Several people have e-mailed me this recent Slate article by developmental scientist Alison Gopnik, which Slate, in its Slate-y wisdom, has chosen to run with the subhead, "New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire."

Does this mean, folks are asking, that all this pre-k stuff you keep talking about could actually be hurting kids?

Not exactly. Gopnik's research, presented in the article, is interesting stuff: Basically, she compared how children engage and problem solve with a novel toy when teachers directly demonstrate its workings to them, as opposed to encouraging them to explore it. Children who were encouraged to explore demonstrated more creativity, engagement, and were more successful in figuring out how to get the toy to do something new than those who were shown directly how the toy worked.

These findings will probably not surprise most people who are involved in conversations about preschool quality--because they reflect what research already tells us about how good preschool teachers interact with kids.

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