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Kindergarteners Today Get Little Time To Play, and It's Stunting Their Development (qz.com)
Christopher Brown Associate professor, University of Texas at Austin, writes:Researchers have demonstrated that five-year-olds are spending more time engaged in teacher-led academic learning activities than play-based learning opportunities that facilitate child-initiated investigations and foster social development among peers.During his research and investigation, Brown found that a typical kindergarten classroom sees kids and one teacher with them almost the entire school day. During this period, they engage in about 15 different academic activities, which include "decoding word drills, practicing sight words, reading to themselves and then to a buddy, counting up to 100 by ones, fives and tens, practicing simple addition, counting money, completing science activities about living things, and writing in journals on multiple occasions." Recess did not occur until the last hour of the day, and only lasted for about 15 minutes. He adds:For children between the ages of five and six, this is a tremendous amount of work. Teachers too are under pressure to cover the material. When I asked the teacher, who I interviewed for the short film, why she covered so much material in a few hours, she stated, "There's pressure on me and the kids to perform at a higher level academically." So even though the teacher admitted that the workload on kindergartners was an awful lot, she also said she was unable to do anything about changing it.
I was in grade school in the late 60s and had at least one 20+ minute recess all the way up through 6th grade. I remember having two recesses a day (morning and afternoon) in the early grades and being disappointed that there was only one recess in the later grades. I also remember in kindergarten we put mats on the floor and took a nap every day. There are many millions of people who are my age and who experienced the same things and grew up to be great leaders, engineers, scientists, etc.
The irony of today's situation is we are pushing kids harder and harder, younger and younger, based on the belief that this is necessary to 'compete with the rest of the world', and yet, we are producing far more functionally illiterate high school students than back in the bad old days when things were more relaxed.
India, with the lowest scoring educational system? Japan as recess. Perhaps you should stick to topics that you know something about or better yet research before you post. Ass.
You should look at some of the schools in Scandinavian countries and ask yourself why they are graduating after 10 years at around the level of a college sophomore while US schools are turning out people after 12 years that need remedial classes in college.
The solution to the problem is already known and long ignored in the USA.
Michael Moore documentary clip of on Finland's school system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Unless they just made that up for the film.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur