pre-school paralysis

Just got around to reading The Junior Meritocracy piece in a recent NY Mag. Love what the head of The Calhoun School has to say:

I want a school full of kids who day dream. I want kids who are fun to be with. I want kids who don't want to answer the questions on those tests in the way the adult wants them to be answered, because that kid is already seeing the world differently. In fact, I want kids who are cynical enough at age 4 to know that there's really something wrong with someone asking them these theings and think, 'I'm going to screw with them in the process!'"

Aren't these many of our special education students? He also says:

You have to play with blocks. You have to make up stories. You have to muck around. Arithmetic and decoding language aren't life---they're symbolic representations of other things. And education is being diverted into focusing on these symbolic representations of the very experiences kids are being denied.