<p>“A new emphasis on testing and test preparation – brought on by politicians, not early education experts – is hurting the youngest students.”</p>
<p>[Pressure-cooker</a> kindergarten - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/08/30/pressure_cooker_kindergarten/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed2]Pressure-cooker”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/08/30/pressure_cooker_kindergarten/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed2)</p>
<p>so much more pressure on the youngin’s than in earlier yrs…I see so many behavior problems in younger children at my job and also with my yougest child’s classmates…scary</p>
<p>I haven’t read that article yet, but I’m just about to! I teach kinder in a low-SES school with very challenging children. We have one 20-minute recess, no nap, no food or snacks allowed, and the IPG (instructional programming guides) allow for NO free-choice or play time. We are supposed to do 90 minutes of Math, 45 of Science, 30 of Social studies, 135 of Language Arts, and 45 minutes of PE/Music/Art each day (none of it integrated or thematically taught). By now - 1 week into the school calendar - we are supposed to have introduced Science, Math and Writing journals- to children who can barely hold a pencil, created 8 “process and good works charts” and the 4-step problem-solving math chart and begun formal testing of letter names and sounds. It would be ridiculous if it were not so sad. :(</p>
<p>anxiousmom: Wow, kindergarten has changed a lot. I think the bulk of my day was free play time-- there were stations set up with different activities and once we finished our lesson for the day we could go play. No naps, but one of the stations was snack. I am pretty sure the only academic responsibilities I had were practicing writing the letters, being able to write out my name correctly, some counting, and coloring inside the lines.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood traditional elementary school, even when it was more lax. I always wondered if those kids really sat at desks and had subjects and notes.</p>
<p>I’m so glad I went to Montessori school.</p>
<p>It is sad. I am a preschool teacher. Our program is very “learn through play” based. We tell parents that upfront. Many of today’s young parents are looking for programs with preschoolers sitting at tables writing letters and numbers and doing worksheets.<br>
A parent of a 2 yr. old (who wasn’t even toilet trained yet) recently asked why we weren’t teaching Spanish since foreign language is required for college acceptance.</p>
<p>“We have one 20-minute recess, no nap, no food or snacks allowed, and the IPG (instructional programming guides) allow for NO free-choice or play time. We are supposed to do 90 minutes of Math, 45 of Science, 30 of Social studies, 135 of Language Arts, and 45 minutes of PE/Music/Art each day”
WHAT?? For kindergarteners?? Good grief! This sounds like a really bad joke. This would be way too much sitting still [ especially for boys!!] and not enough time for learning through play for 5 year olds!</p>
<p>I homeschooled kindergarten for our youngest, when it went full-time. Most parents were in favor of full-time, for day care reasons, and most parents think that all the academics are great. That is part of the problem. Parents want this, and even think that a little 5 year-old doing homework is cute.</p>
<p>(The ironic thing is, that truly gifted students do things later, not earlier. Also, a lot of gifted students get very, very stressed, even with the most old-fashioned schools.)</p>
<p>Lots of things are driving this. Politics and accountability, mania for testing, issue with teachers (testing is supposed to reveal good and bad ones), misguided parents who love the genius baby stuff, parents needing child care, and, I think, welfare reform. Child care is a very real need, and schools seem to be taking care of it a lot. Also, since so many kids have been in preschool, the kindergartens need to start further along, at a level formerly considered first grade.</p>
<p>Back when kindergarten was half-time, and the focus was just learning to be in a group and learning to feel comfortable at school, my older two loved it. They would learn about shapes in the morning, and then come home and play around with the idea at home, entirely on their own. They would cut out shapes and put them in the window. I never suggested a thing. My son would make little signs for his Lego train, when he knew a couple of letters, which he picked up from reading signs. This was so much better than staying at school all day, but I was home and not working, for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>I wish that the adults of the world would stop trying to control the development of children, which unfolds naturally in a beautiful way. The kids were so much happier in the “developmental model.” We don’t really feel our kids were taught to read, by a teacher or parent. Each had their own process for coming to it, and adults were just facilitators.</p>
<p>I shudder to think of what is going to happen to these kids who have no down time, and no play time. Certainly our culture will lose out on a lot of creativity. Parents’ bonds with their children are weakened too, as schools become a dominant factor in their lives and homework takes over family time.</p>
<p>As you can tell, this article hit a nerve! I am so glad my kids are through with public schools.</p>
<p>David Elkind is mentioned, and he has been a voice in the wilderness for a long time. Alfie Kohn too. These wise people have written wise and wonderful books. Maybe if Obama sent his kids to public schools, he and Michelle would read them too.</p>
<p><a href=“The%20ironic%20thing%20is,%20that%20truly%20gifted%20students%20do%20things%20later,%20not%20earlier.%20Also,%20a%20lot%20of%20gifted%20students%20get%20very,%20very%20stressed,%20even%20with%20the%20most%20old-fashioned%20schools.”>quote</a>
[/quote]
I beg to differ. My truly gifted oldest, taught himself to read before he was three and figured out multiplication in kindergarten. But I went out of my way to find a very old fashioned pre-school and pretty old fashioned (half-day) kindergarten. I do think there’s a fair amount of math and literacy a kid can learn in K that is still have a playful developmental experience. It’s no wonder more and more kids are being held back, we’ve turned K into 1st grade and it’s no longer appropriate for 5 year olds.</p>
<p>"The ironic thing is, that truly gifted students do things later, not earlier. "
I also beg to differ with this statement! My son was reading 3rd-4th grade school books at age 3, and doing long multiplication at age 6. The hallmark of a gifted learner is they learn much earlier and faster than their chronological peers.</p>
<p>Kindergarten is more academic now than when I went to school, but kindergarten kids are older now as well. When I began school in the dark ages, we were 4 or 5 in kindergarten. These days, kinderkids are 6 or 7. It’s only appropriate that the work is different.</p>
<p>“These days, kinderkids are 6 or 7.”
Not necessarily! The age can vary widely from school district to school district.</p>
<p>^In our district kids have to be 5 by December 31st, and at least when mathson was small very few people held their kids back. From what I can tell our district has been pretty good about resisting making K overly academic, though they did just recently institute full day K.</p>
<p>I vote for half-day kindergarten, five-and-a-half hour school days, and summers off. We’ve made childhood grown-up enough already; let’s give the poor kids a break.</p>
<p>
Lots of people read these books who don’t send their kids to public schools. A homeschooling friend gave me her copy of Kohn, and my sil who sent her kids to private schools was a big fan of Elkind. (I like Elkind’s essay on the CTY site that says it’s okay to accelerate highly gifted kids.)</p>
<p>The article is horrifying.</p>
<p>Anxiousmom–you have my sympathy.</p>
<p>One hallmark of “gifted” kids is that they do some things earlier, but may actually do some other things later. My S was already reading and had good number sense before Kgn, but was lagging in the small motor skills necessary for writing. Handedness wasn’t even established yet! Fortunately, at his private school, his teacher let him spend the year reading and didn’t worry so much about finishing work sheets & “neatness.” :D</p>
<p>He also could do more than one thing at a time, such as explore another activity while listening to a story being read…and he could tell you what the story was about. I shudder to think of him in one of these restrictive classrooms now!</p>
<p>The truth: my children would all be homeschooled today.</p>
<p>So long ago. I remember looking for pre-K and kindergarten options for the kid way back when. We visited several schools. One school was a hard line academic pressure cooker for pre-K (!!!) During the Q & A I challenged the teacher about play time and such rigid schedules for the students. (My mom taught kindergarten for 35 years and has a masters in early childhood education, so she prepped me - lol). This school didn’t make the cut.</p>
<p>The next school used the High Scope method - Plan-Do-Review and walked us through the pre-K classrooms and kindergarten. What a difference. The school used this methodology through the 2nd grade.</p>
<p>I chuckled at the journals the little ones had. Because the writing skills weren’t there, they drew their plans. (And even those were sketchy - lol). Then they went to their stations to “do”. Afterwards they reviewed what they did with teacher/teacher aids.</p>
<p>What struck me was, I was being trained to be a project manager at the same time and I saw the simularities. Flash forward and the kid is still doing plan-do-review. </p>
<p>I suppose she did learn what she needed in kindergarten. :)</p>
<p>In all honesty, I would have loved my kindergarten to be more academic. I thought it was so stupid that we spent all that time on learning letters, when I wanted to read books, and that I got in trouble for reading books under my desk while pretending to be napping during naptime. The more old-school primary grades model, in which the higher emphasis on social activity meant that I was picked on by other kids, and the lower emphasis on academics meant that I was bored and resentful toward the kids who seemed to be holding things back and the teachers who catered to them, largely left me kind of misanthropic and undersocialized, which took a couple of years and a different school to undo.</p>
<p>However, stronger academics are not the same thing as rigid rote learning. And not all kids are ready to do these things at the same age.</p>
<p>Also, I think recess is vital and should not be eliminated. Kids need exercise and play.</p>
<p>jessiehl, a non-academic K doesn’t have to be like that. mathson got to read when other kids were learning letters. Math projects weren’t just learning numbers - they did things like make patterns with strings of beads. Different kids had different levels of elaborateness. They made graphs. They predicted the weather. Sometimes the teacher would write things (like the predictions) down, and then have one of the readers in the class read the list back. They learned native American dances and made a big class quilt, learned some Spanish, had music classes. The teacher had eyes on the back of her head and made sure that no one got picked on. It was in fact, the year mathson most enjoyed school. He went back and gave that teacher a birthday cupcake every year.</p>
<p>My little sister (only sibling, 11 years younger than me) just went off to her first day of kindergarten today. Our district’s requirement is age 5 before the start of school, and she’s a November baby, so she attended two years of a (rather lax) preschool. My mom was so glad that we have full-day kindergarten because she works 9-4. I wasn’t aware of all this controversy over the extended time.</p>
<p>We are a very academic family, typically Asian in that respect. It suits my personality, but I don’t know about my sister. I think she will be much more “normal” than me, both in nature (such a social butterfly, already!) and in upbringing (I immigrated to suburbia, she was born into it).</p>