In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

PROLOGUE At 6 A.M., the parking lot in front of Red Caboose is dark and empty. The chain-link gate that fences the playground from the parking lot swings open in the warm predawn breeze, whistling as it scrapes back and forth across asphalt . Inside the gate the wooden play structures are humped shadows, taking on fairy-tale shapes in the early morning darkness-a castle turret, a drawbridge , Rapunzel's silent tower. There are no ogres, no kings or queens, no wizards, but there is still magic here, waiting to be set free. Two hours from now the gate will be firmly closed, the playground alive with children crisscrossing the blacktop on tricycles, swarming over ladders and slides and ropes and tires, belly-flopped on swings, digging small feet into piles of wood chips, patting handfuls of sand into cakes and other offerings. Rush-hour traffic will trundle down Williamson Street, the steady whoosh whoosh of leavetaking and arrival. And inside the gray stucco walls, a community will be reinventing itself, as it does each day-grown-ups chatting in the cluttered hallways, teachers setting out cups and plates of food, mothers and fathers blowing kisses, waving , sometimes turning away from a tearstained face. In the long days here, nothing much happens and everything happens. So many lives come together under this roof-parents, staff, and of course the children. Toddlers in tiny wooden chairs scoop eggs from paper plates into their mouths. Two-year-olds carom offthe walls. A preschooler carefully carries a steaming bowl of oatmeal from the kitchen. Four-year-olds tell elaborate stories as they race up the stairs for breakfast. Across the country, scenes like these are played out thousands of times a day, with infinite variations. In 1995 there were about 7 million children in center-based care- 31 percent of all children under age six1_ plus another 4 million in other forms of care.2 Preschoolers-children ages three, four, and 3 Copyrighted Material 4 PROLOGUE five-are more likely to be enrolled at centers than younger children.3 But very few parents really know what goes on after they leave. Some are afraid to know, frightened of discovering that the people they entrust with their children are not as thoughtful and caring and warm as they wish. Separation is painful for parents, too; it's easier to blind yourself, to not know what happens after you say good-bye. Others don't have the time or energy to find out what their children do all day and how they do it. As a society we don't talk much about what goes on in child-care centers. We seem to have decided that the day-to-day experiences of young children are not important or interesting enough to examine. This is wrong, and we are beginning to know it. More and more, the research shows that what goes on in the first few years of life sets the tone and timbre of what is to come. It may seem, after a long day with a young child, that nothing has happened, but that's not true. It's just that it's happening inside the child's brain, where we can't see it. Synapses are firing, wrinkles are forming in the cerebrum, the groundwork for intelligence is being laid. Language is developing, along with social and emotional abilities-all the tools for what we think ofas a good life, a happy life, a useful life. The sudden leaps ofcognitive ability, or language, or emotional maturity that all children make during their development are not really leaps at all but the most visible pieces ofan internal puzzle in progress. The poet William Carlos Williams wrote, "So much depends; upon; a red wheel; barrow; glazed with rain; water; beside the white; chickens."4 For children, too, much depends on the simple details of living. What seem to us little things-a tricycle, a picture book, a blissful hug-are for young children the things that shape their lives. Anyone who's ever loved a child knows this, ofcourse. As my older daughter, Anna, grew out ofinfancy, I watched her world take on meaning and form. By chance more than anything else my husband and I enrolled Anna part time at Red Caboose. She stayed there for four years, right up until kindergarten, and in that time we all got an education. Our education began when we started looking at centers. I...

Share