Marilyn Lewis* is the CEO of Fun Factory Education Corp. (FFEC), a company founded in February 2007, with a mission devoted entirely to the betterment of child care in America. It is her longstanding position that, saying you stand for Family Values is great and ever so popular, however, Valuing the Family by your corporate and personal deeds are far more important and beneficial to the long-term welfare of our communities in general.
A combination of 25 years of child care experience and the most current academic research and published studies bolsters FFEC’s commitment to its teaching methods—making education MORE entertaining.
The main objective of the Fun Factory Education Corp.’s “EnDUCATE”™ philosophy is to demonstrate that children require more than a repetitive delivery of academic materials. Ms. Lewis has stated for the record, “I have found that integrating early childhood materials with a generous dose of controlled and planned entertainment goes a long way in the ongoing effort to engage children for the entire scheduled period of learning.”
It is important to understand that such a position (i.e., adding more entertainment to education) is one that is being hotly contested on a number of fronts, primarily due to the unanswered questions of “how much is too much” or “how much is just right.”
Notwithstanding the giants of the entertainment industry’s attempts at educating whilst entertaining, the consensus of the academic community is still weighted towards the industries efforts being out of balance and in many cases harmful.
Ms. Lewis takes a position far closer to that of the entertainment industry, in that she believes the entertainment value has significant merit when applied in appropriate dosage. Her EnDUCATE™** teaching method accomplishes that balance, in her opinion, and she steadfastly defends her position against the cynics who are anti-entertainment simply because they disagree with the methods being applied by the industry at large and at present.
Ms. Lewis takes her EnDUCATE™ System even further by concentrating on the Emotional Literacy components sometimes neglected, and often underserved in early childhood education. Her research into this area has allowed her to apply for a Patent, through which she demonstrates how children can actually have fun and make great strides by discussing and understanding their emotions, particularly in the presence of their peers.
“Emotional life is a domain that, as surely as math or reading, can be handled with greater or lesser skill, and requires its unique set of competencies. And how adept a person is at those is crucial to understanding why one person thrives in life, whereas another, of equal intellect, dead ends: Emotional aptitude is a meta-ability, determining how well we can use whatever other skills we have, including raw intellect.”
--Maria Montessori (1966)
“It is time for those with an interest in school readiness to consider that a foundation in literacy must include the construct of “emotional literacy.”
--Daniel Goleman (1995)
As a dedicated advocate and stanch supporter of Emotional Literacy at the Preschool level, one might say Ms. Lewis is on a mission or campaign, and yes, even a crusade to change how child care providers educate children in America. We must do more to develop our preschool child's emotional literacy, if we are to seriously claim we wish to stop the spiral of "problem cases" we are finding in grades starting as early as kindergarten.
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