At least one of our kids – now in his 30’s – was fortunate enough to attend Roseville Community Preschool in Southern California when it was run by the legendary Bev Bos. After we moved – first to Northern California, then to Colorado Springs – we were fortunate enough to add two more kids and to find a worthy successor for early childhood education in the Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School (RWCNS). Now you may or may not have kids of your own. You may or may not care about education, in early childhood or otherwise. And you may or may not have heard of either Bev Bos or RWCNS. But any way you slice it, there is one thing you must always remember: Don’t Move The Muffin Tins. That was the title of Bev Bos’ landmark 1978 book, subtitled: “A Hands-Off Guide to Art for the Young Child.”
I’ll leave it to you to figure out WHY you shouldn’t move the muffin tins. Suffice it to say, though, that the proof is in the pudding. And if you were to ask any of our three kids today about their early childhood education experience at Roseville and/or RWCNS, I’m pretty sure all of them would tell you that they got off on the right foot educationally speaking.
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Who cares? Well, apparently not Columbia University. They have their own version of progressive early childhood education, called The Red Balloon, and they’re letting it fold. The story from the current issue of the New Yorker is here. In a word: An institution of higher learning with a thirteen-billion-dollar endowment has decided to discontinue serving twenty-five preschoolers from Harlem. Or, as the NYer article succinctly puts it:
Why would Columbia allow itself to be seen as the ogre crushing a bunch of little kids and their caregivers under its foot? It may be that, in the decades since the university’s president manifested better child care on campus partly out of a sense of pure chagrin, Columbia has fully metabolized its identity as a giant real-estate-holding company, one with a crucial sideline in educational services that exempts it from paying property taxes.
My guess is that without significant external pressure, Columbia will do whatever it wants. My hope is that they will see this for the public relations disaster that it certainly is, and reconsider. Only time will tell. And in the meantime, under any and all circumstances: Don’t. Move. The. Muffin. Tins.
But do you know the Muffin Man? The one on Drury Lane?
This from Marianna McJimsey:
Wonderful to hear the words, Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School. Two of our three children were long time students there. I was treasurer for many years including the what was then frightening move from a building on the Colorado College campus (i.e. we were being taken care of nicely by CC) to launching the purchase of the 19th Street house. How very grown up of us.
Minnow (Miriam) McPhee, niece of Ruth Washburn, was the founder of RWCNS and she was the director during the sojourn of our children. Minnow believed, as did RW, that children should play when they are little and that they learn so much by play.
RW is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs along with other members of her family. Her father was a beloved rector at St. Stephen’s Parish, 1893 – 1898. He especially appealed to the CC students. Our Washburn Field at the college is named for him.