The tradition in the field of early childhood education is that teachers should modify their programs to respond to the individual differences of the children in their classes. Over the past several years, research on cognitive style has suggested that this is a too narrow view of individual differences in education. While some children might indeed learn more quickly than others, children also seem to learn in ways that are essentially different from one another. There is generally a belief held that knowledge of psychological processes and learning theory has direct application on what should happen in educational settings. Differences among children would be maximized rather than narrowed and children would be limited by stereotyped views of what they can accomplish. Such a proposal has significant danger of limiting the opportunities for success in school of those children who arrive in school with cognitive styles that are mismatched to the requirements of school learning tasks.