ANNOUNCER: Coming up on IMPACT, in northern Italy, very young children are creating wonders. Teachers are now bringing this richness to America's children. It's children's education Italian style coming to a school near you. IMPACT, CNN and "Time" on special assignment.

FRAZIER: President Clinton's stroll through the White House with a band of children this week and his proposal to spend $21 billion a year on daycare brought the status of preschoolers to the attention of lawmakers. And they're not the only adults thinking about our young ones.

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(voice-over) Teachers in several American school districts are looking over a radically different way to foster early learning, a new way to teach that comes from the old world. IMPACT was along with one teacher as she got a firsthand look at the Reggio approach.

FRAZIER: As did a lot of schoolteachers, Frances Roland of St. Louis, Missouri, went to Italy this summer. It wasn't time off. They traveled to Reggio nell'Emilia, a small city in Italy's prosperous north to learn how public preschools here manage to produce this: an amusement park for birds with ferris wheels, fountains, a pond, all designed by very young children, 3, 4, and 5 years old. And these are not standout students, not prodigies, not gifted, no smarter than their counterparts in New York or Tulsa or Seattle. But it's easy to see that something is very different here. Inside, a wind machine created by 4-year-olds; their visions plastered and painted into frescoes; their city in three dimensions, sprawling across tables.

(on-camera) What parents and teachers in Reggio decided is that preschool education can do a lot more than its traditional mission of imparting social skills, like sharing toys, or motor skills, like hopping on one foot or learning how to hold a pen. Here, they focus on cognitive development because teachers believe that children, right from their earlier years onward, are trying to develop explanations for the world around them.

(voice-over) The Reggio approach is confirmed by the latest neuroscience which says a baby's brain is primed for work. Way before school begins, a child's brain is laying down patterns for learning and emotion. It is sensory experience, say neuroscientists, that builds these patterns. Drawing, sculpting, painting, wire the brain for life.

HOWARD GARDNER, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION: What Reggio teaches us is that even if we knew everything in the world about the brain and about the mind, we couldn't really tell what children could do. And what we learned from Reggio is that children who are 4 or 5, 6 years of age can follow an interesting idea, an interesting object, an interesting experience for weeks or months, bring fresh insight into it, bring imagination to it, create projects, reflect on them, be proud of them and go on to something else.

FRAZIER: The Reggio approach has attracted international interest. These parents are in St. Louis, where three schools, two private and one public, have adopted the Reggio approach. That means very young children are considered capable of solving very complex problems.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE CHILD #1: It's right there. The picture is up there.

UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: Can you tell me about this piece right here?

FRAZIER: What goes on is written down and photographed by one of the teachers for a record that will go up on the wall, a document that shows children their ideas are valued and which showcases their work for any student or visitor to see. And in the heart of it all, physically and philosophically: the art studio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD #1: Can me and Chu have all the clay right here?

TEACHER: Sure, you can use as much as you want. The Reggio approach gives children more time with the art teacher and more materials to work with than most schools, more ways for children to express themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE CHILD #2: I'm fixing this Batman house.

FRAZIER: And do you all do the blocks at the same time all together?

CHILDREN: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD #2: Some people get to do it and some people don't because some people don't want to be there and some people do.

FRAZIER: For Frances Roland, this is a big change. She's a veteran teacher, worked at a drop-off daycare center.

FRANCES ROLAND, TEACHER: I wouldn't call that educational at all. That was care giving.

FRAZIER: And also at a church preschool.

ROLAND: That was your traditional preschool. There were themes based on the season of the year: apples for September. You know, in October, you taught about pumpkins and all the things about fall.

FRAZIER: Many preschool teachers in the United States work from such lesson plans.

ROLAND: It is sort of a top-down teaching method. It's an adult giving small children the information that they want them to have. I just think you sell them short by expecting that they would only want to do something a certain way.

FRAZIER: Well, at those ages, how much is going on with them?

ROLAND: Just about more than anybody can handle. The possibilities are endless.

AMELIA GAMBETTI: I think the city of Reggio nell'Emilia has decided to invest in the future.

FRAZIER: Amelia Gambetti is a former Reggio teacher who shares its ideas with interested teachers from Los Angeles to Boston. She says Reggio doesn't give children answers. It teaches them how to find the answers themselves.

GAMBETTI: What we are trying to do here together is bring up from the child what the child has inside.

FRAZIER: They have so many years to be in school. This is just the beginning. Why is this so important?

GAMBETTI: We have start from the beginning if we want to build something different.

FRAZIER: Frances Roland followed the same itinerary prescribed for the 2,000 American teachers who have trooped through Reggio nell'Emilia. First Amelia Gambetti sent her to see how the city works before she could see how the schools work. Do you think children are treated differently here?

ROLAND: Everything I see says, yes, they are. They are a beautiful part of all the life I have seen so far. Walking through the town, eating dinner. It doesn't seem like there's an improper place for children here.

FRAZIER: A place where children might not be welcomed?

ROLAND: Yes.

FRAZIER: Generations walk side by side every evening in Reggio nell'Emilia. Families stay put.

GAMBETTI, REGGIO CHILDREN: Why do you move is an interesting question. Why do you move from one state to another so easily? I mean, we don't do it so easily.

FRAZIER: Why don't you do it? What do you value at home?

GAMBETTI: I think we value our roots.

FRAZIER: Staying put provides a continuity these teachers consider vital for their children's development. The teacher welcoming Frances Roland to this school has taught here for 30 years, working with a class for three years at a stretch, not just one.

ROLAND: That's a really long time. I see the length of the relationship. I could see the children's comfort with the place they were, the people they were with. Where I teach, there are many children, half, sometimes more, that have been together for less than a year.

FRAZIER: She saw children and teachers working together on projects that lasted months. We wondered how well that whole approach can travel to St. Louis, Missouri or Washington D.C. when it is so much a part of its wider culture.

GARDNER: I think that it's a mistake to take any school approach and assume, like a flower, you can take it from one soil and put it into another one. That never works. This doesn't mean at all that Americans can't learn a tremendous amount from it, but we have to reinvent it. We can't just transplant it. We have to figure out what are the aspects which are most important to us and what kind of a soil do we need here to make those aspects thrive.

FRAZIER: Frances Roland rode a bus from school to school. They weren't all new or elaborate, but they did reflect the commitment to social programs that the taxpayers in this region support.

GAMBETTI: They look to be so rich, but I think that the richness is here.

FRAZIER: How many school districts in the United States would underwrite such richness for pre-schoolers? Here, where art teachers are the first to go when budgets shrink, where two teachers per class are a luxury, where lessons rarely extend beyond a day, maybe a week, never mind four months.

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Frances Roland's school decided to change. She will stay with her students as they move up a grade. The relationships she built all last year will not be lost.

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Would you say this Reggio system of what you've seen is the best approach to early childhood learning?

ROLAND: The one reason that I feel it's the best is because of the respect for the children and that's who they place first.

FRAZIER: Children first: a dream many parents might wish for their children. Something to consider as the nation's pupils settle in for the spring semester.

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Bernie is back with a final thought after this.

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SHAW: We have heard about Reggio, a remarkable way to teaching children in the early years. President Clinton apparently agrees on the importance of early education as well. The childcare package he unveiled calls for spending $3 billion for an early-learning fund. Now that money would help develop programs for early childhood growth. Reggio might be a good place to look for inspiration.

Now here's what we're following on the next IMPACT.

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