Parents assume that pushing academic learning earlier is better for children - stimulating their minds - and certainly does no harm.  But what if it does?

I've spent the last few days at the first cross-movement conference for Jewish Day School educators - as a lay leader, certainly not an educator.  It's pretty cool to observe from the inside the thoughts, challenges and aspirations of people in North America, Israel and South Africa who have committed their lives to Jewish education. The evening keynote featured a renowned scholar in the study of education - Dr. Lee Shulman from Stanford University and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Shulman has studied the educational process of creating doctors, lawyers, nurses, clergy and more - but his talk was easily graspable by a lay person like me. And his lifetime of research discloses some very obvious, but odd ingredients for success in school.