When I started school as a chubby, dimpled five year old, I had a heart full of love for my teacher and I thought school was the bee’s knees. What could be better than spending my days full of playing, coloring and learning basic manners? Not to mention snack time. I even loved learning the alphabet (one letter a week). As the year went on our teacher gradually introduced us to more and more learning. The last few weeks were spent learning how to sound out words. One day was spent learning how to add numbers together. I and my classmates left Mrs. Wiest’s class ready to enter the world of First Grade. Each school year gently preparing us for the learning expectations of the next.
Fast forward to 2017. Five year olds are now expected to learn the entire alphabet in just a few weeks! Snack time is non-existent as is playtime, and with the current rate of recess reduction, I’m sure lengthy recesses are on their way out. Before they can move on to the first grade students have to be able to read and write. Are we serious? Kids that can hardly sit still for more than 5 minutes at a time are supposed to learn the basic reading skills that will last them a lifetime? No wonder kids hate reading.
My husband and I are proud parents of a two year old girl and a 6 month old boy and I am scared to death of sending them to school when the times come. I want them to grow up with the same love of learning that I have. I want them to desire more education, not desire to be finished as fast as possible.
The PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) is a test administered to students across the globe every 3 years to assess each countries’ education programs compared to others. The United States of America never scores above the middle of the pack. This is obviously an embarrassment and leads each administration to decide that they are going to fix the education system, largely by doing things that don’t help, but rather hinder (I’m looking at you No Child Left Behind). In Obama’s Administration he created a pre-school program that would be available to students everywhere in the United States. He wanted to give kids a head start because he felt that would improve the USA’s test scores. All this did was cause millions of parents to think that there kids would be behind without attending pre-school. This has led to many students who are not ready for school being placed in school much too early.
In Finland, the country which routinely scores higher than any other on the PISA, students are not allowed to attend school before the age of seven. Homework is only what you don’t finish in school and school days are shorter, with more play time for younger students. The result? They routinely score far above America on the PISA. So if they require less of their students, and their students succeed more than American students, why are we requiring so much of our students?
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