Kindergarten Burnouts?

[Dr. Cringle]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32404017/ns/...?GT1=43001

Man, I remember loving my Kindergarten class. It was a little harder the preschool, but there was no pressure that I recall. We had fun. Now were pressuring them to read at that age? Academic acheivment is fine and dandy, but this standardized, cookie-cutter test score bullshit that No Child Left Behind stirred up is just that: bullshit. I hated that my teachers had to teach stuff specifically for the WASL (Washington's Standardized Test), because it was so cut and dry. I never felt like I learned anything of value. And now were exposing this to kids just starting out? Blehh. *grumbles...*

[Super Buu]

Apparently people still haven't gotten the idea that when you force someone to learn, they remember fuck all. But I guess today's arbitrary numbers are more important than tomorrow's educated population, right?

[Tyr]

I honestly thought this has been around for a while ever since I saw an episode of some cartoon (Possibly Simpsons?) where they registered for the best pre-school in the city and they went through tests with the baby, Maggie.

[Pinky]

Government-run schools have been in the shitter for decades, so the complaints about high standards boggles the mind. Things like NCLB and standardized testing was in response to widespread underachievement, to simply point it out and prod those places into taking action. I suppose the real fault here is that educators and parents are expected to take the responsibility of their students and children.

edit: and god help us all when they actually do :|

[Kaden]

I completely agree with Rod.

Public education is a complete atrocity.

[Super Buu]

I wasn't actually surprised by this, if I gave that impression. Education is the #1 thing I think needs paid attention to in most governments including the US's and my own. There are massive fundamental problems with how we treat education. Learning can and should be the most enjoyable thing in life. School, however, is basically a place where kids are sent to stay out of the way whilst their parents are at work. I fully intend to homeschool my kids if possible.

[Shou]

They're just going to end up myopic. The kids.

[Sage]

Mm.

I think school - on some levels - is more about learning how to function in society than it is to actually learn anything.

As such, a child is doomed to failure if homeschooled. That is potentially the worst thing you could ever do for him or her.

Sending the kid to a good school is one thing. France, Canada, Japan, and Korea all have excellent education systems. And I'm sure you've got private schools in other countries as well.

[Kaden]

I think school - on some levels - is more about learning how to function in society than it is to actually learn anything.

I completely agree. However, funding for schools is based on random numbers that are supposed to represent what a student has learned.

Less money means poorer quality of pretty much everything which doesn't provide a student with a decent representation of the society they're supposed to be learning to function in.

[Sage]

That part is absurd. How can you hope to improve education quality when money keeps being siphoned away?

I understand the point. It's a punishment. Do a good job and educate kids well and get a monetary reward for it. It makes sense. But if you get locked in a financial slide, quality can go nowhere but down.

[Pinky]

In school, you sit in a seat for hours on end, unable to talk to the others who are seated an arm's length away, forced to do as the authority figure commands, marching through the building to the tune of bells and/or whistles.

I guess that is a great way to shape people to live in a dystopian society, but our actual society? No. Homeschooling, being able to work at one's own pace rather than as a mass, and even follow parents around as they go about their daily lives in the real world, is phenomenally better.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...html?cat=4
http://www.discovery.org/a/3479
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/social...llenge.htm <-this one's pretty funny
http://school.familyeducation.com/home-s...56224.html

[Sage]

It's not what you do during class.

No, it doesn't even matter. Rod's always right anyway, so fuck it.

[Pinky]

When then? In the minutes between classes where you're moving to your next class? After the school lets out?

[Kole T. Merr]

During recess. The most lasting friendships are made by the twirly slide or the four-square court.

[Super Buu]

It depends entirely on the quality of the homeschooling. Learning adequate social skills should be something you teach your kids. Lots of kids leave school and find that they really don't know how to make friends outside of a school environment, because their parents were never very social and they didn't meet up with other families and their kids. It's very very important to find social circles outside schools and avoid the closed, incestuous social circles that most people these days have (and I wonder why). I see your point about how lots of stuff happens during recess, but I still think the benefits of homeschooling vastly outweigh the downsides.

[Orion]

I've always found it hard to articulate my thoughts on this, so I'll try.

I think the idea of rushing kids into learning before they even start normal school is a bit much. Those early years should be for the kid to be a kid, not start teaching them maths and english. Why do we seem to rush children to be ready for a science degree by the age of 10? Sure, earlier starts can help cement certain things, like reading for instance, but there needs to be a limit.

[Saz]

School can start at four years old in the UK. I guess the idea is that in the first 10 or so years kids soak up information like a sponge, so it's better to get the basics, (reading, writing, math) learned early. Obviously they're not doing a great job of it though, last I heard, a large percentage of boys can't read when they finish primary school, I can't remember the exact pecentage so I won't quote it.

[Super Buu]

I don't think parents should rely on school to teach their kids important skills like literacy and maths. It's usually a crowded classroom and they get very little individual attention. My older brother taught me how to read when he was like 7, and once I could do it by myself I just read books and picked up the English language by myself. From that, somehow, I've had the advantage over most of my peers all the way through school - go figure. I never really learned anything about English in school because, besides identifying verbs, nouns etc, I already knew it all (and the stuff about verbs and nouns I didn't even remember until I was like 18 when I decided to learn it myself).

[Dr. Cringle]

I don't think parents should rely on school to teach their kids important skills like literacy and maths. It's usually a crowded classroom and they get very little individual attention. My older brother taught me how to read when he was like 7, and once I could do it by myself I just read books and picked up the English language by myself. From that, somehow, I've had the advantage over most of my peers all the way through school - go figure. I never really learned anything about English in school because, besides identifying verbs, nouns etc, I already knew it all (and the stuff about verbs and nouns I didn't even remember until I was like 18 when I decided to learn it myself).

Yeah, I'm with Greg on this one. You really don't get the attention needed for learning in a class as opposed to having an individual teach you. The classroom sizes are always a cluster fuck of crazy, and a teacher these days can barely get a kid to sit down and shut up let alone give them the learning they need for literacy. Hell, I only learned the bare minimum at school. The rest I learned from people on roleplaying sites like Chubbs, books, and authors of fanfiction.

[Jonathan Meer]

Kids in kindergarten can't read? Seriously?

School needs to be about teaching children to think (that is, how), and providing them with the resources to think in many different fields.

More art. More music.