Idol Mini: "Retro-Radicality"
Retro-Radicality
Idol Mini| week 5 | 1260 words
Oubaitori (Everything grows and blooms in its own time)
x-x-x-x-x
Our kids were in a Jewish daycare when they were little, which spoiled us for the future. The parents tended to be older, as we were, and the families were so nice. When our oldest entered kindergarten at our neighborhood school, we were all surprised to feel a bit of culture shock.
Most of the other parents were about ten years younger than me. HalfshellHusband is eight years older than I am, but we were both raised by parents who survived the Great Depression. For me, even when I was a school-aged kid myself (in the late 1960s through 1979), my family had a very different set of values from most of the other kids’ families. But the school parents of our daughter’s peers? They grew up in the late 1970s through 1990 or so, all Reagan-era kids whose experiences and attitudes added up to something very much Not Me.
That was how I became the “crank” parent, who disagreed with school methods that other people never gave a second thought.
When I was growing up (and generations before me), it was expected that kids would learn to read at different times. If you were a five-year-old who could read, you were WAY ahead of the game. If you couldn’t read by the end of 2nd grade, you were going to need a lot of special attention. Anything between those extremes was normal and acceptable. Fast-forward to our daughter’s school, where reading and writing were hammered on in Kindergarten, and anyone who didn’t “get it” before first grade was cause for parent-teacher conferences and worry. That was a lot of stress for the kids and their parents.
Little kids also used to learn to write using the “ball and stick” method. Almost everything was circles and lines, which is about all little fingers can handle. At our daughter’s school, Kindergartners were taught to write using the D’Nealian method, where all of the letters had “tails” because that supposedly made it easier to transition to cursive writing in the third grade. It absolutely made it much harder for the kids to learn basic writing, but apparently, that was not important.
Needless to say, I thought both of these choices were bad ideas. Just because you can teach a few kids to read and write in Kindergarten, that doesn’t mean you should. It is a whole lot easier on the kids (and their parents) if you simply wait until they’re older and more developmentally able.
Wow. ‘Developmentally able.’ Who knew that was such a radical concept?
The problem here wasn’t the teachers, it was California’s enormous bureaucratic Education engine. Mandates about what was to be taught when (and sometimes how) started at the state level. Then there were refinements at the county school-district level, and maybe, just maybe, a little wiggle room left for teachers to apply their training and experience.
Some state-level committee had decided that, since standardized test scores were the be-all / end-all of elementary education (because the results tended to affect federal funding), the best way for kids to test better was for them to learn everything earlier. Whether they realistically could seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
This was where I found myself so at odds with other parents. They didn’t question any part of the educational process, whether it was pushing the first-grade curriculum down into half-day Kindergarten, or shifting fourth-grade math into the third grade, or even something as basic as assigning weekly homework to Kindergarteners so they could “get used to the idea” of doing it.
Maybe the difference was due to growing up in the tail end of the Vietnam Era (“Question Authority!”) vs. the Reagan years. Maybe it was because I was old enough to have learned via different methods, so the contrast with the current methods was more obvious (??). Or maybe it was because both HalfshellHusband and I had both grown up as bright kids who were rarely challenged enough, and we were more concerned about keeping kids from hating school. You know what kids (and their parents) really hate? Pointless and unnecessary homework.
Whatever the reason, that generation of younger parents had bought into the same “earlier is better” mentality, and since those were also the parents on the PTA… change was not going to come from below. I felt like the lone voice crying out in the wilderness, over methods that did not actually affect our own kids but which I thought would make things harder for most of the other children. Maybe not surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to regard that as double “crank” behavior.
That emphasis on teaching things early didn’t just start in Kindergarten. When our oldest entered school, I actually started looking for alternative day care for our youngest. We loved where he already was, but it was expensive and we weren’t looking for Jewish enrichment since we weren’t Jewish. So, I visited the local Merryhill school. What an eye-opener that was.
Merryhill has a great reputation, but it is apparently geared toward parents with entirely different priorities. In the 4-year-old room, I noticed that all the toys were essentially locked away. In the 2-year-old room, the kids were having extended “reading time,” in which they all lolled around looking at books… that no one was reading to them. I asked about outdoor play areas, and was shown a patch of grass by the side of the building, “but sometimes we use the big kids’ playground.” And when I returned to the front desk, they were eager to tell me about their computer resources for little kids, but when I asked how much time the kids spent playing outside, the answer was, “We have two good ten-minute recesses a day.”
For pre-schoolers!!!
I could not have been more horrified. The Jewish daycare’s philosophy was that children learn through play, so the kids spent a lot of time outdoors running, jumping, inventing games, and digging. Inside, there were picture books, dress-up clothes, cars, trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys that were always available unless it was snack/nap/outside-play/circle time. The daycare taught basic phonics and numbers during short circle-time sessions each week, but mostly they focused on social skills like manners and listening and playing well with others. It was a wonderful program, and our kids loved it.
Needless to say, we didn’t move our son to another daycare program. The one he was already in was a perfect match for our values. Childhood is for playing and exploring, not for academia. Kids wind up chained to a desk soon enough, once they’re in elementary school. So, why start early?
One of the most puzzling things about that education-fixated generation of parents is that they were also the people who seemed to have specialized in “helicopter parenting.” Was it because they grew up with the beginnings of that themselves? Or could it be that pushing kids to do things too early leads to them feeling incompetent or overwhelmed, and their parents stepped in to do the work for them?
I’m hoping that the pendulum has swung the other way on the approach to early education now, although I doubt it. People would probably consider it a step backwards- it’s so “old-fashioned,” and so much less competitive. How will the U.S. ever keep up with other countries?!?
But I really think it’s harmful to accelerate learning so far beyond most kids’ abilities. We are stealing pieces of their childhood bit by bit, and we don’t seem to have many worthwhile results to show for it.
-/-
If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with many fine others here!
Idol Mini| week 5 | 1260 words
Oubaitori (Everything grows and blooms in its own time)
x-x-x-x-x
Our kids were in a Jewish daycare when they were little, which spoiled us for the future. The parents tended to be older, as we were, and the families were so nice. When our oldest entered kindergarten at our neighborhood school, we were all surprised to feel a bit of culture shock.
Most of the other parents were about ten years younger than me. HalfshellHusband is eight years older than I am, but we were both raised by parents who survived the Great Depression. For me, even when I was a school-aged kid myself (in the late 1960s through 1979), my family had a very different set of values from most of the other kids’ families. But the school parents of our daughter’s peers? They grew up in the late 1970s through 1990 or so, all Reagan-era kids whose experiences and attitudes added up to something very much Not Me.
That was how I became the “crank” parent, who disagreed with school methods that other people never gave a second thought.
When I was growing up (and generations before me), it was expected that kids would learn to read at different times. If you were a five-year-old who could read, you were WAY ahead of the game. If you couldn’t read by the end of 2nd grade, you were going to need a lot of special attention. Anything between those extremes was normal and acceptable. Fast-forward to our daughter’s school, where reading and writing were hammered on in Kindergarten, and anyone who didn’t “get it” before first grade was cause for parent-teacher conferences and worry. That was a lot of stress for the kids and their parents.
Little kids also used to learn to write using the “ball and stick” method. Almost everything was circles and lines, which is about all little fingers can handle. At our daughter’s school, Kindergartners were taught to write using the D’Nealian method, where all of the letters had “tails” because that supposedly made it easier to transition to cursive writing in the third grade. It absolutely made it much harder for the kids to learn basic writing, but apparently, that was not important.
Needless to say, I thought both of these choices were bad ideas. Just because you can teach a few kids to read and write in Kindergarten, that doesn’t mean you should. It is a whole lot easier on the kids (and their parents) if you simply wait until they’re older and more developmentally able.
Wow. ‘Developmentally able.’ Who knew that was such a radical concept?
The problem here wasn’t the teachers, it was California’s enormous bureaucratic Education engine. Mandates about what was to be taught when (and sometimes how) started at the state level. Then there were refinements at the county school-district level, and maybe, just maybe, a little wiggle room left for teachers to apply their training and experience.
Some state-level committee had decided that, since standardized test scores were the be-all / end-all of elementary education (because the results tended to affect federal funding), the best way for kids to test better was for them to learn everything earlier. Whether they realistically could seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
This was where I found myself so at odds with other parents. They didn’t question any part of the educational process, whether it was pushing the first-grade curriculum down into half-day Kindergarten, or shifting fourth-grade math into the third grade, or even something as basic as assigning weekly homework to Kindergarteners so they could “get used to the idea” of doing it.
Maybe the difference was due to growing up in the tail end of the Vietnam Era (“Question Authority!”) vs. the Reagan years. Maybe it was because I was old enough to have learned via different methods, so the contrast with the current methods was more obvious (??). Or maybe it was because both HalfshellHusband and I had both grown up as bright kids who were rarely challenged enough, and we were more concerned about keeping kids from hating school. You know what kids (and their parents) really hate? Pointless and unnecessary homework.
Whatever the reason, that generation of younger parents had bought into the same “earlier is better” mentality, and since those were also the parents on the PTA… change was not going to come from below. I felt like the lone voice crying out in the wilderness, over methods that did not actually affect our own kids but which I thought would make things harder for most of the other children. Maybe not surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to regard that as double “crank” behavior.
That emphasis on teaching things early didn’t just start in Kindergarten. When our oldest entered school, I actually started looking for alternative day care for our youngest. We loved where he already was, but it was expensive and we weren’t looking for Jewish enrichment since we weren’t Jewish. So, I visited the local Merryhill school. What an eye-opener that was.
Merryhill has a great reputation, but it is apparently geared toward parents with entirely different priorities. In the 4-year-old room, I noticed that all the toys were essentially locked away. In the 2-year-old room, the kids were having extended “reading time,” in which they all lolled around looking at books… that no one was reading to them. I asked about outdoor play areas, and was shown a patch of grass by the side of the building, “but sometimes we use the big kids’ playground.” And when I returned to the front desk, they were eager to tell me about their computer resources for little kids, but when I asked how much time the kids spent playing outside, the answer was, “We have two good ten-minute recesses a day.”
For pre-schoolers!!!
I could not have been more horrified. The Jewish daycare’s philosophy was that children learn through play, so the kids spent a lot of time outdoors running, jumping, inventing games, and digging. Inside, there were picture books, dress-up clothes, cars, trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys that were always available unless it was snack/nap/outside-play/circle time. The daycare taught basic phonics and numbers during short circle-time sessions each week, but mostly they focused on social skills like manners and listening and playing well with others. It was a wonderful program, and our kids loved it.
Needless to say, we didn’t move our son to another daycare program. The one he was already in was a perfect match for our values. Childhood is for playing and exploring, not for academia. Kids wind up chained to a desk soon enough, once they’re in elementary school. So, why start early?
One of the most puzzling things about that education-fixated generation of parents is that they were also the people who seemed to have specialized in “helicopter parenting.” Was it because they grew up with the beginnings of that themselves? Or could it be that pushing kids to do things too early leads to them feeling incompetent or overwhelmed, and their parents stepped in to do the work for them?
I’m hoping that the pendulum has swung the other way on the approach to early education now, although I doubt it. People would probably consider it a step backwards- it’s so “old-fashioned,” and so much less competitive. How will the U.S. ever keep up with other countries?!?
But I really think it’s harmful to accelerate learning so far beyond most kids’ abilities. We are stealing pieces of their childhood bit by bit, and we don’t seem to have many worthwhile results to show for it.
-/-
If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with many fine others here!