Today, on another blog, I was made aware of this: Proposed national academic standards for young children. Apparently between the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, a document has been in the works--secretly until very recently--defining core academic standards for grades K-12. The Alliance for Childhood, whose website I have linked above, vehemently opposes these standards for grades K-3. Unfortunately, it's not allowing me to copy and paste even small snippets from their website, but please--go and read what they have to say! I know not many people in my circle of friends feel as militantly as I do about how childhood is being taken away one small piece at a time...but for any of you do think that kindergarten is already too academic and doesn't need to be made into an even greater place of pressure--read the above link and follow the instructions to participate in the survey offering feedback on these standards!
I haven't had time to thoroughly comb through the standards for the four grades in question. I looked extensively at the list for kindergarten and quickly glanced through second grade. A few troublesome things in the kindergarten list:
I thought it would be the reading stuff that would bother me the most, but it was actually the math concepts. MANY of the standards listed were things that Dallin did not do until first grade. Some of the things they are requiring, such as working with 2-digit numbers, tens and ones, etc., he is still trying to master in the second grade! And Dallin is a "good" student, getting A's in all his subjects!
MANY mainstream early childhood educators have already signed their support for the Alliance for Childhood and their opposition to these standards. It's not just weird Waldorf-types like me.
Earlier is not necessarily better! Young children have developmental needs and abilities that are qualitatively different than those of older children! More rigorous academic standards will only result in more time being spent on activities that are not appropriate for many young children, who still need to spend the bulk of their time playing and moving, not practicing more reading skills or filling out more worksheets!
I haven't had time to thoroughly comb through the standards for the four grades in question. I looked extensively at the list for kindergarten and quickly glanced through second grade. A few troublesome things in the kindergarten list:
- Children would be required to "read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension" when reading texts.
- Kindergarteners would have to know their numbers from 1-100 and be able to count forwards or backwards from any named number in the sequence.
- They must be able to capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun "I". (Hello, Dallin is in second grade, and I know his teacher is STILL working to get some kids to remember to capitalize the first word in a sentence.)
- Children must be able to spell simple words phonetically using knowledge of sound-letter relationships. (I know Dallin was not required to spell even the simplest of words until early in first grade.)
I thought it would be the reading stuff that would bother me the most, but it was actually the math concepts. MANY of the standards listed were things that Dallin did not do until first grade. Some of the things they are requiring, such as working with 2-digit numbers, tens and ones, etc., he is still trying to master in the second grade! And Dallin is a "good" student, getting A's in all his subjects!
MANY mainstream early childhood educators have already signed their support for the Alliance for Childhood and their opposition to these standards. It's not just weird Waldorf-types like me.
Earlier is not necessarily better! Young children have developmental needs and abilities that are qualitatively different than those of older children! More rigorous academic standards will only result in more time being spent on activities that are not appropriate for many young children, who still need to spend the bulk of their time playing and moving, not practicing more reading skills or filling out more worksheets!
Comments
I would say that in Dallin's kindergarten, some of those things were in place as ideals, but not expectations. Make sense? For example, being able to read simple CVC words by the end of the year was an ideal, but Dallin wasn't quite at that point and he still was considered to be "above grade level". (According to his report card.) He could struggle through some very basic words with a lot of laboriousness (is that even a word?), but reading for comprehension? No way. The simplest Bob Books were very difficult for him even at the end of kindergarten. And yet he was "at or above grade level". And I wasn't worried. I knew he was on his own timetable and would get it when he was ready. And he did! Early in first grade, everything clicked and he took off with reading.
Most of that math stuff was not expected or taught at all in Dallin's kindergarten. Math was nothing beyond the very simplest addition. 2+2=4, stuff like that.
Even if some of those standards are already in place, I think that's still wrong. I have beefs with how kindergarten already is, much less making it even more academic. It makes me crazy that Dallin did NO art whatsoever in kindergarten. Maybe 2-3 projects came home the entire year.