However, we cannot go on applying the 'one size fits all' rhetoric to the term 'early years', when the learning and development at nursery level is so markedly different from that of a child towards the end of the reception year, perhaps nearly six years old.
Sir Peter advises the DCSF to ensure that by 2010 all pre-school children are taught about time and capacity. Was he ever taught such concepts before age five, or did he learn them quite easily later, on a 'need to know' basis? Young children live in the present. The power of now means more to them than clock-watching!
Pre-school children are naturally numerate, and if we intervene too early, then we are in danger of eroding fragile, but growing self-esteem. Early teaching of mathematics will do more to create the familiar culture of 'I am no good at maths', due to separating the head from the heart too early.
Professor Lilian Katz, an international child education expert, believes passionately in the need for self-directed learning at this tender age. Montessorians and others also believe in this approach if children are to develop in accord with their natural psychological hungers. Encouraging practitioners to enrich their learning environments creatively will do far more to enable children to be 'free to learn' than directly stimulating their intellects too early.
It's the hand that develops the brain, not the narrow focus of specialists. Do the politicians not realise that, given the choice, children under five try to resist any direct formal lessons, whether from pedagogues or parents? This doesn't mean that they can't; it just means that they would rather not, because they have their own developmental agenda - it's called 'nature'.
Dr Maria Montessori beautifully explained this through a photographic analogy. A film is developing in the dark room of children's minds, and if we call it out too soon we'll destroy it.