Should Toddlers Go to School?

This week’s article summary is Toddlers Don't Have to Go to School and it’s a follow to last week’s summary on the difference between the U.S. and Finnish approach to education, particularly in early childhood grades.

Last week’s The Importance of Play ended with the point that other countries are adopting the Finnish style of education, including historically more traditional educational systems of China and Singapore.

This week’s article shows how a growing number of U. S. parents today are holding off on starting the formal education of their children due to what they deem as developmentally inappropriate expectations in schools.

Whether a parent has a more Finnish or a more traditional American view of education, we as early childhood/elementary teachers need to help parents see the connection between Trinity’s program and pedagogy to future outcomes in their children.

I just finished reading the book Building a Story Brand which emphasized the need for teachers to be guides for parents. The book stresses two qualities that are vital for being a guide: empathy and competence.

From an empathy standpoint, we need to understand why many parents believe that drill and kill seatwork leads to a stronger knowledge base which in turn leads to greater academic success.

But then through our competence, i.e., our knowledge of how children best learn, we need to educate parents among other things 1) that drill and kill work more often leads to students becoming bored by and disenfranchised from school, 2) that overly strict school rules don’t allow children to practice and strengthen appropriate decision-making skills and habits, 3) that reducing fine and performing arts classes stifles children’s opportunities to express themselves creatively, 5) that social studies strengthens their content knowledge base, 6) that lack of school recess ignores the interconnection between physical movement and cognitive growth.

Helping parents see the nexus between allowing kids to be kids (cherishing childhood) and preparing them for future success (fostering cognition, character, curiosity, confidence) is not just the Trinity Way but what educational research has long confirmed.

It’s tough to be a parent and just as we guide our children we need to guide their parents—with empathy and competence.

Joe

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On the best-seller wall of my local bookstore is Mo Willems’s new picture book, “The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!” My children adore Mr. Willems’s books, but he’s got one thing wrong: The pigeon doesn’t have to go to school.

While Democratic presidential candidates tout subsidized early schooling and cities like New York expand universal preschool to 3-year-olds, some parents are resisting the pressure to start school early.

For Dawn Gallahue, enrolling her 4½-year-old son, Noah, in preschool didn’t seem like a good fit, and she’s not sure about kindergarten either. “Noah is a very busy guy with a great imagination,” she says, noting that he is already reading. “I worry if I were to send him to preschool, he’d end up bored and act out.”

Ms. Gallahue is right to worry. Last fall, Harvard researchers published findings in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that in states with a Sept. 1 cutoff for kindergarten enrollment, children who were born in August were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder than their peers who were born in September and were thus nearly one year older when starting school. This was particularly true for boys.

Young children are exuberant. They exist to play and explore, wiggling their way through childhood. Standardized curriculum frameworks and frequent testing pressure children to sit still, pay attention and achieve academically before they may be developmentally ready to do so.

Increasingly, kindergartners are expected to be able to read. Researchers at the University of Virginia discovered that 31% of kindergarten teachers in 1998 agreed that children should learn to read in kindergarten. By 2010 that number had risen to 80%. Children who can’t meet this evolving benchmark may find themselves labeled or medicated.

The trend over the past two decades has been toward more time in school, beginning at earlier ages and with an increased focus on academics. Schooling consumes more of childhood than ever, yet the benefits of early schooling remain unclear. Some studies show positive results for low-income children, but often those results don’t last. For children with advantages, the upside is negligible.

In my work with families that choose to delay or forgo formal schooling, I find common themes. They are disillusioned with a model of mass schooling that rewards conformity over creativity. They recognize that an archaic education system designed for the 19th century is incompatible with the realities of the 21st. They want to nurture their children’s curiosity and originality, not watch these qualities eroded by one-size-fits-all schooling. These families seek alternatives to formal schooling.

The pigeon admits he is afraid to go to school, but fear shouldn’t be what leads parents to consider opting out. Rather, they should look at what children gain when allowed to learn and explore outside institutional education. Benefits can include a stronger connection to family, unhurried exposure to literacy and numeracy, and abundant time outdoors and at play. For many children, their world contracts when they go to school as they are segregated by age, surrounded by a static handful of adults, and subjected to a regimented curriculum.

So, no, the pigeon doesn’t have to go to school. He can stay in the nest and soar when he’s ready.