Twenty-two hard-hitting chapters by leading educators, researchers, policy-makers, and parents advocate for alternative ways for slowing childhood, better policy-making, and, most important, the right learning at the right time in children growth, when they are developmentally ready.

CHAPTERS

PART I: Policy Making and the Erosion of Childhood:
The Case of the Early Years Foundation Stage

1. The EYFS and the Real Foundations of Children Early Years � Penelope Leach
2. Challenging Government Policy-making for the Early Years:
Early Open EYE Contributions � Margaret Edgington, Richard House, Lynne Oldfield, and Sue Palmer
3. Against the Government Grain: The Experience of Forging a Path to EYFS Exemption � JOHN DOUGHERTY
4. The Impact of the EYES on Childminders � Arthur and Pat Adams
5. A Parent Challenge to New Labour Early Years Foundation Stage � Frances Laing
6. The Tickell Review of the Early Years Foundation Stage: An pen EYE� dialogue � The Open EYE Campaign

PART II: The Foundations of Child Development and Early Learning:
Perspectives, Principles and Practices

7. The Myth of Early Stimulation for Babies � Sylvie H彋u
8. Current Perspectives on the Early Childhood Curriculum � Lilian Katz
9. Physical Foundations for Learning � Sally Goddard Blythe
10. The Unfolding Self he Essence of Personality � Kim Simpson
11. The Democratization of Learning � Wendy Ellyatt
12. The Steiner Waldorf Foundation Stage � 13. Can We Play? � David Elkind
14. Play � Transforming Thinking � Tricia David
15. Challenging the Reggio Emilia Approach with Relational Materialist Thinking and an Ethics of Potentialities � Hillevi Lenz Taguchi

Part III: Advocacy, Research and Policy Making
for Children Early Years� Learning

16. f I Wanted My Child to Learn to Read and Write, I Wouldn Start from Here� � Sue Palmer
17. Viewing the Long-Term Effects of Early Reading with an Open Eye � Sebastian Suggate
18. Early Childhood Research and its Political Usage: Some Cautionary Remarks � Richard House
19. Does Not Compute, Revisited: Screen Technology in Early Years Education � Aric Sigman
20. An Inveterate Early Childhood Campaigner � Margaret Edgington interviewed by Richard House

Part IV: Ways Ahead to Achievable Futures

21. Education and Paradigm Shift � Grethe Hooper Hansen
22. Early Childhood: A Policy-Making Perspective � Barry Sheerman
Towards the Future: Implications and Recommendations for Educationalists and Policy-makers � Wendy Scott and Richard House
AFTERWORD � Richard Brinton and Gabriel Millar