Education: Mud Pies & Water Play

To the parents, most of them professional people and graduates of the best colleges in the country, Melody Workshop in Berkeley, Calif, seemed an ideal nursery school. It was run by imaginative Lila Joralemon, 35, who considers bright preschoolers capable of more than mindless play. Using music—a sure fascinator for children aged 3½ to 5—she taught the alphabet, French, good manners and good music itself. But last week Mrs. Joralemon, daughter of a Los Angeles school superintendent who for years fought against excessive permissiveness in education, was losing the same battle. To state...