometimes kids must be referred for in-depth evaluations, but I did not hear about that...)  It all seems to work well, even without the numbers and standardized tests. Children, parents, and teachers seem satisfied that this individualized, qualitative approach works. The funding for these programs has been generous, compared to what we have in the U.S.  I find myself wondering, though, as city and national budgets constrict (and they are!) if there will be demands for more a quantified accountability.  Or maybe these services for children are viewed more as a right and thus not subject to our kind of accountability?  Maybe measurement and standardization are not the Italian way.  What do you think?
To see more photos of the Pistoia preschools, click here.