Kindergarteners Today Get Little Time To Play, and It's Stunting Their Development (qz.com) 228
Christopher Brown Associate professor, University of Texas at Austin, writes:Researchers have demonstrated that five-year-olds are spending more time engaged in teacher-led academic learning activities than play-based learning opportunities that facilitate child-initiated investigations and foster social development among peers.During his research and investigation, Brown found that a typical kindergarten classroom sees kids and one teacher with them almost the entire school day. During this period, they engage in about 15 different academic activities, which include "decoding word drills, practicing sight words, reading to themselves and then to a buddy, counting up to 100 by ones, fives and tens, practicing simple addition, counting money, completing science activities about living things, and writing in journals on multiple occasions." Recess did not occur until the last hour of the day, and only lasted for about 15 minutes. He adds:For children between the ages of five and six, this is a tremendous amount of work. Teachers too are under pressure to cover the material. When I asked the teacher, who I interviewed for the short film, why she covered so much material in a few hours, she stated, "There's pressure on me and the kids to perform at a higher level academically." So even though the teacher admitted that the workload on kindergartners was an awful lot, she also said she was unable to do anything about changing it.
Kindergarten ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't just Kindergarten, is is throughout all of school, K-12.
They also neglect soft education like Music and Art (often replacing with Social Conformity Drills).
The problem is, we have people in far away cities, who don't have any real interest in the education of any student, making all sorts of Rules and Regulations (see Common Core) about not only how, but what kids ought to learn by when. All, often without any clue how long it takes to teach a room full of kids who just want to play.
We don't live in an industrial world, we shouldn't be treating our education system like a factory.
Pendulum (Score:2)
It isn't just Kindergarten, is is throughout all of school, K-12.
They also neglect soft education like Music and Art (often replacing with Social Conformity Drills).
The problem is, we have people in far away cities, who don't have any real interest in the education of any student, making all sorts of Rules and Regulations (see Common Core) about not only how, but what kids ought to learn by when. All, often without any clue how long it takes to teach a room full of kids who just want to play.
We don't live in an industrial world, we shouldn't be treating our education system like a factory.
Unfortunately when the politicians and education bureaucrats realize this, they will mandate an equally stifling "soft education" regiment.
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The educational system is fucked for a variety of reasons (far-off bureaucrats as you've alluded to) and it seems like no one is really interested in
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My children went to a charter school through middle school that had way too many applicants and too few seats. They had lotteries for new students. It had a requirement that parents "volunteer" a certain number of hours per child per year otherwise your kid would end up the next years "lottery". From pickup/dropoff monitors to stapling papers to assisting at school "events" -- countless ways to get hours.
It *FORCED* parents to be at least marginally involved and in turn, appeared to have a community of
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Not how it worked at mine you just got left way behind and they gave you a D- so they didn't have to deal with teaching you next year.
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we have people in far away cities, who don't have any real interest in the education of any student, making all sorts of Rules and Regulations
I don't buy that at all. I think the people taking and the people tasked with coming up with those regulations largely do want whats best for students. But due to a variety of factors (almost all political) too many compromises must be made along the way so every "education overhaul" falls back on whats easiest to quantify which is regurgitating facts on tests. Thus classrooms in the US look almost the same today as they did 100 years ago. Give those people in far away cities enough time, data, and infinite
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Give those people in far away cities enough time, data, and infinite "political capital" and they'll probably come up with a general system that works much better for most all students.
They have had the Dept of Education, since Jimmy Carter, to do exactly that. And they have failed. They have failed, not in collecting data, but generalizing "students" in such a way that no student fits their "average" student in their models. There is no such thing as "average student" except in a statistical mean.
Sorry, but the ONLY people who can educate a student (singular individualized) is in the classroom, and they are hamstrung by the "System" these people in far away cities have come up with (See
Healthcare (Score:2)
We don't live in an industrial world, we shouldn't be treating our education system like a factory
If you like public education you'll love what Congress will do with socialized medicine. Remember, Pelosi's goal was to put insurance companies out of business:
“Well of course I wanted single-payer, and I wanted a public option. But that not being in the mix, uh, you have to prioritize what it is you want to get over the finish line.” - Nancy Pelosi
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I sometimes wonder whether he only watches Fox News, or whether he's one of their writers.
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Sure they are. You're just tied up with the concept of "standards" which are ... nothing more than rules and regulations. They aren't merely guidelines as suggested by people like yourself, because they are not optional.
Because Common Core gives more emphasis on procedure than the correct answer, students will grow up thinking 3x4=11, if they have a "valid" explanation for it. Because memorizing FACTS leads to correct answers without understading! (liberal logic).
Don't tell me Common Core isn't rules based,
Father of an 8 year old (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an 8 year old son and have been appalled by the expectations placed on kids, especially boys that are naturally energetic. I took my son out of one private pre-school that was an arts and crafts factory. At the time he was 3 or 4. First I noticed the drawings were too dark for him. Then I observed how they assembly lined the kids while the teacher would fill out the art after the kids 30 seconds was done. The teacher said my son wouldn't stay on a task and I witnessed my son very focused on painting and then the teacher took the painting so the next kid could get their 30 seconds of painting.
I know I'm going off on the teachers, it's really the school system. I have teachers in my family that taught many years ago that retired or got out of the business. They too are appalled at what they saw in the final years of practicing their profession.
My recollection of Kindergarten, circa 1986 (Score:4, Insightful)
We had only half-day kindergarten. We went outside at least twice a day. During the day, we sang songs, did water coloring, played with clay, construction paper and scissors, the sandbox, sock puppets. There was lots of arts and crafts. There was always story time, where our teacher would read aloud to us. The only academic work I can ever recall was studying the alphabet, learning how to count to ten, how to count money, and learning how to write our name.
I still work in a school, in Minnesota, and now kindergarten is full day. Kids are expected to learn how to read. They do lots of worksheets, spelling tests, spend time learning how to use computers, and learn basic adding and subtracting. There's also lots of social behavior practice (how to stand in lines, how to be quiet and raise your hand, how to take turns, not interrupt others, etc.) And writing...lots and lots of writing. Long story short, what I covered in 1st grade 30 years ago is now what is expected in Kindergarten. Play is a thing of the past.
At this rate, expect them to be bringing home Algebra textbooks by the turn of the century.
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And the really sad thing is that all this does not benefit them one bit. Instead, it harms them.
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When i entered first grade, the teacher gave us reading tests to separate us into different skill levels. I saw this as my chance to start over, threw the test, and told the teacher i couldn't read
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What, they aren't expected to learn how to program the computer? They are going to fall behind if they don't get computer science! Why won't someone think of the children?!?!
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That's nothing. Elroy Jetson know calculus when he was 6.
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A higher education is no gaurentee of of a job either, especially as STEM jobs are shipped overseas and/or staffed with H1-Bs instead.
Wanna be rich? Be born to rich parents,,,,
Re:My recollection of Kindergarten, circa 1986 (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wanna be rich? Be born to rich parents,,,,"
Wrong question.
"Wanna *NOT* be poor?" is the right question.
And the way to dramatically reduce the chance of that is to (A) Stay in school. (B) Don't have kids before you finish school. (C) Don't have kids before you are married.
Is it fool proof? No. Bad luck happens. But the chances of being habitually poor are pretty much negated.
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And the way to dramatically reduce the chance of that is to (A) Stay in school. (B) Don't have kids before you finish school. (C) Don't have kids before you are married.
This! This isn't preachy moralism, it's firm statistics. These factors matter (for avoiding poverty) more than race or parents income.
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Do I hear the voice of experience?
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And in 1986 an average american could get by just fine with nothing more than a high-school education. Give it another 10/15 years and those that don't get a higher education will be living in poverty.
Whether we like it or not. this thing we know as life has become a race. You get to choose if you want to race to the top or to the bottom. Those that sit idol are racing to the bottom even if they don't realize it.
Meanwhile the value of what one knows grows increasingly worthless with each passing year. Enjoy your sinking ship.
No time to play we have the test and college prep (Score:2)
No time to play we have the test to learn or we lose our funding and college prep to do.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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You know that Piaget has been largely discredited, right?
But, yes, education policy is dominated by know-nothings whose only strategy is "fire the bad teachers". Where the good replacement teachers come from with the pitiful salaries that most teachers earn is never discussed. Also not discussed: how to identify the "bad teachers".
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Piaget
You know that Piaget has been largely discredited, right?
At some point we hopefully get to the point where we realize this entire field is discredited and stop trying to use it to set policy. Keep studying it all you want, much like economics, it has the feel of science without any of the icky details of repeatability and determinism.
Until you have something that absolutely, definitely works, let's just teach kids with teachers who are masters of their subject. Those kids who aren't learning fast enou
Re:US education policy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until you have something that absolutely, definitely works, let's just teach kids with teachers who are masters of their subject.
That sounds good, but in practice it's not good. Why? To be a master of your subject, you have to live and breathe your subject. To be a good teacher you need to be a bit of a generalist. You can't be so hyper-focused on one thing that everything else in life gets excluded.
I've got an education degree and some teaching experience, and I've also spent a fair bit of time working in and around grad-school STEM programs. The experts in those programs are the shittest teachers, for the most part. Why? They never learned about how kids learn, because they were busy becoming experts. They never learned the basics of assessing learning because they were becoming experts. They never learned motivational strategies because they were hyper-motivated on an exclusive topic, and it never occurred to them that some students need some motivation the way they would for any other topic.
What we need are not masters of their subjects, but communicators and collaborators who can give kids access to people who are masters of their subjects. I once filled that role, connecting NASA scientists to middle school science classrooms. The NASA scientists weren't teachers and didn't know the first thing about it, and the middle school science teachers weren't scientists and engineers. But when we set up the communication and collaboration between the kids and the experts, amazing stuff happened.
That's one thing we need. The other is equitable funding. I think that it's Germany that does the opposite of what the US does. They still have standardized tests, but the results are secret. The lowest performing schools get more money, and the highest performing schools get less. That makes all of the schools roughly the same, and parents don't know which ones are better, so the rich parents can't move their kids out, leaving behind the poor (minority) kids. The US does the opposite - we openly publish our assessment scores, and we threaten to withhold funds from poorly performing schools. Since we also have wacky local funding, parents create these "ghetto schools", as rich parents move their kids to the best performing schools, and work to ensure that they don't need to pay for the schools they left behind. Great for their kids, but terrible for all the other kids. But who cares when you can live in a gated community with a guard to keep the rabble out, right?
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How many could Stephen Hawking teach?
Like the man from IBM said, about half a dozen physicists should be enough.
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False, not discredited at all, some disagree with him but his influence has been huge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Good teaching is hard. You have to know and understand those you teach to. You have to be flexible. You have to select a small set of things to do really thorough and a larger set to just touch on the surface. And then, if that was not hard enough (and apparently already impossible for the people that create these courses), you have to engage your students and earn their respect. You have to give them a lot of freedom to find out whether what you taught them actually works or not. You have to allow them to
Why is this bad? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a dad of a new kindergartener. They're not solving differential equations at this level; it appears that they're trying to get them on a level playing field, accounting for differences in background, etc. If a kid has spent the last 5 years doing nothing but watch TV and has never been read to, they really have to catch them up quickly. First grade is apparently where the "rigorous academics" start. My kid already learned to read and has a pretty good background in the basics, so I imagine it's going to be a less than engaging first year.
I know everyone hates the common core stuff, but I do see the point. Teachers aren't given a class full of kids with attentive parents who care about what their kid does in school. Maybe some are like that, but others are too busy, don't have the educational background, or the family is poor and education takes a back seat to living. Absent the nice home life, the schools have to do everything they can to ensure they give a kid a fighting chance education-wise.
Also, having recess is almost optional in my mind. Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese and other countries' students spend way more time in school than our students do. Education is valued in those societies and they make sure they turn out well-educated students. Look at some of the university entrance exams from countries on this list and compare it to high school curriculum in the US. Compared to these countries, we're doing nothing near that level of work with students. Visiting faculty from other countries send their kids to private tutors to ensure they receive a level of education on par with their country's system so the kid won't be behind when they return home. I think the school day should be longer and the school year should be year-round. Only 2% of the population works in agriculture anymore, so there's no excuse for students to be out the whole summer anymore.
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:5, Informative)
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Perhaps you should stick to topics that you know something about or better yet research before you post. Ass.
Wow, and here people were going to take you seriously. Too bad.
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You should look at some of the schools in Scandinavian countries and ask yourself why they are graduating after 10 years at around the level of a college sophomore while US schools are turning out people after 12 years that need remedial classes in college.
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The US is 3400 different school system and not all yielding the same result. Upper middle class communities in the US are graduating globally competitive students ready for college and on the same level as any European graduates, but the US is very big and very socio-economically diverse and the poorer communities are graduating people not ready for college. We know how to graduate competitive students in the US. The problem is they have to be from households making $100k a year or over. Schools cant make u
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Re:Why is this bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"why is everything invented in America"
Because there are tons of top level people with money to blow on a risky venture. How the hell do people who read slashdot not realize this.
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My kid already learned to read and has a pretty good background in the basics, so I imagine it's going to be a less than engaging first year.
Then that school is doing your kid a disservice and wasting all that time you put in to his learning the basics. Why should your kid be held back by welfare funded children who weren't weaned properly?
I know everyone hates the common core stuff, but I do see the point.
I don't. School shouldn't be a model of Marxist equal outcome. Human beings are too diverse to work that way. This has been proven repeatedly over the last 80 years and the powers that be still haven't gotten the message.
Also, having recess is almost optional in my mind. Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese and other countries' students spend way more time in school than our students do.
and their societies praise conformity over free-thought and innovative approaches. In t
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Also, having recess is almost optional in my mind. Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese and other countries' students spend way more time in school than our students do. Education is valued in those societies and they make sure
they turn out well-educated students. Look at some of the university entrance exams from countries on this list and compare it to high school curriculum in the US. Compared to these countries, we're doing nothing near that level of work with students. Visiting faculty from other countries send their kids to
private tutors to ensure they receive a level of education on par with their country's system so the kid won't be behind when they return home. I think the school day should be longer and the school year should be year-round. Only 2% of the population works in agriculture anymore, so there's no excuse for students to be out the whole summer anymore
This is just opinions without any merit based justification. I will dismiss it as such.
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That's mostly myth it was mostly done because the school buildings were too hot it the summer before air conditioning and it hurt attendance.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/up... [pbs.org]
entire school day... (Score:4, Interesting)
An entire school day here in Texas means from about 8-3, minus 40 minutes for lunch, 20 minutes for recess, and 15 minutes for morning announcements. Seems pretty sparse and there's plenty of time to go play somewhere before dinner and bed-time (which some shaman are insisting should be 730p). Since my kids go to school very near where this yahoo practices his quackery, I can honestly say they goof off at school in epic proportions. I can say for a fact that they didn't cover such complex topics as "the alphabet" or "adding numbers" in kindergarten. Whatever they were doing, wasn't strongly academic.
All I see down here is more concentrated efforts to defund public schooling, pushing more interested parents into debt for private schools that still focus on academics. Public schools have always worked reasonably well, but it's clear that the more we defund and defocus them over the decades, the lower the quality of the graduates produced. In Austin they're talking about doing away with homework, and this fool is trying to provide the support needed. This is great way to cut pay to teachers who don't have to grade it, but whether we liked it or not as kids, there is is a time when you need to memorize certain things, and homework is the weapon of choice. Class time should be spent on questions and explanations, homework is the ideal time for reading new material and memorizing what things absolutely need to be memorized.
The entire topic of "child initiated" blah blah "social development" is saying happy words that people like to hear but has absolutely zero substance. If I get home another paper that my son "collaborated" on with his peers that contains mistakes that I know he is far beyond but he tells me "well if I tell her she's wrong she cries and we all get demerits", I will scream. Sure it's an excellent opportunity to teach leadership, but on the spot it isn't happening because teacher is busy with the remedial kids who still can't do their ABCs, but we can't have remedial/normal/advanced classes because it marginalizes someone (read: that budget was cut). At home it's out of context and contrived, particularly on a child who is not destined for leadership by its current definition (i.e. Zaphod Beeblebrox's school of CEOing). Whatever fantasy land this asshat lives in, he should retreat to, he couldn't handle the world he's shaping.
Let's keep school focused on academics, but when we get to the teenage years not be afraid to spend some money on kids who have no track record of academics, and help them with trade skills in a useful, non-profit, way. For now, if lack of play time is hurting children, it's probably all the after-school sports/band/dance/cheerleading/gymnastics/music/etc. stuff parents sign their kids in to as extended daycare. A friend of my son's has an after-school schedule that is full of more junk than my work calendar. Surely by the time they're done with all that they are exhausted and too tired for homework or required reading anyway.
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Total nonsense. School funding is the highest its ever been. Kids are most definitely still split up by ability and they most definitely don't put the remedial kids in with the above average kids, and no one is really saying "do no homework," except for a handful of crazy charter schools trying to attract moron parents, but we have doubled the amount of homework nationally in the last 30-40 years and gotten nothing to show for it except for really stressed out kids. They certainly aren't doing better on tes
Indoor recess is sit down and be quiet (Score:2)
I visited my son's Kindergarten for a day last year. When it's cold or rainy, they have indoor recess, which was in the media room that day, sitting in the dark, asked to sit still and be quiet while they watched a vouple Curious George videos. OK, so a cartoon monkey is jumping around on a pogo stick trying to make a painting that way, making a huge mess, and 5 year olds watching are expected to sit still and be quiet? No talking, we don't want to start any social interaction either... Weird... It it any w
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Whatever... (Score:3)
John Stuart Mill was taught ancient Greek by the age of three. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato.
My kids are way behind!
I will admit two laments about modern education:
1) Too much homework for young kids (pre-K, K, etc.) Not that homework is a bad thing, but when a kid can't even read, "homework" is really "parent work".
2) Too many public school fundraisers. I thought this was all socialist schooling paid for at the point of a gun by taxes? If they expect me to pay for school, I'll send my kids to private school and move to some place that has lower taxes. I don't remember any of these crazy fundraisers when I was in school...
Already Implemented in Ontario, Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and over the last four years there's been a push to 'play based learning', presumably resulting from the same kind of research mentioned in the article.
By and large it seems fine, though it doesn't alleviate some of the problems they mention; specifically my wife still feels the pressure to move through the curriculum, but it's a little less clear how. Part of the 'learning through play' initiative also pushes heavily on 'self guided learning', and while all of this seems great, there's not a lot of guidance given on how to execute. I think most of us would agree that it's better if the student is interested & wants to learn the subject, but there's no real help about what to do if the student /isn't/ interested. Presumably the teacher just forces the kid to learn what has to be learned, but all the material provided leans heavily on instructing teachers not to do that.
At any rate, this is mostly just typical of governments adopting something and not thinking through how to implement fully. Still, the impression I get from my wife & her colleagues is that the ideas are good (play-based learning) but it'd have been nice if there was better instruction on how to follow through.
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Re:Already Implemented in Ontario, Canada (Score:4, Interesting)
I have two happy kids in a Waldorf kindergarten here in Denmark, and here's a biased opinion: basically you leave the kids alone and let them play with whatever they want to play with for most of the day, preferably outdoors in a calm setting.
Kindergarten is not really for intellectual stuff. Your wife should forget the curriculum and let the school handle it - the fact she's called a teacher is part of the problem. She should see herself as someone providing inspiration and someone whose behavior is worthy of replicating, not as someone who instructs.
In my kids' kindergarten, the adults study fairy tales so they can retell them to the children (recounting them orally, never reading directly from a book) to provide fodder for their imagination. They also cook and do other household chores each day, again setting examples for the children to participate in and replicate in their play.
For a small child, there's a lot to be learned about self-motivation, inventing things, experimenting, self-confidence and important topics such as friendships and life. Counting and reading is easy, in comparison, for a determined, self-confident child. So better wait with that.
In a nutshell, as far as I'm aware, you don't end up being a better reader by learning to read one year earlier. But you might end up being more self-confident and self-motivated by having entertained yourself through play for that year.
Society Advances? (Score:4, Interesting)
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A modern day "Renaissance Man" like Leonardo da Vinci would be a quack in everything from medicine to aerospace. Or brain surgeons need to know brain surgery, our rocket scientists rocket science but any one person would only know a tiny little fraction of all human knowledge even if he studied 24x7 from the day he was born to the day he died. Yes, obviously the more knowledge we accumulate the longer the climb before you can stand on the shoulders of giants but you can't just decide to make it go faster. I
It's not happening by accident, it's a feature. (Score:5, Informative)
The solution to the problem is already known and long ignored in the USA.
Michael Moore documentary clip of on Finland's school system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Unless they just made that up for the film.
commentsubjectsaredumb (Score:2)
Because more results gets more funding.
Which is just asking for shit. Begging for shit. ANY sort of automated yield is. People game the system if you chain them to one. Leaning on metrics is often a flawed equivalence right away, and if not it will be soon, by those affected.
kindergarten has recess for 20/24th of a day (Score:2)
Kindergarten in these United States is only half a day long.
Cranks up antique horned vinyl record player with patriotic music repeatedly warbling higher than lower in proper pitch for background while the announcer proclaims, "The United States rose to greatness during era of one teacher/many grade school houses..."
They're not there to play (Score:2)
Yikes - (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, American public education: Where young minds go to die, and old mistakes live forever.
When I was a kid in the early 1990's, things were a lot different than they are now. We didn't have uniforms. If we lived close enough to the school, we were allowed to walk, and very few people thought that this was unusual at the time. Recess came twice a day, first in the morning, then in the afternoon after lunch, each session lasting about 15 to 20 minutes depending on the day's schedule. We went outside and playe
Play makes good learners (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of my best learning opportunities came from play. I played in the woods and road my bike around town with friends (those big scary places that today's parents tell their kids to avoid). I had to fix my dad's computer after breaking stuff because I messed with IRQ settings to get my mouse and my sound working at the same time (and I had to do it before he got home from work and found out!). I played Axis and Allies, Risk, Chess, and other games that required thinking. I pieced together civilizations and learned how people react when playing Sim City and Civilization games. I tinkered with electronics. My parents let me build a fort. I planted seeds I found and watched them grow. I moved spiders to different parts of the yard, watched them build a web, then observed them eating mosquitoes.
This is where I learned the most. Play keeps learners engaged. Strictly academics is boring. I think society is too focused on maintaining the status quo and it is killing the fire of desire for learning that burns in the hearts of young children. Without play, and with an overemphasis on memorization (as opposed to experimentation) you make dull, lifeless people who lose the ability to be more than cogs in the machine of society.
Kindergarten.... (Score:2)
Well now that was a long time ago. One of the things I remember about high school was that the library was off limits unless you had a class that used it. Before school? Closed. Lunch? Closed librarian takes lunch same time. During class? I only ever had one class that used the library and that class only used it twice. After school? Closed.
So when are you supposed to use it?
As for kindergarten I just remember the neat little school play we did and all the toys that were always in varied states of missing.
No child left any time? (Score:2)
Could this be a side effect of the "No Child Left Behind", that even though Bush signed was written by Ted Kennedy.
maybe it is about lawsuits (Score:3)
If they let the kids go out and play, and while playing they get hurt, the school gets sued. It is easier and cheaper to keep the kids in a controlled environment.
I guess they are trying to move high school down (Score:2)
because in HS now, they don't do anything. A friend teaches at a underperformer school. No homework, name your grade, text, neck, whatever you want in class. So now kindegarden teaches and high school baby sits. Crazy world.
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I used to walk the 1.5 miles to school when in first grade; came home for lunch and same when getting home (though once in a while one of my parents would drive us home). I never went 'missing', nor did my parents freak out (obviously) at my being out alone.
As for recess, I remember my first day of grade 8, the school board had decided we no longer needed recesses - I always was a bit bitter about that because I liked the break from the monotony of being taught, but also because that was the start of 'us'
Re:Ah the 90s. (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't get glasses until I was 30. I was told that I should have had them as a child, but I didn't know any better. Sure you turned out fine, but what if things were different? Could you have been better, more creative if you had more time to play? Or maybe the schooling you did have made you more focused? We will never know.
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I used to regularly walk home despite living 7 miles from school, usually after clubs and such.
The real problem is that too much time of the kids' day is structured and rote, which means that when they eventually reach college or post-school they're not going to be able to handle unstructured time well. Recess was more than just a time to mess around on the playground or shoot hoops, it was a time to learn how to deal with peers in a neutral environment. A child who can help form teams for a pickup game and
Re:Ah the 90s. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, please. The whole "you cant leave your kids alone for 2 seconds" thing was well and firmly in place by the 90's. It was in the 80s when everyone started wetting the bed about kidnappings and child safety. By 1990 that part of the culture was exactly the same as now. What's changed is Tigermomism now translating into no free time for kids at all and all their free time now being consumed by structured activities which no adult would put up with for 5 minutes. If someone made me play soccer after work, learn an instrument, learn chess, and do random volunteering on the weekend too I would do physical harm to that person, but then I'm 30 and get a choice.
We don't let kids be kids and all because we forget that humans have piss poor retention anyway and the dumb kid wont remember even half the nonsense you are trying to cram into his head when he grows up.
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that's weird, looking back it seems all the kids that did something after school like play sports or sing in a chorus or anything else were the ones who now succeeded. Might not be organized sports, but do something constructive instead of sitting home and watch TV
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Generally we had one or two things after school. And it tended to be in much later grades, 6th grade or later. We didn't have every hour of the day scheduled with activities. One day a week for piano lessons, for an hour, for two or three years until parents finally listened to your whining and let you stop going. Sports, a lot of activity for a couple months then back to the normal schedule. Band and chorus, you practice at school during the normal school day, practice at home, a few on-the-road event
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the kids that did something after school like play sports or sing in a chorus or anything else were the ones who now succeeded.
Correlation is not causation. The popular, successful, and socially engaged kids are more likely to participate in these activities than the misfits and kids that need to work after school to help their single mom with the rent. But that doesn't mean that these activities caused them to be successful.
My teenage daughter was told by her HS counselor that she had to do at least two extracurricular activities, to be even considered by a good college, and it would help a lot if she has a leadership position i
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It was in the 80s when everyone started wetting the bed about kidnappings and child safety.
It was much more than that. The 1980s were also the time of Satanic Ritual Abuse [wikipedia.org] when the nightly news reports were filled with stories of thousands or even millions of children being tortured and murdered. Thousands were accused, and hundreds of people were prosecuted for these crimes.
Of course, the number of known victims was later revised down to zero, but there was no way to know that at the time, unless you actually considered the lack of any actual evidence, but you don't get votes and ratings by pl
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Satanists. Don't forget that Satanists were everywhere and were grabbing kids for ritualistic torture and sacrifice. Strangely, they disappeared around the time the Teletubbies became popular...
Re:Ah the 90s. (Score:4, Informative)
I was in grade school in the late 60s and had at least one 20+ minute recess all the way up through 6th grade. I remember having two recesses a day (morning and afternoon) in the early grades and being disappointed that there was only one recess in the later grades. I also remember in kindergarten we put mats on the floor and took a nap every day. There are many millions of people who are my age and who experienced the same things and grew up to be great leaders, engineers, scientists, etc.
The irony of today's situation is we are pushing kids harder and harder, younger and younger, based on the belief that this is necessary to 'compete with the rest of the world', and yet, we are producing far more functionally illiterate high school students than back in the bad old days when things were more relaxed.
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What gave us the edge in the past was more than academics. It was the creativity and willingness to take risks. Those are things that are learned when kids are allowed to be kids. They need recess and play time to learn social skills, learn leadership, learn problem solving, learn independence and learn to take risks. Pushing academics too soon and regimenting their day too soon destroys the qualities that made this country a leader in innovation.
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In the 80s, we had 30 minutes for lunch and 45 minutes for recess. I guess they don't want kids spending too much time playing as it might give them a taste of the free thought that comes with free-play.
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I was in Kkindergarten in the 60s. Half day only. First grade was the real start of normal school, and kindergarten was the get-ready-for-school program really. We did a little bit of learning the alphabet and basic counting, but nothing like what was described. We turned out ok.
Today though I think we have too many panicked parents. Their child *must* succeed, *must* get into the best schools, and so forth. Every hour of the child's life is now scheduled. Plus too many panicked school officials and
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I see you don't recognize that they're talking about kindergartners.
None of this is good for 5 yr olds.
But you probably have no idea about that.
I feel a little bit better about the future of our great country today
Only because you're fucking ignorant of childhood development.
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As an example:
"Who is it?"
Mother said, "It is not DIck. It is not Jane...."
The fact is, most children entering into first grade nowadays aren't at that level. Their parents - frankly - suck !
So, Kindergartens have li
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From some of the stories I have heard, Kindergarten teachers are happy if all their kids are toilette trained.
whoah wait! If you are from North America shouldn't that be 'washroom trained'??
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I couldn't read at all when I went into the first grade. By the end of second grade, I was reading 5 books per week. Forcing little kids into academics in kindergarten serves no purpose.
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I see you don't recognize that they're talking about kindergartners.
None of this is good for 5 yr olds.
But you probably have no idea about that.
I feel a little bit better about the future of our great country today
Only because you're fucking ignorant of childhood development.
I think I sensed the presence of the sarcasm fairy lurking around OP
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As in "Kids this fed up with learning by the time they hit elementary school will never threaten my job security"?
Re:Ah the 90s. (Score:5, Insightful)
My 5 year old was coming home from Kindergarten with an hour of homework more than three days a week.
http://www.edutopia.org/no-proven-benefits
"It may surprise you, as it did me, to learn that no study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to assigning homework before children are in high school."
There have been many studies that prove that homework not only does not help the young, but can harm them.
Also, this lovely chestnut that happened to my normal 5 year old boy. No recess... AT ALL.
Why you may ask?
We asked the teacher. The twenty something childless lady told us that our 5 year old son had trouble sitting still and filling out his math and sight word work sheets. So to 'help' she decided that the best course to deal with a fidgety 5 year old boy was to keep him in class during recess every day and have him sit quietly at his desk.
Really, you remove all chance of physical activity and wonder why a small child can't sit still?
We asked if it helped.... She said his 'restlessness' was getting worse and wondered if we needed to enroll him in special education... Really?
We took him out of that nightmare and enrolled him in an 'IDEA' school. You can read up on it but basically, as far as we can tell, it is simply the same kind of school I went to in the 80's.. No more problems, good grades, and 3 recess times a day and gym every other. Minimal 10 min home work once a week and most is the same type I had; Name you family members, ask what grandpa did/does for work, read a simple book with a parent, etc.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten
"A kindergarten from German, which means literally "garden for the children"[1]) is a preschool educational approach traditionally based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school."
NOTE: "transition from home to school"
Kindergarten, when I went to school, was mostly about lining up for recess, sharing toys, and learning colors and the names of the letters.
Some counting perhaps. But mostly just how to get along, raise your hand if you need to ask something, and wash your own hands after using the bathroom.
That was the entire idea from the start.
My child came home with and hour of math worksheets and sight words (not phonics, but rote memorization). Children in his class had trouble sharing, playing nice, working in teams, and being good losers... Because they are no longer allowed to do what Kindergarten was intended for in the first place. To learn all the basic social norms needed to actually be ready to be a student. He was hating going to school... AT 5 YEARS OLD!
He is now doing great at the new school.
Is it such a wonder that letting small kids play helps them to behave and learn how to get along with others? Is it strange that a 5 year old will resist busy work?
We need to go back to proper early childhood teaching and allow our children to be children.
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Kindergarten, when I went to school, was mostly about lining up for recess, sharing toys, and learning colors and the names of the letters. ...
Some counting perhaps. But mostly just how to get along, raise your hand if you need to ask something, and wash your own hands after using the bathroom.
My child came home with and hour of math worksheets and sight words (not phonics, but rote memorization). Children in his class had trouble sharing, playing nice, working in teams, and being good losers... Because they are no longer allowed to do what Kindergarten was intended for in the first place. To learn all the basic social norms needed to actually be ready to be a student. He was hating going to school... AT 5 YEARS OLD!
My backwoods kindergarten in the 70's had a bit more: counting (and the names of the numbers), and I think single-digit addition, though there wasn't math homework. We also learned a bit about money: the names of coins and what a dollar was. I remember being fascinated by the idea of 1, 5, and 10 as physical objects.
I can't imagine kindergarten, or even elementary school, without play/excercise time (though I think in 5th grade it changed to more structured gym class).
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I'll make America gross again!
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So edgy, be careful you'll cut yourself with that snark.
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Yes because an obsession with athletics led to what? An army of fat armchair football fans?
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Yes because an obsession with athletics led to what? An army of fat armchair football fans?
The only country in the world with less than 1% of its population considered fit for military service...
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Don't be silly. They'll introduce a military equivalent of the H1-B.
Hey, it worked for Rome. A bit.
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Don't be silly. They'll introduce a military equivalent of the H1-B.
Hey, it worked for Rome. A bit.
I've often wondered how single countries, such as Japan or Germany or UK managed to occupy such huge swathes of land and colonies given their population. Surely they can't have actually had their own national forces doing the occupation. So yeah they must have done some outsourcing!
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I was somewhat in a similar role, but fortunately I had a lot of freedom to fill my time with things that interest me. The absolute worst thing you can do in teaching is to focus on rote memorization, and that is what cramming more and more things into a curriculum does: It eliminates understanding and replaces it with memory, which is a very, very bad substitute.
When I design a course (currently doing that again, for advanced CS students), I first make a list of what should be in there. Then I throw out wh
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Early school years are mostly memorization, with some understanding. Understanding should be the focus in later years, after a solid foundation is established.
My kids are in first grade, and I'm very surprised by the level of home work they have (French immersion school, homework in English).
You mentioned Advanced CS students, I would like to change the topic to early grade school students:
Memorization: Words and numbers, the basic tool kit - not a small set of tools either.
Understanding: Story structure
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But ... but then not everyone would be a winner!
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D'awwwww... ain't that cute? Can't wait to see those safespacers hit economic reality.
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I ended up with the highest tested reading and comprehension skills in my graduating class but I would not go back to that daily hell for anything. I could go to college it might be different but after going through our local high school, I don't think I could even today mentally cope with anything similar to it and for how much college would cost to attend it's not worth the risk.