Reply #7: Wait a damned minute. [View All]

School used to start in first grade, not all that long ago, and in most states is still the first year some form of schooling is mandatory. Then kindergarten became more popular (and in some states obligatory) in order to ensure readiness for the first grade. Then preschool became less about childcare and more about preparedness for kindergarten, first for disadvantaged and then for kids generally, and people started sending kids whether they were able to work with them at home or not, to programs that were originally intended to help kids with semi/illiterate parents to get the experience being read to that their peers got *at home*.

So most kids are getting two or three more years of schooling, sometimes four if they start preschool at two, than American kids got a few generations ago. I don't think there's any evidence that the results of all this extra work are any better than under the old system. Certainly people in my parents generation, who started school at five or six, are at least as well educated and literate as kids today who start school as soon as their parents can coax them into using a toilet.

I have to ask why we waste time and money on pushing kids into academic skills that precede their development, and what the harm that does is, and point out that this system of ever earlier readiness classes and now tutoring to make sure the kids aren't behind in their readiness classes, is wasteful, stupid and deeply unfair to the kids. And that anybody who makes a five year old waste their summer on phonics lessons to get a leg up on freakin' kindergarten is going to pay for it later after they fuck that kid up royally.