Tuesday, May 26, 2009

More on Preschool being a bad, bad idea

Last week Janine wrote about a disturbing trend in Only 19 minutes of free play in Kindergarten.

Chester E. Finn Jr. has a great column on why we should Slow the Preschool Bandwagon which reinforces Janine's point that early academics is not good for children. If their brains are not ready, pushing academics does more damage than good.

(Hat tip: Friends of Dave)


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

2 comments:

Cally said...

Our youngest just finished 1st grade in the public school. I can foresee with a mothers eye what will come to pass if I don't get him out now. He learned to read early. All we know is before Kindergarten we noticed he could read. The first book he picked up and read to us was a 2nd grade book. The same level as his brother 2 years older. We think he learned to read at the same time. He has complained for two years that they do the same things over and over in school. By 4th grade I can see him being a sullen unhappy boy if we continue to keep him in public school. He jumped for joy when we told him we would homeschool him. The thing that made us lean toward homeschool was when the teacher told us at the last conference that she was surprised he kept moving forward in reading levels. She said if they can read usually they stay at the same level and then level out with the rest of class at some point. He moved himself forward... as his brother reads larger books he does also. We had planned on homeschooling both of them but the oldest going into 4th grade next year did not want to, he said. We thought we would convince him once summer got here. Lucky for us public school did it for us on the last day. The teacher promised to teach them a unit on the ocean the last day of school, but the class would not settle down. So he did not get to learn about the ocean. He told us he was ready to homeschool. The relief I see on their faces is enough for us. We know we are headed in the right direction for our boys who love to learn!

Henry Cate said...

One of our first reasons for homeschooling was to help our daughters keep their love for learning. They were always asking questions. They wanted to know more about the world. It seemed like public schools beat the love for learning out of children.

Good luck with homeschooling.