Thirty Years' Change.

An article from Slate on what constituted the skills needed for becoming a beginning first grader in 1979 has been making the rounds.

Much of the discussion over the article has focused around the societal changes we've seen in attitudes about letting children walk to school alone (or a distance of four to eight blocks).

But what struck me about the article (and the links to the original, source information) was how incredibly different expectations are for the other skills.

Can you imagine the furor and horror over "low expectations" if your local public school had, as a requirement for beginning first grade, that your child be able to ". . . draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored" or that she be able to ". . . repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once" ?

Although it is now expected that children be well on their way to reading by the end of kindergarten and it's not uncommon for first and second graders to have significant homework, my sense is that overall school achievement is not dramatically better than it was in 1979.  In the very early 70s Mad Musician's mom (very wisely, I believe) opted not to send her son to kindergarten at all but start his formal schooling with first grade. 

Kindergarten was considered completely optional as recently as thirty years ago.  But when Sparkle Kitty was three and four years old I would occasionally get stunned looks when I stated that she was not going to be attending a pre-school. 

A friend was told, sternly, by her child's school, that she would be compromising her child's chances for sucess by removing her child from four-year-old preschool.  Her child would not be ready for the academic rigors of Kindergarten.

When I was in kindergarten, we learned to cut paper in straight lines and in wavy lines.  We played circle games.  In first grade, those of us who were not already reading began to learn to read. (In a class of less than 20, four of us already were reading fluently after a kindergarten curriculum that would barely pass muster as a pre-school one today.)    Within just a couple months, most of the first grade class was reading at grade level.  The few stragglers got extra help from a reading specialist, the same specialist that worked with the four of us who were reading above grade level. 

It just doesn't add up, this push for earlier and earlier formal academics.

 

Comments

[Ewe]

I agree. In order to go to first grade you were supposed to be able to read 16 words (and, the, etc.) in my 1979-1980 kindergarten class. I could read those words but I'm sure some kids couldn't. Others thought my mom was crazy because I did not go to any preschool and was a few months away from turning 6 when I went to kindergarten. I think she made a wise decision because I was at the top of my class vs. the kids that weren't mature enough for kindergarten.
When my oldest was 2 I told someone I did not plan to send my children to preschool. This person told me I had no idea what the schools were teaching now vs. when I was in kindergarten and how much my kids would miss out to not go to preschool. I responded that I had taught 1st and 2nd grade in the classroom so I knew what to expect but that wasn't a good enough answer for them.

[Susan G]

1. Ewe makes a point I hadn't considered before. If the schools are being increasingly academic at ridiculously young ages, no wonder people think our kids are Missing Something by not attending preschool. It's like we're not speaking the same language; I tell people, "How hard is it to teach kindergarten??? They need to know their colors, their letters, and how to count to 10." Apparently that's not what we're teaching in kindergarten these days.

2. Ewe's requirements to get into first grade were a lot stricter than mine. I'm about 15 years older, and there was NO reading expected of kindergarteners. None. If you got out of kindergarten knowing that "M is for mmmmmouse" and "E is for eeeeeeelephant," you were excelling.