
Kindergarten Has Become the New First Grade - chrismealy
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/the-new-preschool-is-crushing-kids/419139/?single_page=true
======
littletimmy
This is one part of a much larger trend of dismantling all niceness in
American life. EVERYONE now works much harder than they used to: workers work
more than 10 hours a day with similar or lesser benefits, college students
work much harder to get the same jobs, where we had one breadwinner supporting
an entire family we now have two struggling to support families. Even
kindergarten kids work harder than they ever have in history.

It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not a sustainable system.
All benefits of the lower classes working really hard will keep accumulating
to the top until society collapses on itself. Or maybe not; we could return to
a stable feudalism.

In any case, the solution to this obviously is that kids should not have
preschool, but their parents (particularly the mom) should stay home with the
kids and play. That interaction with parents teaches kids far more than a
lowly paid preschool teacher will. That's how it was done for centuries.
That's what works.

~~~
TheGirondin
>parents should stay home with the kids and play. That interaction with
parents teaches kids far more than a lowly paid preschool teacher will.

Do you have kids? I have a 2.5 year who has been in a small day care setting
(about 10 kids) for 2 years. The effect it has had on her social (and even
academic) skills have been pretty amazing.

She is learning so much more about how to deal with other people, social
interactions, ect than she ever could staying at home with me.

>[One parent staying at home with the kids] was done for centuries.

Not really. Preindustrial revolution life was much more communal and based
around large, multi-generational family units.

~~~
mahyarm
Even a few generations ago, 4+ year olds wandered the neighborhood with the
other 4+ year olds lightly supervised and played games in the woods. Today
that never happens.

And in those large family units, all the kids played with each other
constantly and barely bothered the parents to do anything.

~~~
leshow
That doesn't happen anymore? Man it's sad to think I was probably the last
generation to wander around outside with my friends and play.

~~~
mahyarm
Well at least in Canada and the USA in many spots. I don't know about europe
and other parts of the world.

It is pretty sad.

------
dfabulich
It's weird to read an article like this today, dated January 2016, in light of
Congress passing ESSA two weeks ago, eliminating most federal rules around
national standardized tests. [http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-
congress-overwhe...](http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-congress-
overwhelmingly-approves-new-federal-education-law/91650)

~~~
dragonwriter
Dismantling the federal rules doesn't dismantle the state rules which, whether
or not they were in part designed to meet the federal requirements, exist
independently. Nor does it, more to the point, rewrite the actual school
curricula or transform classroom practices that were shaped by the system
produced by the old federal rules and associated state rules.

This is largely an advocacy piece about how practices should be changed
(focusing on what is viewed as negative about current practices); it makes as
much sense to see it now -- when the federal rules allow practice to change --
as any other time.

Where is the weirdness?

------
anigbrowl
This is a very US-centric article. Lots of other countries start out education
with a fair degree of desk work, rote memorization (eg of the alphabet, basic
addition and subtraction), expectations of being able to read by the end of
the first year and so on...and they're doing fine. My education in Ireland
would probably have seemed pretty Dickensian by the author's standards
(although we also had unstructured time, physical play and so on), and yet
Ireland consistently does well on measures of academic achievement and in
terms of cultural capital.

My parents both liked reading (thanks Mm & Dad) so I was lucky enough to be
able to read before I went to school at age 4, and the idea that it's bad for
kids' brains to teach them to read before 5 or 6 just seems laughably
delusional to me. I would have resented anyone trying to interfere with my
reading at a young age and certainly plan on teaching my own kids to read
should any come along. The article's suggestion that kids can't identify any
similarity between the veins in a leaf and those in their hand because they're
being subjected to too much book learning strikes me as bizarre.

Of course one shouldn't generalize from one's own experience, but given the
highly standardized nature of the educational curriculum I grew up with, if it
was so bad I'd expect that to have manifested in the form of intractable
social problems or declining international rankings by now.

------
vlunkr
This is a really disturbing trend to me. If you learn to read one year earlier
then the last generation then.. what? What long term effect will that have on
your life? Kids are learning so much at that young age already, even if they
aren't sitting a desk learning from a certified teacher. It's cliche, but we
need to let kids be kids for a while.

~~~
nickbauman
My daughter learned to "read" at 18 months. This was done by putting cards
with words next to the things they described all around the house (a card
written with "BUCKET" was put next to an actual bucket) for weeks, pointing
them out and explaining them through the days. Then occasionally collecting
them up and spreading them out on the floor to play a game "Emi, go bring me
the bucket card". After six months she was reading billboards along the
highway.

The key idea though was that it was always just a game, never a chore. We'd
put the cards back BEFORE she got bored of them.

She could read a 400+ page novel in a day at age 11. I can't even come close
to that.

~~~
infinite8s
This sounds like an interesting approach. What age did you start doing this?

~~~
lintiness
it's an interesting approach if you like picking up bits of torn up and chewed
up cards all day long. as for a reading 18 month old child, i call bullshit.

~~~
nickbauman
Notice the quotes. I said "read" not read. She was recognizing words on
billboards by remembering the letterforms from cards. But it was a start.

------
thewarrior
Two articles on the front page.

One lamenting that college graduates don't have any real skills and the other
saying that Kindergarten is now harder than ever.

~~~
qntty
Maybe not unrelated

 _New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of
Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found
that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more
“school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-
preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their
attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed
worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers
told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive,
poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected
to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably
losing their enthusiasm for learning._

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
> ... children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year
> after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.

And yet we pretend this isn't by design! The US system is based on 18th-19th
century's Prussian system which was used in their military to create more
obedient soldiers. That's why school is soul crushing and so many children
suffer in school. We are teaching them obedience above all else.

The system stinks.

~~~
cafard
I think that the Prussian bit is overdone. For one thing, the Prussian
government was not trying to create more obedient soldiers--it had ample &
brutal discipline for that--but literate ones. For another, it was the
widespread literacy that US reformers were looking at.

------
grandalf
What is Kindergarten for? What is school for?

Any approach is going to have consequences. For most Americans, the purpose of
both is primarily daycare and also a bit of socialization.

------
ideonexus
I found this article very frustrating. Everything the author is complaining
about comes down to one issue: the ratio of Teachers to Students. And yet, she
does not mention this once.

> A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system,
> published in September, found that although children who had attended
> preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they
> entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the
> time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were
> deteriorating... overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly
> structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to
> the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing
> their enthusiasm for learning.

The problem here isn't that preschoolers were more "school ready," the problem
is that the school system isn't prepared to handle "school ready" students.
School ready kindergartners have just come from a preschool like that of my
sons, where state regulations require a 1:10 teacher to student ratio [1], and
they are now in a 1:20 or worse ratio public school [2]. When a teacher is
going over material some students have already mastered, those students zone
out.

> Unfortunately, much of the conversation in today’s preschool classrooms is
> one-directional and simplistic, as teachers steer students through a highly
> structured schedule, herding them from one activity to another and signaling
> approval with a quick “good job!”

The author claims that providing a conversational class room is "relatively
cheap to provide." But this isn't something a teacher can just change their
teaching strategy and accomplish. This kind of interaction requires focusing
attention on a student at the expense of the other students--so it takes more
teachers. It is laughably naive to claim a teacher can have personalized
dialogue with 20 kindergartners at once.

> Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the
> Common Core State Standards Initiative’s kindergarten guidelines... One
> study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten
> teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the
> percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of
> the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent.

And yet, the Common Core only requires children know a number of sight-words,
basic phonetics, and the concepts of reading (words are separated by spaces,
we read left-to-right, etc.) [3]. The standards, which everyone loves to
criticize but no one seems to know what they actually say, are quite easy to
meet. One of my preschoolers has easily mastered the Kindergartner
recommendations with nothing but teaching him that the alphabet, words,
reading, and books are fun--but it takes personalized time to encourage that
attitude.

[1]
[http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STAR...](http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STARS/Kits/3to4centerteachertochildratiochart.pdf)

[2]
[http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411](http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411)

[3] [http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-
Literacy/RF/K/](http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/)

~~~
CaptSpify
Heh, your comment makes me laugh. You are correct, but I was shocked to see
1:20 ratio. My elementary ratios were ~1:30

------
InclinedPlane
The biggest problem with modern formal education is that all of the incentives
are screwed up. There's a race toward optimizing certain "metrics" and making
progress on paper to the detriment of actual learning. Sometimes I wonder
whether the educational system actually helps more than it hurts. So much of
"education" is not about learning, and in fact turns students away from
learning. It's amazing that the system works at all really.

------
amelius
And has the Ph.D. become the new Master's?

~~~
Balgair
If not now, then soon. The MS/MEng is for sure the new BS. I had a hiring
manager from a local firm come in and say: "Yes, we are hiring entry level
talent right now, masters students like you guys are in high demand and...."

The sentence betrayed his logic, that a MS is now entry level.

When asked if there were questions, one student said:"Wait, are masters now an
entry level requirement or preference?"

He relied:"Yes, they are a requirement, and they are entry level not just in
terms of comapny structure, but in terms of pay too"

This was bioengineering, by the way.

~~~
Retric
Bioengineering has rather high barriers to entry and an oversupply of highly
qualified workers.

You see the same thing in any field that attracts more workers than it needs.

~~~
Balgair
Wow, I did not know that! Do you know how much there is an oversupply of
workers? I'd love to see the stats and whatnot, as I am in the field.

~~~
Retric
[https://www.asee.org/papers-and-
publications/publications/co...](https://www.asee.org/papers-and-
publications/publications/college-profiles/2011-profile-engineering-
statistics.pdf)

4,066 undergrad in 2001 got a bio engenearing degree. +1,558 masters.

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-
engineering/biomedic...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-
engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm)

22,000 total jobs 2014 ([http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-
engineering/biomedic...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-
engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm))

There does seem to be steady growth in the field. But supply is definitely
outstripping demand.

~~~
Balgair
agreed, thank you!

------
sergiotapia
This is the case almost everywhere else in South America. You start with pre-
kinder if you wish, but most start at kinder.

