“The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.”
The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but what I remember about my first-grade experience in the mid-90s doesn’t match the kindergarten she described in her email: three and a half hours of daily literacy instruction, an hour and a half of daily math instruction, 20 minutes of daily “physical activity time” (officially banned from being called “recess”) and two 56-question standardized tests in literacy and math—on the fourth week of school.
That American friend—who teaches 20 students without an aide—has fought to integrate 30 minutes of “station time” into the literacy block, which includes “blocks, science, magnetic letters, play dough with letter stamps to practice words, books, and storytelling.” But the most controversial area of her classroom isn’t the blocks nor the stamps: Rather, it’s the “house station with dolls and toy food”—items her district tried to remove last year. The implication was clear: There’s no time for play in kindergarten anymore.
A working paper, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” confirms what many experts have suspected for years: The American kindergarten experience has become much more academic—and at the expense of play. The late psychologist, Bruno Bettelheim, even raised the concern in an article for The Atlantic in 1987.
Researchers at the University of Virginia, led by the education-policy researcher Daphna Bassok, analyzed survey responses from American kindergarten teachers between 1998 and 2010. “Almost every dimension that we examined,” noted Bassok, “had major shifts over this period towards a heightened focus on academics, and particularly a heightened focus on literacy, and within literacy, a focus on more advanced skills than what had been taught before.”
In the study, the percentage of kindergarten teachers who reported that they agreed (or strongly agreed) that children should learn to read in kindergarten greatly increased from 30 percent in 1998 to 80 percent in 2010.
Bassok and her colleagues found that while time spent on literacy in American kindergarten classrooms went up, time spent on arts, music, and child-selected activities (like station time) significantly dropped. Teacher-directed instruction also increased, revealing what Bassok described as “striking increases in the use of textbooks and worksheets… and very large increases in the use of assessments.”
But Finland—a Nordic nation of 5.5 million people, where I’ve lived and taught fifth and sixth graders over the last two years—appears to be on the other end of the kindergarten spectrum. Before moving to Helsinki, I had heard that most Finnish children start compulsory, government-paid kindergarten—or what Finns call “preschool”—at age 6. And not only that, but I learned through my Finnish mother-in-law—a preschool teacher—that Finland’s kindergartners spend a sizable chunk of each day playing, not filling out worksheets.
Finnish schools have received substantial media attention for years now—largely because of the consistently strong performance of its 15-year-olds on international tests like the PISA. But I haven’t seen much coverage on Finland’s youngest students.
So, a month ago, I scheduled a visit to a Finnish public kindergarten—where a typical school day is just four hours long.
* * *
Approaching the school’s playground that morning, I watched as an army of 5- and 6-year-old boys patrolled a zigzagging stream behind Niirala Preschool in the city of Kuopio, unfazed by the warm August drizzle. When I clumsily unhinged the steel gate to the school’s playground, the young children didn’t even lift their eyes from the ground; they just kept dragging and pushing their tiny shovels through the mud.
At 9:30 a.m., the boys were called to line up for a daily activity called Morning Circle. (The girls were already inside—having chosen to play boardgames indoors.) They trudged across the yard in their rubber boots, pleading with their teachers to play longer—even though they had already been outside for an hour. As they stood in file, I asked them to describe what they’d been doing on the playground.
“Making dams,” sang a chorus of three boys.
“Nothing else?” one of their teachers prodded.
“Nothing else,” they confirmed.
“[Children] learn so well through play,” Anni-Kaisa Osei Ntiamoah, one of the preschool’s “kindergarten” teachers, who’s in her seventh year in the classroom, told me. “They don’t even realize that they are learning because they’re so interested [in what they’re doing].”
When children play, Osei Ntiamoah continued, they’re developing their language, math, and social-interaction skills. A recent research summary “The Power of Play” supports her findings: “In the short and long term, play benefits cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development…When play is fun and child-directed, children are motivated to engage in opportunities to learn,” the researcher concluded.
Osei Ntiamoah’s colleagues all seemed to share her enthusiasm for play-based learning, as did the school’s director, Maarit Reinikka: “It’s not a natural way for a child to learn when the teacher says, ‘Take this pencil and sit still.’” The school’s kindergarten educators have their students engage in desk work—like handwriting—just one day a week. Reinikka, who directs several preschools in Kuopio, assured me that kindergartners throughout Finland—like the ones at Niirala Preschool—are rarely sitting down to complete traditional paper-and-pencil exercises.
And there’s no such thing as a typical day of kindergarten at the preschool, the teachers said. Instead of a daily itinerary, two of them showed me a weekly schedule with no more than several major activities per day: Mondays, for example, are dedicated to field trips, ballgames, and running, while Fridays—the day I visited—are for songs and stations.
Once, Morning Circle—a communal time of songs and chants—wrapped up, the children disbanded and flocked to the station of their choice: There was one involving fort-making with bed sheets, one for arts and crafts, and one where kids could run a pretend ice-cream shop. “I’ll take two scoops of pear and two scoops of strawberry—in a waffle cone,” I told the two kindergarten girls who had positioned themselves at the ice-cream table; I had a (fake) 10€ bill to spend, courtesy of one of the teachers. As one of the girls served me—using blue tack to stick laminated cutouts of scoops together—I handed the money to her classmate.
With a determined expression reminiscent of the boys in the mud with their shovels, the young cashier stared at the price list. After a long pause, one of her teachers—perhaps sensing a good opportunity to step in—helped her calculate the difference between the price of my order and the 10€. Once I received my change (a few plastic coins), the girls giggled as I pretended to lick my ice cream.
Throughout the morning I noticed that the kindergartners played in two different ways: One was spontaneous and free form (like the boys building dams), while the other was more guided and pedagogical (like the girls selling ice cream).
In fact, Finland requires its kindergarten teachers to offer playful learning opportunities—including both kinds of play—to every kindergartner on a regular basis, according to Arja-Sisko Holappa, a counselor for the Finnish National Board of Education. What’s more, Holappa, who also leads the development of the country’s pre-primary core curriculum, said that play is being emphasized more than ever in latest version of that curriculum, which goes into effect in kindergartens next fall.
“Play is a very efficient way of learning for children,” she told me. “And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy.”
The word “joy” caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated that the country’s early-childhood education program indeed places a heavy emphasis on “joy,” which along with play is explicitly written into the curriculum as a learning concept. "There's an old Finnish saying,” Holappa said. “Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.”
* * *
After two hours of visiting a Finnish kindergarten, I still hadn’t seen children reading. I was, however, hearing a lot of pre-literacy instruction sprinkled throughout the morning—clapping out syllables and rhyming in Morning Circle, for example. I recalled learning in my master’s degree courses in education that building phonemic awareness—an ability to recognize sounds without involving written language—was viewed as the groundwork of literacy development.
Just before lunch, a kindergarten teacher took out a basket brimming with children’s books. But for these 5- and 6-year-olds, “reading” looked just like how my two toddlers approach their books: The kindergartners, sitting in different corners of the room, flipped through pages, savoring the pictures but, for the most part, not actually deciphering the words. Osei Ntiamoah told me that just one of the 15 students in her class can currently read syllable by syllable. Many of them, she added, will read by the end of the year. “We don’t push them but they learn just because they are ready for it. If the child is willing and interested, we will help the child.”
There was a time in Finland—in the not so distant past—when kindergarten teachers weren’t even allowed to teach reading. This was viewed as the job of the first-grade teacher. But, as with America, things have changed: Nowadays, Finnish teachers are free to teach reading if they determine a child is—just as Osei Ntiamoah put it—“willing and interested” to learn.
Throughout Finland, kindergarten teachers and parents meet during the fall to make an individualized learning plan, shaped by each child’s interests and levels of readiness, which could include the goal of learning how to read. For Finnish kindergartners who seem primed for reading instruction, Holappa told me it’s still possible to teach them in a playful manner. She recommended the work of the Norwegian researcher Arne Trageton—a pioneer in the area of play-based literacy instruction.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic, kindergarten students like that of the Arkansas teacher are generally expected—by the end of the year—to master literacy skills that are far more complex, like reading books with two to three sentences of unpredictable text per page. “These are 5- to 6-year-olds!” the Arkansas teacher wrote in disbelief.
More than 40 states—including Arkansas—have adopted the Common Core State Standards, which contain dozens of reading expectations for kindergartners. In the United States—where 22 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty (more than 16 million in total)—the Common Core’s emphasis on rigorous language-learning in kindergarten could be viewed as a strategy for closing the alarming “Thirty Million Word Gap” between America’s rich and poor—holding schools accountable for having high expectations for their youngest students.
Furthermore, unlike the reality of teaching kindergarten in Finland where the poverty rate is 10 percent and the student-teacher ratio is typically 14:1 (based on national guidelines), most American kindergarten teachers don’t have a choice whether or not they teach reading. Under the Common Core, children should be able to “read emergent-texts with purpose and understanding” by the end of kindergarten. Ultimately, they’re expected to, at the very least, be able to decode basic texts without the support of a teacher.
“But there isn’t any solid evidence that shows that children who are taught to read in kindergarten have any long-term benefit from it,” Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emeritus of early childhood education at Lesley University, explained in a video published by the advocacy group Defending the Early Years.
Research by Sebastian Suggate, a former Ph.D. candidate at New Zealand’s University of Otago studying educational psychology, confirms Carlsson-Paige’s findings. One of Suggate’s studies compared children from Rudolf Steiner schools—who typically begin to read at the age of seven—with children at state-run schools in New Zealand, who start reading at the age of five. By age 11, students from the former group caught up with their peers in the latter, demonstrating equivalent reading skills.
“This research then raises the question,” he said in an interview published by the University of Otago. “If there aren’t advantages to learning to read from the age of five, could there be disadvantages to starting teaching children to read earlier?”
* * *
At the end of my visit to the Finnish kindergarten, I joined the 22 children and their two teachers for a Friday event that only happens on weeks when children are celebrating their birthdays. The birthday child that week sat at the front of the classroom in a chair facing his peers and teachers, all of whom sat in a semicircle, and a table with a candleholder to his left.
I expected the celebration to end after the lighting of candles and “Happy Birthday” song, but it didn’t. One of the boy’s classmates, donning a hat that looked like a beret and wearing a mail carrier’s sling over his shoulder, took him by the hand, and the two proceeded to dance as we sang the Finnish children’s song, “Little Boy Postman.”
Once the song was complete, the little postman took out a card and handed it to his classmate. “Would you like me to help you read this?” one of the birthday boy’s teachers asked. “You help,” he responded, a hint that hadn’t quite mastered the skill yet. I watched his face carefully, searching for any hint of shame. I found none—but then again, why should he have felt embarrassed?
The flickering six candles reminded me he’s only a little kid.
Research shows that there is really no point to learning to read at an early age. While early readers outperform their illiterate peers in K-2, research shows that it all evens out in grades 3-4 when the others catch up. Trying to force an unwilling child to sit and read does more harm than good - not only does it frustrate the child and harm their self esteem, but it also causes them to think reading is boring. Waiting until the child is ready and willing to learn will help give them a love of reading. And let's not even get into the pathologizing normal behavior in little boys who don't want to do it and the longterm damage the stigma if a diagnosis or health consequences of unnecessary medication.
I know everyone thought I was crazy in the homeschooling thread for saying that we get good results with only an hour or two of structured lessons with my 6 and 8 year olds, but kids at these young ages learn best by being given the freedom to play and explore the world around them. They do eventually WANT to learn to read and do math when they realize they need it to function and understand the world around them. Why force them to learn it before they need or want to? Good for Finland.
I read this earlier and I am still ambivalent. Not about what Finland's doing but our system in the States. I think we still struggle with making differential instruction happen here. Both because I think there are too many competing demands and constraints put on teachers' time and because class sizes are usually too large (my 2nd grader has 21 kids in his class so I know going in that it's going to be extremely difficult for his teacher to tailor lessons to each individual student every day. I don't expect that). It's been my experience that learning in school goes pretty slowly and that there's a lot of repetition, again, probably having to do with the large class sizes and also the unnecessarily long summer vacations. So I guess I have kind of the opposite position from the author in that I feel like we could probably benefit from introducing new concepts to kids earlier than we typically do, especially in math. We've been printing out math problems for our second grader to do at home just because he's eager to learn and I feel like he could use the extra practice and it's easy enough to teach at this stage. Both of my kids really wanted to learn to read in kindergarten (and actually before in prek. Their prek program was play based and did not teach formal reading. So we started with the BOB books which are great).
I wanted to add that DH and I have a unwritten rule in our house - we never interrupt good play for school. If I think it's a good time to get some lessons in and go upstairs to call the kids down to the table and find them focused on a Lego set or playing a board game together - yesterday when I went to get them the oldest was reading a book to my 4 year old and the 6 year old was building a fort with the 2 year old - there is no way I will interrupt that to do worksheets. What they are doing is WAY more important. School work is done in our downtime. Good play always comes first, at least during the elementary years.
I had a 24 hour layover in Helsinki almost two weeks ago and it was very interesting. It was only me and my 2 year old so we spent the day doing kid stuff like visiting the zoo, going to parks, and playing at the playground close to our hotel. It really seemed like such a wonderful place for children. I saw classes of all age groups walking around the city. The parks were full of moms with babies (obviously enjoying their long parental leave) and the playgrounds were full of pre-schoolers waiting to be picked up by their parents. The playgrounds were so old school too; only metal and wood equipment and tons of dirt to dig around in.
One mom on the playground guessed I was American and struck up a conversation. She said her brother and SIL live with their kids in Manhattan and that the whole helicopter parent and intense preschool admissions things were a huge culture shock for them. She also said how happy she was to live in Finland and be able to let her kids just run around and play without worrying about it.
I was only there one day, but it just seemed like such a nice place. If I thought I had any chance of learning Finnish or if I didn't enjoy daylight year round I'd try and move there. It was just so, so lovely overall and actually much more diverse than I expected.
Also, random Finland fact: all the public bathrooms play bird noises for background music. My daughter was really scared that birds were going to ambush her mid diaper change so maybe it isn't all great in Finland.
Post by WanderingWinoZ on Oct 6, 2015 8:17:53 GMT -5
yea, I'm pretty much generally in the boat that kids need to learn social/emotional skills much longer than we allow them to do so in schools. There is so much value in play- physically learning to interact with the world around you, developing senses & motor skills, navigating social circles, using your imagination to entertain yourself are so much more important than learning to read for the 4-7 crowd.
I'm all for early reading and literacy, but only if kids are interested and ready. A lot of the things this piece brings up are why we have the youngest in Montessori. I wish there were an option past Kinder for it here.
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
well they did say if a child wants to, they help them learn. They said there was one child who could read, and by the end of kindergarten many would be able to. That seems more reasonable than expecting EVERY child to know how to read by the end of kindergarten.
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
This is why I love Montessori - kids read when they're ready and interested. Some kids are reading at 3, some are reading at 8, but they're all given the tools to do so when it's time for it to "click" for them.
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
The article points out that if the child is willing and ready than teaching advanced skills for reading is fine. The problem comes in pushing expectations on children who are not developmentally ready.
My child was not ready to read in Kindergarten or even first grade. We're at a point now where the pushing and expectations have taken a major toll on his confidence. He can read but he believes that he's too slow or not smart enough to read on par with his peers. That's not OK and his 2nd grade teacher and I have to do a lot of "undoing" of that belief.
The problem with the American style of education is that we're trying to teach a massive number of students with a low number of teachers in the the most "efficient" way possible and it's not really a good system.. We're doing too much, too early, with too few resources.
The problem with the American style of education is that we're trying to teach a massive number of students with a low number of teachers in the the most "efficient" way possible and it's not really a good system.. We're doing too much, too early, with too few resources.
I totally agree with this.
Do you all feel that your schools do a good job with differential instruction? This is what makes the Finnish kindergartens ideal. Like I said above, it's not really an expectation in our school. If you want extra instruction, whether remedial or accelerated, it's up to the parents to provide it.
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
The article points out that if the child is willing and ready than teaching advanced skills for reading is fine. The problem comes in pushing expectations on children who are not developmentally ready.
My child was not ready to read in Kindergarten or even first grade. We're at a point now where the pushing and expectations have taken a major toll on his confidence. He can read but he believes that he's too slow or not smart enough to read on par with his peers. That's not OK and his 2nd grade teacher and I have to do a lot of "undoing" of that belief.
The problem with the American style of education is that we're trying to teach a massive number of students with a low number of teachers in the the most "efficient" way possible and it's not really a good system.. We're doing too much, too early, with too few resources.
I get that and read it in the article. I should have been more clear, I guess, in asking if it is somehow detrimental even if the kid is expressing interest because it seems like the flip side is there isn't joy in early reading (which I mean I guess if it's something you enjoy that's not true - I know I find much joy in reading). I guess the takeaway more is not that there isn't joy in learning/reading even at an early, the lack of joy comes from making it a chore and the pressure. I think I was wondering if there is a detrimental aspect even if it's enjoyed because it's not age appropriate and they should be playing?
Post by dutchgirl678 on Oct 6, 2015 9:12:52 GMT -5
Such an interesting perspective. We lived in the States and DD went to K there. I grew up in the Netherlands and was pretty surprised at the intensity of her school work in K. They used to get homework every week and she could read and write fluently by the end of the year. But I also think she loved it and was ready to absorb it.
Last year we moved to the Netherlands where she went on to what they call here group 3. It is similar to first grade, except that kids here start K at age 4 and usually have 2 years of K. They are not expected to read or write yet, so she learned all over. But since her Dutch was pretty basic in the beginning, it was good for her to be at that level with her Dutch peers. She was fluent in about 6 weeks though and apart from learning to write in cursive, she progressed to a point where she was consistently ahead one workbook in school. But the teachers were ok with that and kids that could work independently on such tasks were allowed to do that.
Last year there was no homework, but this year in group 4 they started giving the kids sheets with vocabulary to practice at home and last week they started with an online learning program for math, reading, spelling, etc. She wants to play with it.
In the meantime my son started group 1 in May when he turned 4. He is in a mixed class 1-2 so kids are between 4 and 6 years old. The older kids sometimes do some math (mostly counting) and even though he is only 4 he wants to do it too, so he is in the older group when they do this. But other than that they play, do crafts, listen to the teacher, sing songs etc. He loves school. BTW they have pretty big class rooms too. 24-30 kids in one class with mostly one teacher, sometimes an assistant.
I can definitely tell I need to step back some as I have the classic helicopter mom behavior . I won't let my kids bike to school yet even though we don't live too far. We only just started letting them practice riding their bikes around the block. And I can see I am projecting some of my anxiety about it onto my daughter. But I am slowly trying to let her do her thing, on her own...
The "only four hours a day" thing is a negative for me though. that's more after school care to pay for! lol
This is where I stopped. What's happening with these kids the rest of the day? State-funded daycare? Or is it like Germany where they've essentially forced mothers of younger children out of the workforce because there's no supplemental childcare?
But what if your 4yo wants to learn to read? I have never done anything formal with my kids (until this year - and it's totally whenever Scarlett wants to - and she wants to), and both were reading before K. Scarlett is reading now and has been for awhile (just turned 5). Jackson was reading at around 5.5 (his birthday is October, so he started K at almost 6).
I just let them play, so on the one hand, I see what the article is saying because that's how I approached my kids' lives until K. But both of them were ready for more before school really started for them, too.
This is why I love Montessori - kids read when they're ready and interested. Some kids are reading at 3, some are reading at 8, but they're all given the tools to do so when it's time for it to "click" for them.
Ditto the bold - while reading this the Finnish school reminded me of my kids' Montessori school. Much more child-directed/play-based learning than the public schools in my area. I was so disappointed when the elementary principal informed me the K-level students get 4(!) standardized tests minimum in the 10m they're in school. Ridiculous for 5yr olds.
The "only four hours a day" thing is a negative for me though. that's more after school care to pay for! lol
This is where I stopped. What's happening with these kids the rest of the day? State-funded daycare? Or is it like Germany where they've essentially forced mothers of younger children out of the workforce because there's no supplemental childcare?
They have universal daycare for kids seven and under. There is a monthly fee depending on your income and household size, but it only goes up to $318/month, I believe. I read that in an article a while back.
I currently have a kindergartener in regular public school and I don't think it's too academic or too challenging at all. They have two recesses, lunch, and two sessions of "free choice," which is play time with the class toy stations.
The only homework we have is 20 minutes per night of reading.
This is where I stopped. What's happening with these kids the rest of the day? State-funded daycare? Or is it like Germany where they've essentially forced mothers of younger children out of the workforce because there's no supplemental childcare?
They have universal daycare for kids seven and under. There is a monthly fee depending on your income and household size, but it only goes up to $318/month, I believe. I read that in an article a while back.
good for them! We need something like this in the US. Until then, nothing will convince me that half day kindy is the way to go. Our district is in the first year of full day kindy and it's such a perk for working families. It's a huge money saver and I firmly believe it also benefits the kids.
In my school, 75% of the kids qualify for free lunch. When we only had half day kindergarten, the K's didn't get lunch so many of these children would have gone hungry.
Wasn't there another article posted here about how learning to read is NBD in Finland because everything is phonetic and grammar rules are consistent? They spend significantly less time on reading and spelling because there is much less memorization required. I think play is important for elementary students and it sounds like Finland does have a different model for early education, but there are other factors at play if the other article was accurate.
K will only be half-day when DS starts. Right now, he's in half-day, 4 days a week, public Pre-K (which is not universal, we live in a poor 'hood and there was room for him in the program). We have arranged for him to walk to and from daycare with her older kids. There is also bus service to get the kids to and from either home or daycare.
I see no point in pushing reading on 4-5 year olds. I could try to teach him above his ability, but it's so much easier to learn when you're ready. DS has "pre-reading skills" - he likes knowing his letters, and he asks me what letter words start with, and he asks to write words sometimes and has us spell them for him. The key phrase there is "he asks". I love encouraging him. I'm not going to break his little spirit at 4 with worksheets and drills.
The "only four hours a day" thing is a negative for me though. that's more after school care to pay for! lol
This is where I stopped. What's happening with these kids the rest of the day? State-funded daycare? Or is it like Germany where they've essentially forced mothers of younger children out of the workforce because there's no supplemental childcare?
FWIW, our regular, state-run daycare is 8-5pm, incl lunch, breakfast, snack and has 1:4 teacher ratio all for 260 euro per month so that is sweet as hell. But starting from 1st grade that half-day BS is no bueno.
The article points out that if the child is willing and ready than teaching advanced skills for reading is fine. The problem comes in pushing expectations on children who are not developmentally ready.
My child was not ready to read in Kindergarten or even first grade. We're at a point now where the pushing and expectations have taken a major toll on his confidence. He can read but he believes that he's too slow or not smart enough to read on par with his peers. That's not OK and his 2nd grade teacher and I have to do a lot of "undoing" of that belief.
The problem with the American style of education is that we're trying to teach a massive number of students with a low number of teachers in the the most "efficient" way possible and it's not really a good system.. We're doing too much, too early, with too few resources.
I get that and read it in the article. I should have been more clear, I guess, in asking if it is somehow detrimental even if the kid is expressing interest because it seems like the flip side is there isn't joy in early reading (which I mean I guess if it's something you enjoy that's not true - I know I find much joy in reading). I guess the takeaway more is not that there isn't joy in learning/reading even at an early, the lack of joy comes from making it a chore and the pressure. I think I was wondering if there is a detrimental aspect even if it's enjoyed because it's not age appropriate and they should be playing?
Not for a NT kid (for a SN kid the social impact of reading instead of playing with peers has to be considered) But for your average kid if they are doing it because it's fun and they enjoy it then KOKO. The issue is that reading is a developmental skill (like walking or talking) and our brains are hardwired to get it between 5-7 (for a typical kid with no issues). Forcing a kid at 5 who just isn't there yet to 'read' is just torture for all involved and ruins the concept of reading for a kid. If you have a 5 yr old who it has clicked for and they want to read encourage it and KOKO.