Ah, kindergarten. You may remember it as a "happy land of building blocks and singalongs," but not anymore.
In this interesting article over at The Boston Globe, Patti Hartigan explains how kindergarten has turned into a high-pressure academic boot camp for little kids:
... increasingly in schools across Massachusetts and the United States, little children are being asked to perform academic tasks, including test taking, that early childhood researchers agree are developmentally inappropriate, even potentially damaging. If children don’t meet certain requirements, they are deemed “not proficient.” Frequently, children are screened for “kindergarten readiness” even before school begins, and some are labeled inadequate before they walk through the door.
This is a troubling trend to an experienced educator like Gerzon, who knows how much a child can soak up in the right environment. After years of study and practice, she’ll tell you that 5-year-olds don’t learn by listening to a rote lesson, their bottoms on their chairs. They learn through experience. They learn through play. Yet there is a growing disconnect between what the research says is best for children -- a classroom free of pressure -- and what’s actually going on in schools.
Link (Illustration: Paul Blow)
i find this to be true of any age.