Anyone who met my kid before kindergarten calls the kid Firstname Middlename. But in kindergarten the kid decided to only go by Firstname because of needing to write it all out. But using the spelling of one’s first name as a screener to see if someone is ready for kindergarten seems a bit much.
I wonder what the expectations are in Finland, where reading instruction doesn’t start until kids are seven, and yet Finland is one of the world leaders in terms of education performance in K-12. I also wonder if the younger males in their society are struggling to the degree that many young American males are.
It seemed like the kids of my friends all walked very early. Oldest DS could crawl very fast, but he just wouldn’t walk. I was getting worried. He finally started walking at 15 months, 20 days.
He went on to set a state record with his teammates in the 4x800 relay.
My younger son has a mid-September birthday. September 30 is the cut off date for entering school in each grade. We decided to redshirt him. Not because he didn’t have the “academic” skills (he could read a little at 4 almost 5 when he would’ve started kindergarten) but for behavioral. He Could Not Sit to save his life. His social emotional skills were way way behind. I do think waiting that year helped him to be better able to manage the rigors of kindergarten (because it did feel rigorous - too much sitting, not enough moving and doing). The flip side, though, was because he was also a bright kid, he quickly got bored in most elementary school classes because he’d already learned whatever they were learning. And he didn’t need to work - at all - on the academic issues, it just came super easy. Which, of course, comes to an end. So then junior and senior year of high school when all of a sudden some effort was needed to excel in all those AP classes he really didn’t know HOW to work. This is something I’m still worried about as he heads off to college in the fall. I’m not sure he knows how to just buckle down and work. On the other side of the coin, though, he’s one of the most observant of others kids - he’s clearly got a strong EQ and does well with people. So perhaps that year of redshirting helped?
My nephew was young for his class and emotionally/behaviorally seemed like he would benefit from another year. But also very bright. He went to a transitional kindergarten year, regular kindergarten, and then after the first 6 weeks of first grade was skipped to second grade (where he was now very young). He’s done just fine. The first month of second grade was tough but then the other kids were saying to ask him “he knows the answers”.
I think all children would benefit from kindergarten that was more developmentally appropriate. My youngest grandchild goes to a school where the morning part of kindergarten is pretty structured and academic, but the afternoon is “purposeful play” where they can choose center-based activities that develop cooperation, fine motor skills, pattern recognition, role-playing, all through play-based activities.
My kids’ K was like this because you could choose half day or all day. My kids had to go all day because it was also my daycare. They had 4 hours in the morning, then about 1/2 the class went home and the rest went to lunch, then lunch recess, then back to the classroom for things like cooking, art, story reading. They had themes like Bears, and everything would be about bears for 4 weeks - bear stories, bear snacks, bear games, bear art. A little academics, lots of play.
My daughter’s favorite classes were lunch recess, afternoon recess, and morning recess. And then she went to after school care which was, yes, more recess. That morning academic stuff just wasn’t that much fun. She came home filthy and exhausted every day
Our schools didn’t offer full-day K until the year after DS entered, so I got to stay home one more year before going back to work. Man, I miss those years.
Your post reminded me of a friend’s statement from long ago - I can’t remember it exactly, but something like “I knew it was a great camp because after he went there I had to throw away his socks” - they were outside having fun all week.
My kids wore uniforms. Other parents (mostly those whose kids went home at noon) would say their kids could wear the same uniform all week, or at least several days of the week. I was surprised they didn’t ask me to send a second uniform (at least the shirt) for the afternoon class!
At first we only had 2-3 shirts and 2 skorts each, so I was washing clothes at least twice a week. My kids were really small so others started giving us the shirts and skorts their kids had outgrown so we had extras. The uniforms were made of Kevlar (I swear) and lasted forever. Parents of boys had to replace the pants because of ripped knees, but my kids just ripped their own knees. They had several choices of skorts, jumpers, shorts, pants, colors of shirts, but both my kids wore a skort and a short sleeved red polo every day. Every day.
We lived in Germany the year one of my kids was in 1st grade – Kindergarten for his classmates had very much still been “playschool” so 1st grade was the beginning of a more academically-focused experience. My observation was that the kids got to the same place, they just hadn’t been rushed to get there.
Until I read this column, I had no clue that there were people arguing that teachers were infantilizing students, that they represented a radicalizing “woke” influence on students, or that they had been poo-pooing ambition in any students (much less male students). I don’t believe that any of the above is true.
I do think there is a relationship between classroom teachers who look like their students and those who don’t. Not necessarily in terms of teaching style, but in terms of whether they think that school/academics is something that is valued within their community and/or attainable for their group (whether that is their gender, race, etc.).
If my hospital is run by a female, it doesn’t make me feel more comfortable if I’m then needing to see a male gynecologist (I prefer female ones). Same thing for school leadership. The vast majority of students see school leaders on a very limited basis, whereas their classroom teachers are the ones they see on a frequent, more extended basis. That shouldn’t be downplayed.
I think there are are some groups that have tried to frame this as a “boys are performing worse than females” issue, but I think it’s more of a “boys are performing worse than they used to.” It’s not whether their class rank has decreased because there’s more competition, but that students are not meeting metrics that were more commonly met before. And there has long been a segment of the population that was never well-served by our educational system anyway.
Essentially, this feels more like a column designed to say that we don’t need to be thinking about systemic issues related to boys, outside of how we’re raising them at home. And that seems a bit dismissive to me of some valid concerns.
I’m coming back very late to this thread, so I imagine this particular sub-topic has moved on (haven’t read the latest entries yet).
But just had to add this: When my D was small, I had a good friend from Switzerland with two daughters around the age of mine. She said that in
Switzerland, first grade didn’t start until about the age of seven and before that, parents had a choice. One kindegarden option was the more structured route (but with more play time than in typical American schools) and other I understood to be basically an outdoor school where children spent most of the day (most days) in supervised free-play and exploration, in all seasons. By her telling, even that supervised play was not as sterilized as American play situations are in removing any possible danger. Non-serious skinned knees, blisters, bruises and ouchies of all kinds were expected and normalized parts of growing up. Kids went hiking in the mountains, ran in meadows, built play forts from fallen branches, used tools such as hammers,etc. Sure, they’d be taught certain skills and learn some songs and games together….there were opening and closing activities, but most of the day was filled with child-led outdoor activities with adults close by. She basically said it’s the normal understanding in Switzerland that physical development, motor coordination, learning by doing how the concrete world works, and learning social/emotional development by spending most of the day in close-knit groups are prerequisites for best cognitive/emotional development. So, duh, why regiment small children to sit all day and do what is unnatural to them in order to to hit some artificial benchmarks that may be actually stymied in the long run by the more rigid approach?
I was envious, even though my D did did get a lot of outdoor time as a young child and went to a more-or-less Montessori kindegarden. Makes sense to me, even though I am NOT a free-range parent (our neighborhoods and society are just not set up for that) and my D happened to love a lot of very structured activities such as ballet and music lessons from a very young age).
From what I know, Swiss adults are not academically behind in any way because of this approach. Wonder how their boys and young men do as compared to girls ?
Cherry picking data doesn’t help, homeownership rates, especially amongst the young have grown in recent years (at least up to 2022). Should we therefore conclude that young people are getting happier?
Not to mention that you often don’t buy a home until you are married. The delays to (or in some cases, lack of) forming stable relationships likely has more to do with happiness than whether you own a home. And homeownership was far lower a century ago, were people much less happy back then?
And finally, price vs income is a dumb metric, since falling interest rates have made large mortgages much more affordable. Taking that into account, the best time to buy a house in recent memory was the early 2010s, after the crash of 2008.
You haven’t been listening to Jordan Peterson and his ilk then. These claims are getting a LOT of airtime lately. Again and again the argument that teachers unions are controlled by left leaning women who are indoctrinating our children and discriminating against our boys. The answer? Private school vouchers, and eventually the elimination of traditional public schools.
