Idol Mini: "Retro-Radicality"
Aug. 7th, 2024 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfshellvenusRetro-Radicality
Idol Mini| week 5 | 1260 words
Oubaitori (Everything grows and blooms in its own time)
x-x-x-x-x
Our kids were in a Jewish daycare when they were little, which spoiled us for the future. The parents tended to be older, as we were, and the families were so nice. When our oldest entered kindergarten at our neighborhood school, we were all surprised to feel a bit of culture shock.
Most of the other parents were about ten years younger than me. HalfshellHusband is eight years older than I am, but we were both raised by parents who survived the Great Depression. For me, even when I was a school-aged kid myself (in the late 1960s through 1979), my family had a very different set of values from most of the other kids’ families. But the school parents of our daughter’s peers? They grew up in the late 1970s through 1990 or so, all Reagan-era kids whose experiences and attitudes added up to something very much Not Me.
That was how I became the “crank” parent, who disagreed with school methods that other people never gave a second thought.
When I was growing up (and generations before me), it was expected that kids would learn to read at different times. If you were a five-year-old who could read, you were WAY ahead of the game. If you couldn’t read by the end of 2nd grade, you were going to need a lot of special attention. Anything between those extremes was normal and acceptable. Fast-forward to our daughter’s school, where reading and writing were hammered on in Kindergarten, and anyone who didn’t “get it” before first grade was cause for parent-teacher conferences and worry. That was a lot of stress for the kids and their parents.
Little kids also used to learn to write using the “ball and stick” method. Almost everything was circles and lines, which is about all little fingers can handle. At our daughter’s school, Kindergartners were taught to write using the D’Nealian method, where all of the letters had “tails” because that supposedly made it easier to transition to cursive writing in the third grade. It absolutely made it much harder for the kids to learn basic writing, but apparently, that was not important.
Needless to say, I thought both of these choices were bad ideas. Just because you can teach a few kids to read and write in Kindergarten, that doesn’t mean you should. It is a whole lot easier on the kids (and their parents) if you simply wait until they’re older and more developmentally able.
Wow. ‘Developmentally able.’ Who knew that was such a radical concept?
The problem here wasn’t the teachers, it was California’s enormous bureaucratic Education engine. Mandates about what was to be taught when (and sometimes how) started at the state level. Then there were refinements at the county school-district level, and maybe, just maybe, a little wiggle room left for teachers to apply their training and experience.
Some state-level committee had decided that, since standardized test scores were the be-all / end-all of elementary education (because the results tended to affect federal funding), the best way for kids to test better was for them to learn everything earlier. Whether they realistically could seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
This was where I found myself so at odds with other parents. They didn’t question any part of the educational process, whether it was pushing the first-grade curriculum down into half-day Kindergarten, or shifting fourth-grade math into the third grade, or even something as basic as assigning weekly homework to Kindergarteners so they could “get used to the idea” of doing it.
Maybe the difference was due to growing up in the tail end of the Vietnam Era (“Question Authority!”) vs. the Reagan years. Maybe it was because I was old enough to have learned via different methods, so the contrast with the current methods was more obvious (??). Or maybe it was because both HalfshellHusband and I had both grown up as bright kids who were rarely challenged enough, and we were more concerned about keeping kids from hating school. You know what kids (and their parents) really hate? Pointless and unnecessary homework.
Whatever the reason, that generation of younger parents had bought into the same “earlier is better” mentality, and since those were also the parents on the PTA… change was not going to come from below. I felt like the lone voice crying out in the wilderness, over methods that did not actually affect our own kids but which I thought would make things harder for most of the other children. Maybe not surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to regard that as double “crank” behavior.
That emphasis on teaching things early didn’t just start in Kindergarten. When our oldest entered school, I actually started looking for alternative day care for our youngest. We loved where he already was, but it was expensive and we weren’t looking for Jewish enrichment since we weren’t Jewish. So, I visited the local Merryhill school. What an eye-opener that was.
Merryhill has a great reputation, but it is apparently geared toward parents with entirely different priorities. In the 4-year-old room, I noticed that all the toys were essentially locked away. In the 2-year-old room, the kids were having extended “reading time,” in which they all lolled around looking at books… that no one was reading to them. I asked about outdoor play areas, and was shown a patch of grass by the side of the building, “but sometimes we use the big kids’ playground.” And when I returned to the front desk, they were eager to tell me about their computer resources for little kids, but when I asked how much time the kids spent playing outside, the answer was, “We have two good ten-minute recesses a day.”
For pre-schoolers!!!
I could not have been more horrified. The Jewish daycare’s philosophy was that children learn through play, so the kids spent a lot of time outdoors running, jumping, inventing games, and digging. Inside, there were picture books, dress-up clothes, cars, trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys that were always available unless it was snack/nap/outside-play/circle time. The daycare taught basic phonics and numbers during short circle-time sessions each week, but mostly they focused on social skills like manners and listening and playing well with others. It was a wonderful program, and our kids loved it.
Needless to say, we didn’t move our son to another daycare program. The one he was already in was a perfect match for our values. Childhood is for playing and exploring, not for academia. Kids wind up chained to a desk soon enough, once they’re in elementary school. So, why start early?
One of the most puzzling things about that education-fixated generation of parents is that they were also the people who seemed to have specialized in “helicopter parenting.” Was it because they grew up with the beginnings of that themselves? Or could it be that pushing kids to do things too early leads to them feeling incompetent or overwhelmed, and their parents stepped in to do the work for them?
I’m hoping that the pendulum has swung the other way on the approach to early education now, although I doubt it. People would probably consider it a step backwards– it’s so “old-fashioned,” and so much less competitive. How will the U.S. ever keep up with other countries?!?
But I really think it’s harmful to accelerate learning so far beyond most kids’ abilities. We are stealing pieces of their childhood bit by bit, and we don’t seem to have many worthwhile results to show for it.
–/–
If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with many fine others here!
Idol Mini| week 5 | 1260 words
Oubaitori (Everything grows and blooms in its own time)
x-x-x-x-x
Our kids were in a Jewish daycare when they were little, which spoiled us for the future. The parents tended to be older, as we were, and the families were so nice. When our oldest entered kindergarten at our neighborhood school, we were all surprised to feel a bit of culture shock.
Most of the other parents were about ten years younger than me. HalfshellHusband is eight years older than I am, but we were both raised by parents who survived the Great Depression. For me, even when I was a school-aged kid myself (in the late 1960s through 1979), my family had a very different set of values from most of the other kids’ families. But the school parents of our daughter’s peers? They grew up in the late 1970s through 1990 or so, all Reagan-era kids whose experiences and attitudes added up to something very much Not Me.
That was how I became the “crank” parent, who disagreed with school methods that other people never gave a second thought.
When I was growing up (and generations before me), it was expected that kids would learn to read at different times. If you were a five-year-old who could read, you were WAY ahead of the game. If you couldn’t read by the end of 2nd grade, you were going to need a lot of special attention. Anything between those extremes was normal and acceptable. Fast-forward to our daughter’s school, where reading and writing were hammered on in Kindergarten, and anyone who didn’t “get it” before first grade was cause for parent-teacher conferences and worry. That was a lot of stress for the kids and their parents.
Little kids also used to learn to write using the “ball and stick” method. Almost everything was circles and lines, which is about all little fingers can handle. At our daughter’s school, Kindergartners were taught to write using the D’Nealian method, where all of the letters had “tails” because that supposedly made it easier to transition to cursive writing in the third grade. It absolutely made it much harder for the kids to learn basic writing, but apparently, that was not important.
Needless to say, I thought both of these choices were bad ideas. Just because you can teach a few kids to read and write in Kindergarten, that doesn’t mean you should. It is a whole lot easier on the kids (and their parents) if you simply wait until they’re older and more developmentally able.
Wow. ‘Developmentally able.’ Who knew that was such a radical concept?
The problem here wasn’t the teachers, it was California’s enormous bureaucratic Education engine. Mandates about what was to be taught when (and sometimes how) started at the state level. Then there were refinements at the county school-district level, and maybe, just maybe, a little wiggle room left for teachers to apply their training and experience.
Some state-level committee had decided that, since standardized test scores were the be-all / end-all of elementary education (because the results tended to affect federal funding), the best way for kids to test better was for them to learn everything earlier. Whether they realistically could seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
This was where I found myself so at odds with other parents. They didn’t question any part of the educational process, whether it was pushing the first-grade curriculum down into half-day Kindergarten, or shifting fourth-grade math into the third grade, or even something as basic as assigning weekly homework to Kindergarteners so they could “get used to the idea” of doing it.
Maybe the difference was due to growing up in the tail end of the Vietnam Era (“Question Authority!”) vs. the Reagan years. Maybe it was because I was old enough to have learned via different methods, so the contrast with the current methods was more obvious (??). Or maybe it was because both HalfshellHusband and I had both grown up as bright kids who were rarely challenged enough, and we were more concerned about keeping kids from hating school. You know what kids (and their parents) really hate? Pointless and unnecessary homework.
Whatever the reason, that generation of younger parents had bought into the same “earlier is better” mentality, and since those were also the parents on the PTA… change was not going to come from below. I felt like the lone voice crying out in the wilderness, over methods that did not actually affect our own kids but which I thought would make things harder for most of the other children. Maybe not surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to regard that as double “crank” behavior.
That emphasis on teaching things early didn’t just start in Kindergarten. When our oldest entered school, I actually started looking for alternative day care for our youngest. We loved where he already was, but it was expensive and we weren’t looking for Jewish enrichment since we weren’t Jewish. So, I visited the local Merryhill school. What an eye-opener that was.
Merryhill has a great reputation, but it is apparently geared toward parents with entirely different priorities. In the 4-year-old room, I noticed that all the toys were essentially locked away. In the 2-year-old room, the kids were having extended “reading time,” in which they all lolled around looking at books… that no one was reading to them. I asked about outdoor play areas, and was shown a patch of grass by the side of the building, “but sometimes we use the big kids’ playground.” And when I returned to the front desk, they were eager to tell me about their computer resources for little kids, but when I asked how much time the kids spent playing outside, the answer was, “We have two good ten-minute recesses a day.”
For pre-schoolers!!!
I could not have been more horrified. The Jewish daycare’s philosophy was that children learn through play, so the kids spent a lot of time outdoors running, jumping, inventing games, and digging. Inside, there were picture books, dress-up clothes, cars, trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys that were always available unless it was snack/nap/outside-play/circle time. The daycare taught basic phonics and numbers during short circle-time sessions each week, but mostly they focused on social skills like manners and listening and playing well with others. It was a wonderful program, and our kids loved it.
Needless to say, we didn’t move our son to another daycare program. The one he was already in was a perfect match for our values. Childhood is for playing and exploring, not for academia. Kids wind up chained to a desk soon enough, once they’re in elementary school. So, why start early?
One of the most puzzling things about that education-fixated generation of parents is that they were also the people who seemed to have specialized in “helicopter parenting.” Was it because they grew up with the beginnings of that themselves? Or could it be that pushing kids to do things too early leads to them feeling incompetent or overwhelmed, and their parents stepped in to do the work for them?
I’m hoping that the pendulum has swung the other way on the approach to early education now, although I doubt it. People would probably consider it a step backwards– it’s so “old-fashioned,” and so much less competitive. How will the U.S. ever keep up with other countries?!?
But I really think it’s harmful to accelerate learning so far beyond most kids’ abilities. We are stealing pieces of their childhood bit by bit, and we don’t seem to have many worthwhile results to show for it.
–/–
If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with many fine others here!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 06:42 am (UTC)And forest kindergartens are a big thing here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_kindergarten?wprov=sfti1#
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 06:58 pm (UTC)But most of the kids in their classrooms did NOT learn during Kindergarten, and there was hand-wringing and grief. The real attempts used to be made in first grade (when kids were typically 6), but all of the first-grade curriculum had been shoved down into half-day Kindergarten, which was a recipe for stress. :(
My particular school district didn't have Kindergarten when I was growing up, but for those that did, it was usually about learning colors, cooperation, and maybe numbers. And it included naptime!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 07:02 pm (UTC)Your own school... Gah. My Dad ran into that situation, where he was told, "No, the correct answer is I don't know, because we haven't learned that yet!"
Yes, heaven forbid anyone 'learn ahead' just driven by their own interests and abilities!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 03:25 pm (UTC)I homeschooled my kids because my oldest couldn't handle the pressure of first grade after one week. We figured out years later that her introverted personality couldn't deal with the noise and confusion and the first-time teacher yelling to assert control.) All of them have grown up into very competent adults and did just fine in college.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 07:49 pm (UTC)Ours were fine, but the large part of the bell curve... that situation really didn't help them. :(
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 05:53 pm (UTC)Our entries are very different, but it amuses me that we both wrote about aspects of education starting from the Oubitori prompt.
This was a very interesting entry. I think my main problem with education theories and management is that there really isn't a standard, just lots of bureaucrats pushing the latest fad. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Dan
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 07:57 pm (UTC)Apparently, some kind of whippersnapper! *grin*
that there really isn't a standard, just lots of bureaucrats pushing the latest fad.
Yup. The "Whole Language Theory" approach to reading was a prime example of that. It was someone's UNPROVEN theory, and it was adopted country-wide. I almost included a whole subsection on it here, but it was kind of a tangent because our school/school-district/someone found a sneaky way to primarily continue teach phonics with supplemental "high-frequency words" that often did not work well with phonics. Like 'the' and 'are.'
I pity the kids in other schools and states who were not so lucky. Right now, there are school districts who have reverted to phonics under the hood because their states still mandate Whole Language Theory but their kids' literacy rate has just tanked. :(
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 08:14 pm (UTC)Don't get me sterted...well, ya got me started. LOL
Kindergarted especially is not the kid-friendly place it used to be in our day. My 5-yr-old granddaughter (starting K-Garten next week), is curious and often asks me, "What does that sign say?" So I have been teaching her some sight words. I would NEVER push a kid who isn't ready (or judge them.) Same if it was math skills. School claimed Fuzzy1 was "at risk" for intervention / special ed in K-Garten. I held off, but in my heart I also knew something as a little off. Turns out she needed glasses. At the end of 1st grade I got the same report, but I was seeing some acting out in frustration and a hate for school starting. I had her tested. She was mildly dyslexic. (just in reading but oddly not in math) I made sure she got the help she needed, and she is a successful, educated adult now. Still, I noticed a shift between the 3 yrs between how my older daughter, MermaidFan and Fuzzy1 were presented with material. No kid before 2nd grade should have to do homework except reading / having someone read to them for 15-20 minutes. That just normalizes reading.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 09:46 pm (UTC)I think most kids learn to read better if they are read TO a lot. Our son knew some basic phonics from preschool, but what turned on the light bulb for him was sitting on his Dad's lap being read "Hop On Pop." Short words, rhyming-- it all clicked. Seeing the words while they're being read out loud really helps.
Fuzzy1 was lucky her vision problems AND dyslexia were caught fairly early. The longer you go without help, the harder and more discouraging it becomes.
I knew someone whose 10-year-old granddaughter wasn't a great reader, and one of the things I suggested was some fun kids' books below her grade-level. I think it helps to build fluency, and that also helps build confidence. The bigger words will come eventually, but too much struggle just puts kids farther behind. :(
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 10:19 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 07:33 am (UTC)My parents were both big readers, though my Dad read what he thought he "should" read (because they were the Classics), and my mother was more like me-- she hated reading things she didn't enjoy. But I think she read a LOT more books than my Dad because of it. Her "to read" pile was usually 10+ books deep, and she would just cycle through it.
And I am still baffled by the fact that neither of them EVER got the hang of using the public library. My Dad had hundreds of books that will have to be given away, that nobody really wants. My mother had another 100 of her own, but mainly she would mail boxes of books to a friend who would mail boxes of OTHER books to her, and they were very proud of this system... which already has a well-known civic model known as the LIBRARY. Oy. \o?
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 09:41 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 09:55 pm (UTC)It's funny, when I was growing up in Portland, Oregon (and later, Eugene), both cities had the Central Library and then bookmobiles. So, for the most part, all of my reading up through graduation came from the school library or the bookmobile.
I don't know what system those cities have now, but Sacramento has a county public library system where there are branch libraries at various locations (3 within about a 4-mile radius of our house) AND they have an inter-library hold system. Any book in the county system can be put on hold, and it will get transferred to your local branch library when it's ready. And the ebook system (since I almost exclusively use Kindle now)? Same thing. You can place holds on electronic books, and when your turn comes up it's available to be released to you. Awesome!
I love books and reading, but my husband's collection would rival my dad's if left unchecked, and I've seen that headache before. My parents used to move a lot (my dad was restless), and they would have 20-30 boxes of books ALONE that had to be moved ever time. Ridiculous! My current approach is that I only buy books I know I'm going to want to re-read multiple times. That cuts way down on random accumulation.
OTOH, the really good picture books we bought when the kids were little are being saved for the grandkids. Because, as I unfortunately learned, even kids' classics sometimes go out of print. And those Kinuko Craft and Jan Brett and Richard Scarry books need to be available forever. ;)
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 07:41 am (UTC)And don't get me started on people's insistence on getting their kids started on computers early. I'm a software engineer, and I think that whole idea is pretty much pointless, not to mention expensive. And (the biggest factor)... no teacher can ever hope to compete with the entertainment level of software designed to make games out of learning. So, even if those things DO help your kids learn to read early (and what is the rush?), they are setting your kids up to be bored in school and to make teachers' lives harder. :(
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 01:35 pm (UTC)My current nemesis is Education by Legislators who know nothing about it. The STARR test in Texas is a particularly egregious example. One local poet had one of her works sampled for the test and apparently her interpretation of her poem was wrong.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 08:11 pm (UTC)Education by Legislators is also a problem in California (and a lot of states), and compounds the existing problem of Education by Oversized Administration.
apparently her interpretation of her poem was wrong.
Uggggghhhh. Somehow, that does not surprise me.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 08:19 pm (UTC)I mean, we don't usually expect babies to walk and talk before the age of 1. Some do, but most just are not ready, and no amount of hounding them will change that. So, why would we ignore that when it comes to 5-year-olds vs. 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds? What's next, trying to teach multiplication to 1st graders?
I don't know how it was for your kids, but ours were in school for the Whole Language Theory reading program. BUT... our school didn't do that. I don't know if that was local to our school, the district, or the state as a whole. It was what was "supposed" to be used, but ours basically did Phonics and fulfilled the Whole Language part with high-frequency words like "the," "that", "there," "and," and "are." It helped a little, but trying to enforce ANY reading program "too early" created its own problems.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 08:26 pm (UTC)Yes, reading too early. We believe they shouldn't be expected to learn on that level until they shed their milk teeth. But our daughter was hyperlexic and perhaps things were easier for her because of that? Our main issue for elementary was we were in a predominantly ESL school and...get this...the lessons were taught one week in Spanish, the next in English. SERIOUSLY problematic for advancing. We were literally a year behind each school term.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 09:04 pm (UTC)OUCH. That sounds like it would be hard for BOTH sets of kids, though I imagine the Spanish-speaking ones might have it a little easier?
If you're going to do that, why not just do English instructions and Spanish instructions in turn, all day long? That way, ALL the kids have the chance to become bilingual almost by osmosis. But week-by-week? That's throwing them in the deep end of the pool and taking the ladders away. /o\
WHY does no one apply SENSE to education anymore? Gah.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 09:45 pm (UTC)The Jewish day-care had some religious learning (a little bit of Hebrew, a Tot Shabbat every Friday, and the Jewish holidays obviously were observed because it was part of a larger religious private school). But the Early Education Program for babies through age 4 was just so wonderful. The baby emphasis was on being loved and held and played with, and they even had a bike wagon with baby seats where the babies would be strapped in and then taken for a slow bicycle tour around the property. Random enrichment was a big focus.
Arts and crafts started at around 18 months in the next room up, and our daughter lived for that. They told us at a parent-teacher conference that she was the only kid they'd ever had who did every single one of the art projects. She's very crafts- and art-oriented even today!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 10:17 pm (UTC)I do believe all kids learn at their own pace. I do feel school was the best place for my particular kids to learn though. Part of education is relating to others, learning how to communicate with teachers, etc.
I am glad you like the preschool your kids had.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-09 10:25 pm (UTC)Ideally, most kids really shouldn't hate school, if the school is doing a good job of things!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-10 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-10 06:28 pm (UTC)It sounds as if your first year of grade school is what we would probably think of as Kindergarten, because that's the 5-year-old grade (usually a half-day in the U.S.) So, that's also kind of early!
I never went to Kindergarten (my school district at the time didn't have it), but for most places I think the goal there used to be making sure kids learned to play well with others, knew their colors and basic numbers, and started to learn the alphabet. Putting the alphabet together with phonics might have waited until first grade.
How was reading taught where you were growing up? I think phonics overall still works best (though not for every kid), but maybe not for every language. I mean, think of trying to apply phonics to French, where so many of the letters are silent!
And now I'm thinking of Finnish and Icelandic, where the words are so LONG. And Finnish has a ton of double-vowels, which could make spelling tricky. :O
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 12:01 am (UTC)I grew up in the 80s and 90s but I've advocated for more creative stuff in the classroom. I got to teach improv to my son's class in elementary school a few times (he's starting high school on Monday now). But given how college was stressed as the be-all-end-all solution when I was a teenager, I kind of went the opposite with my kids - they're super smart and could totally go to college, but I wasn't going to force them to go and get themselves into debt with education loans if it wasn't going to lead where they wanted to go. I feel like I've been lucky that I found schools for my kids that gave them the freedom to nurture their own interests though. They went to charter rather than district schools, so I have no idea what the differences are like.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 12:37 am (UTC)You were lucky to have your kids in charter schools, at least during the elementary years. The class size is smaller, which helps already (our Kindergarten size was usually 30-33 students). And they're much more receptive to enrichment and expanding learning. District schools are under much more bureaucratic control here, which usually makes things harder for the teachers. :(
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 06:10 pm (UTC)Yeah, it sounds like we got really lucky to go charter. This is why I get so angry at the people who try to cut funding or speak poorly about charter schools here. I understand charter schools are different around the country, but in California they are technically also public schools and held to certain expectations too. Class size makes a big difference. Accommodations for students are important too. My youngest has had a 504 plan since he was diagnosed with autism in 2017, and I've gotten the impression that he might not've gotten as much validating support as he needed if he'd gone to a different school.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:29 pm (UTC)Which really helps. They might emphasize different things more (like arts or math/science), but the kids still have to pass all the same standardized tests, so the students' competence (however it's achieved) still has to be the same as regular schools. But it can allow teachers a lot of creativity in how they teach, and (especially with smaller sizes) can allow them to adapt the teaching style better for individual students. As in, the kids who aren't going to learn through phonics (and there are always a few) might learn reading via different methods, if the teacher is able to use them.
I don't know how well a general school might have handled your son's case. My sister lives in Portland, and her youngest struggled in Kindergarten and first grade. My sister wanted her tested for dyslexia (which runs in our family), and the school didn't want to-- because then they would need special teaching for her, and that would cost them money. The Kindergarten teacher's response to the inquiry was, "I just think she's not all that smart." !!! It was like he'd never MET my niece, who was sharp as a tack and very inquisitive. But a charter school opened up in the neighborhood, and their response was, "Oh, yes-- her teacher also wondered if she might be dyslexic. Let's test her." It made a world of difference for my niece.
In our daughter's school (our son went into a Rapid Learner program staring in 2nd grade), she had the brother of a boy in our son's Kindergarten class. The younger boy was struggling with reading... but he was FIVE, so that could have been entirely normal. But I used to help out in both kids' classrooms, and for the older one... he would guess a word based on the first and last letters, and then the other kids would help him out (!). It was clear to me he couldn't really read, and I brought it up to the teacher. She thought they would have tested him for learning disabilities when he was younger, but thinking of my sister's example... maybe they didn't want to. Or maybe he masked it, because guessing from context clues works a lot better when the words are shorter. But he definitely needed help. I hope he got it. The teacher really collaborated well with her parent helpers (she was a neat lady), so I think she took me seriously when I brought it up. Hope so.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:38 pm (UTC)Their school didn't actually teach it. They taught phonics, and taught some high-frequency words like "the," "there," "and," the five "W" words, and "are." I.e., "linking" words that don't necessarily match up well with phonics, but which increase reading fluidity. But I don't think most schools approached it that way. It's been in use for more than 30 years now, and literacy here as plummeted.
As a result, though, there are school districts in various states who are going back to phonics despite the state mandates. Because the teachers themselves know better, and they'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 11:31 pm (UTC)When did that "smart baby" trend start? Remember flash cards for infants?
There are ads for "re-wilding" children and it's a great idea except for most urban children not possible .
K, this is a marvellous article! 👏❤👏
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Date: 2024-08-12 01:21 am (UTC)I've seen some really extreme things, like "unschooling," which worry me. Those are often parents who hated school, and are trying to save their kids from it entirely. One article in Outside Magazine was _really_ scary. It was a dad who had taught his kids reading, writing, and basic math, but then wanted them to become competent at hunting and tracking and building things, plus the enrichment of maybe playing a musical instrument. But he was setting them up to have very few career options apart from being an outdoor guide, like he was. It was frightening.
Why can't we help kids learn things at the right developmental age, instead of trying to fruitlessly rush them into feeling like failures? And at the other end, why can't we realize that limiting our kids' opportunities to learn and thrive isn't doing them any favors either?
/rant. I'm glad you enjoyed this!
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Date: 2024-08-12 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-12 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-13 12:33 am (UTC)But did your school system try to force the first grade into Kindergarten, or did they defer?
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Date: 2024-08-13 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-12 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-13 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-13 12:02 am (UTC)I was in kindergarten at the tail end of the 90's, and from what I can remember, I did a lot of reading. Up until I was in fourth grade, we had the Success For All program, where we would get divided by reading level and get like 45 minutes a day to read and develop critical thinking skills. And this was separate from our English classes. And the group of students I went to school with all knew how to read at grade level by the time we got to middle school. And no one felt weird or left out because it was just fun to get to leave class to hang out with new and a new teacher. But they discontinued that program because of funding.
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Date: 2024-08-13 12:38 am (UTC)HalfshellHusband has read studies that say the advantage for "early readers" tends to disappear by the 3rd grade. So again, what was the rush? Why push the 1st grade reading program down into kindergarten?