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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.
It isn't just Kindergarten, is is throughout all of school, K-12.
They also neglect soft education like Music and Art (often replacing with Social Conformity Drills).
The problem is, we have people in far away cities, who don't have any real interest in the education of any student, making all sorts of Rules and Regulations (see Common Core) about not only how, but what kids ought to learn by when. All, often without any clue how long it takes to teach a room full of kids who just want to play.
We don't live in an industrial world, we shouldn't be treating our education system like a factory.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know 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 didn't get glasses until I was 30. I was told that I should have had them as a child, but I didn't know any better. Sure you turned out fine, but what if things were different? Could you have been better, more creative if you had more time to play? Or maybe the schooling you did have made you more focused? We will never know.
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.
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.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and over the last four years there's been a push to 'play based learning', presumably resulting from the same kind of research mentioned in the article.
By and large it seems fine, though it doesn't alleviate some of the problems they mention; specifically my wife still feels the pressure to move through the curriculum, but it's a little less clear how. Part of the 'learning through play' initiative also pushes heavily on 'self guided learning', and while all of this seems great, there's not a lot of guidance given on how to execute. I think most of us would agree that it's better if the student is interested & wants to learn the subject, but there's no real help about what to do if the student /isn't/ interested. Presumably the teacher just forces the kid to learn what has to be learned, but all the material provided leans heavily on instructing teachers not to do that.
At any rate, this is mostly just typical of governments adopting something and not thinking through how to implement fully. Still, the impression I get from my wife & her colleagues is that the ideas are good (play-based learning) but it'd have been nice if there was better instruction on how to follow through.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
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
My 5 year old was coming home from Kindergarten with an hour of homework more than three days a week.
http://www.edutopia.org/no-proven-benefits
"It may surprise you, as it did me, to learn that no study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to assigning homework before children are in high school."
There have been many studies that prove that homework not only does not help the young, but can harm them.
Also, this lovely chestnut that happened to my normal 5 year old boy. No recess... AT ALL.
Why you may ask?
We asked the teacher. The twenty something childless lady told us that our 5 year old son had trouble sitting still and filling out his math and sight word work sheets. So to 'help' she decided that the best course to deal with a fidgety 5 year old boy was to keep him in class during recess every day and have him sit quietly at his desk.
Really, you remove all chance of physical activity and wonder why a small child can't sit still?
We asked if it helped.... She said his 'restlessness' was getting worse and wondered if we needed to enroll him in special education... Really?
We took him out of that nightmare and enrolled him in an 'IDEA' school. You can read up on it but basically, as far as we can tell, it is simply the same kind of school I went to in the 80's.. No more problems, good grades, and 3 recess times a day and gym every other. Minimal 10 min home work once a week and most is the same type I had; Name you family members, ask what grandpa did/does for work, read a simple book with a parent, etc.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten
"A kindergarten from German, which means literally "garden for the children"[1]) is a preschool educational approach traditionally based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school."
NOTE: "transition from home to school"
Kindergarten, when I went to school, was mostly about lining up for recess, sharing toys, and learning colors and the names of the letters.
Some counting perhaps. But mostly just how to get along, raise your hand if you need to ask something, and wash your own hands after using the bathroom.
That was the entire idea from the start.
My child came home with and hour of math worksheets and sight words (not phonics, but rote memorization). Children in his class had trouble sharing, playing nice, working in teams, and being good losers... Because they are no longer allowed to do what Kindergarten was intended for in the first place. To learn all the basic social norms needed to actually be ready to be a student. He was hating going to school... AT 5 YEARS OLD!
He is now doing great at the new school.
Is it such a wonder that letting small kids play helps them to behave and learn how to get along with others? Is it strange that a 5 year old will resist busy work?
We need to go back to proper early childhood teaching and allow our children to be children.
"Wanna be rich? Be born to rich parents,,,,"
Wrong question.
"Wanna *NOT* be poor?" is the right question.
And the way to dramatically reduce the chance of that is to (A) Stay in school. (B) Don't have kids before you finish school. (C) Don't have kids before you are married.
Is it fool proof? No. Bad luck happens. But the chances of being habitually poor are pretty much negated.
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.