KINDERGARTEN - THE WRONG LESSONS

Remember the book ”Every thing I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?”
Well, they don’t learn that anymore. Today intensive reading and math instruction begins on day one. And in many all day kindergartens there is chaos and the children are running amok. Experienced teachers are out on stress leave.

Children used to learn that school was a happy place, a place to find new friends - a room filled with wonderful toys, blocks and puzzles. Kindergarten taught that children play and share without hitting each other - and no biting, spitting or kicking either. They learned to take turns and play fair.

Teachers had the wonderful opportunity to observe behavior as the children delighted in dress-up and playing in the playhouse, modeling the conversations and actions of the adults in their lives. The conversations between little ones during play sessions allowed the school deep insight into the inner lives of these children.

No more. Today, these five year olds are required to sit silently for ninety minutes, learning to read and write. This is physically impossible for most children at this age and many have not yet developed the small motor skills to handle a pencil properly. Instead of learning the value of caring for the bunnies and guinea pigs that once were part of the kindergarten experience, they must learn feelings of failure if they can’t sit still or write their letters perfectly.

Most of our inner city children do not have the advantage of attending preschools, where starting at less than three years old, they begin, in tiny increments, to learn to listen, and follow directions. Five-year olds are whirling dervish bundles of energy, who must now, somehow, stuff that hurricane force into one twenty minute recess in a six hour day. The rolling, hopping, jumping, squealing toddler is confined to his spot on the carpet or his small chair for the remainder of the day. That repressed energy is often unleashed in the classroom where the child, who has had no previous experience in controlling his physical power, is now disruptive and labeled a behavior problem.


While kindergartners traditionally learned their abc’s, the colors, and counting, it was part of a balanced curriculum, which also introduced children to the joy of creativity through finger painting, building, and easel painting. Now the blocks are gone, the playhouse is gone, and there is no time to play with the toys. They are supposed to sit at their desks hunched over math problems during the time they could be singing songs and dancing. Tooting, drumming, tambourines and triangles once introduced young students to the delights of music -making, and to put things back where they belong.

Now they are expected to understand all the rules from the start. There are no baby steps. We all know that a child must crawl before she walks, but the preliminaries have been discarded in the race to earlier and earlier academics. But how do you learn - if you do not know that you must listen when the teacher is talking, and raise your hand when you want to talk?

And no napping! Napping is not allowed, even though many are so tired by afternoon, they have temper tantrums or fall asleep on the desk. “ Absolutely not! Every minute of the day must be instructional time,” was the angry response of an assistant principal, “there is no time for rest.”
No time to rest. No time for caring, no time for sharing, no time to learn to say “I’m sorry”.

Kindergarten was a half-day program, enough time for the children to become acquainted with letters, numbers, colors and how to behave in school. Now, with little evidence that reading sooner is better, we have at great expense lengthened kindergarten to a full day. Most evidence negates the advantage of an early start in reading and suggests it evens out by fourth grade with no long term benefit.

In addition, the abandonment of kindergarten’s traditional socializing skills may be responsible for the increasing numbers of children in kindergarten, first and second grades who are so disruptive and so undisciplined that these classrooms do not function.