Consensus is growing that high-quality early education is a critical support to all subsequent learning. In early childhood education quality is generally considered holistically in terms of the physical environment, programmatic structure (e.g., length of the school day), curriculum and instruction, and the nature of interactions between teachers…

The author describes an engineering and architecture course for junior high school students. It is a nonmathematical approach to understanding why buildings and bridges stand up and, basically, covers the same content as that of an architecture course he offers to Columbia University graduate students. (Author/KC)