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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 have an 8 year old son and have been appalled by the expectations placed on kids, especially boys that are naturally energetic. I took my son out of one private pre-school that was an arts and crafts factory. At the time he was 3 or 4. First I noticed the drawings were too dark for him. Then I observed how they assembly lined the kids while the teacher would fill out the art after the kids 30 seconds was done. The teacher said my son wouldn't stay on a task and I witnessed my son very focused on painting and then the teacher took the painting so the next kid could get their 30 seconds of painting.
I know I'm going off on the teachers, it's really the school system. I have teachers in my family that taught many years ago that retired or got out of the business. They too are appalled at what they saw in the final years of practicing their profession.
I used to regularly walk home despite living 7 miles from school, usually after clubs and such.
The real problem is that too much time of the kids' day is structured and rote, which means that when they eventually reach college or post-school they're not going to be able to handle unstructured time well. Recess was more than just a time to mess around on the playground or shoot hoops, it was a time to learn how to deal with peers in a neutral environment. A child who can help form teams for a pickup game and keep everyone playing by the same rules is learning much more about leadership and diplomacy than any lesson in the classroom can effectively teach.
Granted, we shouldn't entirely dispose of more traditional learning techniques (understanding math takes quite a bit of rote memorization and repetition), but children need to learn more peer-driven social lessons. I used to work for a charter school system that operated on a system close to the article's setup, and while it worked to get the kids accepted into colleges (which was more or less the only goal), it rarely kept them there.
Oh, please. The whole "you cant leave your kids alone for 2 seconds" thing was well and firmly in place by the 90's. It was in the 80s when everyone started wetting the bed about kidnappings and child safety. By 1990 that part of the culture was exactly the same as now. What's changed is Tigermomism now translating into no free time for kids at all and all their free time now being consumed by structured activities which no adult would put up with for 5 minutes. If someone made me play soccer after work, learn an instrument, learn chess, and do random volunteering on the weekend too I would do physical harm to that person, but then I'm 30 and get a choice.
We don't let kids be kids and all because we forget that humans have piss poor retention anyway and the dumb kid wont remember even half the nonsense you are trying to cram into his head when he grows up.
I'm a dad of a new kindergartener. They're not solving differential equations at this level; it appears that they're trying to get them on a level playing field, accounting for differences in background, etc. If a kid has spent the last 5 years doing nothing but watch TV and has never been read to, they really have to catch them up quickly. First grade is apparently where the "rigorous academics" start. My kid already learned to read and has a pretty good background in the basics, so I imagine it's going to be a less than engaging first year.
I know everyone hates the common core stuff, but I do see the point. Teachers aren't given a class full of kids with attentive parents who care about what their kid does in school. Maybe some are like that, but others are too busy, don't have the educational background, or the family is poor and education takes a back seat to living. Absent the nice home life, the schools have to do everything they can to ensure they give a kid a fighting chance education-wise.
Also, having recess is almost optional in my mind. Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese and other countries' students spend way more time in school than our students do. Education is valued in those societies and they make sure they turn out well-educated students. Look at some of the university entrance exams from countries on this list and compare it to high school curriculum in the US. Compared to these countries, we're doing nothing near that level of work with students. Visiting faculty from other countries send their kids to private tutors to ensure they receive a level of education on par with their country's system so the kid won't be behind when they return home. I think the school day should be longer and the school year should be year-round. Only 2% of the population works in agriculture anymore, so there's no excuse for students to be out the whole summer anymore.
An entire school day here in Texas means from about 8-3, minus 40 minutes for lunch, 20 minutes for recess, and 15 minutes for morning announcements. Seems pretty sparse and there's plenty of time to go play somewhere before dinner and bed-time (which some shaman are insisting should be 730p). Since my kids go to school very near where this yahoo practices his quackery, I can honestly say they goof off at school in epic proportions. I can say for a fact that they didn't cover such complex topics as "the alphabet" or "adding numbers" in kindergarten. Whatever they were doing, wasn't strongly academic.
All I see down here is more concentrated efforts to defund public schooling, pushing more interested parents into debt for private schools that still focus on academics. Public schools have always worked reasonably well, but it's clear that the more we defund and defocus them over the decades, the lower the quality of the graduates produced. In Austin they're talking about doing away with homework, and this fool is trying to provide the support needed. This is great way to cut pay to teachers who don't have to grade it, but whether we liked it or not as kids, there is is a time when you need to memorize certain things, and homework is the weapon of choice. Class time should be spent on questions and explanations, homework is the ideal time for reading new material and memorizing what things absolutely need to be memorized.
The entire topic of "child initiated" blah blah "social development" is saying happy words that people like to hear but has absolutely zero substance. If I get home another paper that my son "collaborated" on with his peers that contains mistakes that I know he is far beyond but he tells me "well if I tell her she's wrong she cries and we all get demerits", I will scream. Sure it's an excellent opportunity to teach leadership, but on the spot it isn't happening because teacher is busy with the remedial kids who still can't do their ABCs, but we can't have remedial/normal/advanced classes because it marginalizes someone (read: that budget was cut). At home it's out of context and contrived, particularly on a child who is not destined for leadership by its current definition (i.e. Zaphod Beeblebrox's school of CEOing). Whatever fantasy land this asshat lives in, he should retreat to, he couldn't handle the world he's shaping.
Let's keep school focused on academics, but when we get to the teenage years not be afraid to spend some money on kids who have no track record of academics, and help them with trade skills in a useful, non-profit, way. For now, if lack of play time is hurting children, it's probably all the after-school sports/band/dance/cheerleading/gymnastics/music/etc. stuff parents sign their kids in to as extended daycare. A friend of my son's has an after-school schedule that is full of more junk than my work calendar. Surely by the time they're done with all that they are exhausted and too tired for homework or required reading anyway.
Society is continuing to advance. Kids should have to learn more, because WE have learned more. 200 years ago they weren't being taught what we were being taught and 200 years before that the same thing. The problem is this antiquated notion that school should start at 7:45AM and end at 2-3PM with sports taking up until 7-8PM. Of course that 7 hours has to include lunch, breaks, gym, and anything else that isn't directly "education" related. Children have more history to learn, more science, more technoloy, and they have to be better thinker/problem solvers/etc. Perhaps I'm strange, but I just think that's a natural progression. What needs to happen, instead of cutting back on necessary education, is adding another hour or two to each day (especially to the older grade levels).
Some of my best learning opportunities came from play. I played in the woods and road my bike around town with friends (those big scary places that today's parents tell their kids to avoid). I had to fix my dad's computer after breaking stuff because I messed with IRQ settings to get my mouse and my sound working at the same time (and I had to do it before he got home from work and found out!). I played Axis and Allies, Risk, Chess, and other games that required thinking. I pieced together civilizations and learned how people react when playing Sim City and Civilization games. I tinkered with electronics. My parents let me build a fort. I planted seeds I found and watched them grow. I moved spiders to different parts of the yard, watched them build a web, then observed them eating mosquitoes.
This is where I learned the most. Play keeps learners engaged. Strictly academics is boring. I think society is too focused on maintaining the status quo and it is killing the fire of desire for learning that burns in the hearts of young children. Without play, and with an overemphasis on memorization (as opposed to experimentation) you make dull, lifeless people who lose the ability to be more than cogs in the machine of society.
I have two happy kids in a Waldorf kindergarten here in Denmark, and here's a biased opinion: basically you leave the kids alone and let them play with whatever they want to play with for most of the day, preferably outdoors in a calm setting.
Kindergarten is not really for intellectual stuff. Your wife should forget the curriculum and let the school handle it - the fact she's called a teacher is part of the problem. She should see herself as someone providing inspiration and someone whose behavior is worthy of replicating, not as someone who instructs.
In my kids' kindergarten, the adults study fairy tales so they can retell them to the children (recounting them orally, never reading directly from a book) to provide fodder for their imagination. They also cook and do other household chores each day, again setting examples for the children to participate in and replicate in their play.
For a small child, there's a lot to be learned about self-motivation, inventing things, experimenting, self-confidence and important topics such as friendships and life. Counting and reading is easy, in comparison, for a determined, self-confident child. So better wait with that.
In a nutshell, as far as I'm aware, you don't end up being a better reader by learning to read one year earlier. But you might end up being more self-confident and self-motivated by having entertained yourself through play for that year.