[blparent] First Grade, Kindergarten, Pre-K, Preschool ...

Mon Aug 20 20:21:57 UTC 2012

Part of why I sent Sarah to preschool was that I thought, since she was an 
only child, she needed to learn sharing, cooperation, and how to win and 
lose, with other kids her age.

Now that you mention it, I recall that when my cousin went to Burkina Faso 
with the Peace Corps to teach in a village school, he said the teacher who 
had been there before had taught by the French model, which was a lot of 
memorization and drills.  So when he got there, many of the village children 
and teenagers could tell him that five times four is twenty, but they 
couldn't really apply that to their real lives.

When I brought up the discussion, I was just feeling uneasy, not about 
Sarah's trek through preschool and pre-K to get to kindergarten, but at the 
general trend it seemed to indicate.  Sarah is barely now starting to 
recognize some of her letters, which is fine with me because I believe we 
still have plenty of time.  But I hear parents comparing their kids a lot, 
and my daughter has been unfavorably compared to my sister's children, who 
are older and were in daycare from their infancy, because they learned to 
read much sooner than she has.

Jo Elizabeth

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's 
brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and 
died in cotton fields and sweatshops.--Stephen Jay Gould
-----Original Message----- 
From: Pickrell, Rebecca M (TASC)
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 6:25 AM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] First Grade, Kindergarten, Pre-K, Preschool ...

        I had a preschool director tell me (and it's important to remember 
her perspective) that the stakes are lower in preschool which is why it's 
important kids go. She says that if a six year old bops someone over the 
head while he's figuring out how to share, it's far more serious then if a 
three year old does it.  I found this interesting.
I think part of the push for preschool is that families are smaller now. 
Kids do need to learn things that they used to have learned from older 
siblings and other big kids in their lives.

I also think that kids are able to do school type stuff earlier because 
we've gotten rid of many childhood and big people illnesses. The energy that 
used to be spent getting sick, being sick, then recovering can now be used 
for other things.

As for our educational system compared to the rest of the world, I'd be 
careful with that. We only know what other countries want us to know.  The 
U.S. is very good at giving the rest of the world a clear view. Other 
countries, well not so much. Look at some of the Indian engineers who can do 
exactly what they are told, but who cannot think creatively.  I'll see if I 
can find an article I recently read and post to the list.

Also, India uses far more manual labor then the U.S. so not everybody is 
bennifitting from what we think of as a better education.

What I've always found interesting is that no matter when and where an 
earthquake happens, there are a large number of children not at home with 
their families.  Look at this next time an earthquake hits the news. No 
matter what time it is local time, you'll find a surprisingly large number 
of children not with mom and dad.
Where I do think America fails is that the vocational tech programs are 
where they send the "bad kids".  This to me is very wrong because it sends 
the message that these professions aren't valuable.  It also means you have 
to do poorly in school to be considered for HVAC, automechanic or plumbing 
training.

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On 
Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 11:19 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: [blparent] First Grade, Kindergarten, Pre-K, Preschool ...

My daughter started preschool a year ago; now she's in Pre-K. She goes two 
days a week and really enjoys her class activities. But I'm wondering about 
the trend of getting kids started earlier and earlier. When kindergarten 
came about, it was to prepare kids for the first grade. It was a half day a 
week, just sort of easing the kids into school and teaching them how to be 
students--share, cooperate, follow directions, the basics. Kindergarten 
isn't even mandatory in all states, but now there are year-long waiting 
lists to get kids into full-day kindergarten classes. And we have Pre-K 
programs at our preschools. And preschool is promoted to get kids ready for 
Pre-K, which will prepare them for kindergarten, which was meant to prepare 
them for first grade. The insinuation is that if your child doesn't have 
Pre-K, she'll not be on track for kindergarten, and if she doesn't do 
preschool, she won't measure up well in Pre-K. So when and why did 
everything get so competetive? When and why did we stop letting our kids be 
kids till they started school? What are we pushing them toward, and is it 
good for them in the long run?

As part of her Pre-K information, I was given a list of standards that most 
kindergartens hope their students will be on track with before they start. 
They need to know all of their letters and numbers, as well as recognizing 
some common words by sight.  They need to know how to count to twenty and 
remember all the tens up to one hundred.  They need to know their colors and 
shapes by sight, and be able draw the shapes with a pencil.  They need to 
have basic skills with crayons, scissors, and glue.  It’s preferred if they 
can write their first and last names.  That sounds like first grade used to 
be.  I believe I remember learning my letters and numbers in kindergarten.

I just worry that our society has become too competetive with young 
children.  Besides that, if the standards are so strict for incoming 
kindergartners, then what are they teaching in kindergarten, and why isn’t 
the quality of our education system, particularly in America, rising when 
compared to that of students elsewhere in the world?

Jo Elizabeth

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's 
brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and 
died in cotton fields and sweatshops.--Stephen Jay Gould
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