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The article basically says that kids are being made to do things developmentally out of reach to the detriment of their school careers and being labeled as delayed when in fact the expectations are too high. My son turns 5 this week, he starts kinder in a month. He will be very young but others will be younger as the cutoff is October. School are eliminating music and art classes and recess in favor of structured classes and rigorous learning and testing. One article I read a woman said her barely 5 year old came home and said "I hate school, I hate reading". That's a very negative start to the next 13 years of their lives. And it doesnt seem to make them perform better than learning at a developmentally appropriate rate.
It is true that in many places, we are pushing kids in kindergarten to do a first grade curriculum. Kids, however, are often capable of learning a lot more than we used to expect.
The problem is not the amount of learning, but the lack of using the developmentally appropriate methods to teach. Children this age learn best through play, so classrooms need to use that to help the children learn. I taught several different ages and the preK I taught in was play based. Our kids always did fine in kindergarten and did much better than preKs where worksheets were used.
It is also important to realize that different children learn differently and also learn at different times. A child may learn to read at 4, but that does not make him or her any smarter than a child who does not learn until they are 7 or 8.
Also, we should NOT be giving standardized tests to children this young and some places are doing that.
The article basically says that kids are being made to do things developmentally out of reach to the detriment of their school careers and being labeled as delayed when in fact the expectations are too high. My son turns 5 this week, he starts kinder in a month. He will be very young but others will be younger as the cutoff is October. School are eliminating music and art classes and recess in favor of structured classes and rigorous learning and testing. One article I read a woman said her barely 5 year old came home and said "I hate school, I hate reading". That's a very negative start to the next 13 years of their lives. And it doesnt seem to make them perform better than learning at a developmentally appropriate rate.
What's you thoughts?
It is not just that the expectations are "too high". They are just wrong for this age. Around here, they are starting to, rightly, move back away from this kind of structured class crap at this age and back to play based learning. They soak stuff up like little sponges at this age.
Haven't read any scientific data that suddenly a generation is spewing out these progressive kids. Most development stages still remain as is. The super race is not here.
Yes sadly for the most part the districts are finding ways to fund their education by insinuating that a five year old must know proficiently how to read and write before hitting the first grade. Thus putting the hardship on the instructor and the child to achieve such.
They have the cart before the horse.
Our district thankfully has the 3 hr school day for kindergarten. During which art ( eye hand coordination ) and color identifying are the goal. Math is integrated thru simple every day inquiry. Such as how many moons are there? Or how many horns does a bull have? Observation math works for that age.
They do a cute nutrition class to learn what foods they can grow. (Early science without the book!). Kids are hands on at five. Not book pressured.
OP, maybe that woman's kid came home saying he hated reading, because she had given him a tablet to amuse himself with all day at 4, so he was used to youtube already, at 4-5? Already hooked on screen time? Without more info, it's hard to evaluate that statement. This first-grade-work-in-kindergarten topic has come up on a number of threads, and there wasn't any objection to it. Maybe most kids are ok with it?
OTOH, I've spoken to a couple of adults, who said they weren't ready for kindergarten even at the conventional age in their day. One said, he kept being made to stand in the corner, and had no idea why. He said he never understood what was going on in the classroom at all, and had a very similar experience in first grade, to which he was automatically promoted, in spite of having spent much of kinder in the corner. Some European countries don't start kids in first grade, doing traditionally first grade work (learning alphabet, etc.), until they're 7, because they want to make sure everyone is ready together, and no one feels lost.
Does it matter at what age kids start reading, and at what age they're done with school and ready for college? If US kids are learning to read and work with numbers at 5, what are the school systems doing with the extra year of student productivity? They're not graduating kids a year early, and eliminating 12th grade, so what's the purpose of introducing basic skills a year early? Is it so that kids will be ready for college work in their senior year of HS, since some universities are now requiring college-level work on the HS transcript, for admission? Where did this idea of pushing first grade forward into kindergarten come from?
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 07-21-2019 at 10:00 AM..
Our schools have one (too short) recess and they still have music and art. The expectations and curriculum for K and 1st are ridiculous and inappropriate. And yes, they are labeled "behind", even though they should not be. The district expectation is that all children are reading by the end of Kindergarten, and math in 1st grade is all word problems. Every child I know with a summer birthday is "struggling". They are pulled out for math and reading. They hate the homework and their parents struggle to get them to do the required reading.
Separately - yes. Giving babies phones and tablets is a huge problem. Books - which should be one of their best experiences - pale in comparison to flashing, moving images, as do crayons and a teacher. They get very expensive OT because they don't have the strength or dexterity to hold a crayon. They have never waited for anything or stood in a line without a screen to make them happy, so school is an enormous change and they can't handle any sort of free time. Many can't even handle recess, because they don't know what to do with themselves. While everyone complains about the lack of recess time, a good percentage of them are raising children that don't know how to play or be outside. So now you have kids that are less prepared than ever for a classroom setting, being asked to do things no one has ever made them do before, and it's at a level beyond what is developmentally appropriate. All you can do is hope you get a great teacher.
At my house we rotate every night, one night we read a book the next night he gets to watch an education video on YouTube. He goes to pre school/daycare 5 days a week for 8/9 hours. He learns history and math and sight words and all those things. But if hes struggling or impatient they back off and do role play time or storytime or dancing. The schools dont have dancing or play corners or even just art time (not.all.schools obviosuly) if next year in kinder the teacher expects him to sit at a desk for 6 hours a day hes going to be labeled as fidgety or have adhd characteristics. Because hes not ready to sit still that long. Also I agree that's it's not as much the material as the method.
Excluding kids who function outside the "norm" at both ends of the learning spectrum, most gains are lost or equalized (depending on how you chose to look at it) by the second grade.
Generally, I see that it's 3rd grade when things equalize. But that's just academics. The kids who hate school because of this don't stop hating it in 3rd grade.
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