Kindergarten today asks more of our children than it used to, and so California’s Senate Bill 1381 increased the minimum age for entrance to five years. Four year-olds now will have pre-K training. Hopes are high that these changes will produce a better-educated population. However, early achievement may not in fact ensure later success.
Sebastian Suggate has studied the matter. He found that students from countries where reading is not taught until age six actually do better on standardized reading tests than those from countries that begin at five or earlier, as in the USA. Children who start even later catch up quickly: Suggate collected extensive data from about 400 students in New Zealand – some in public schools and some in private “Waldorf” schools, where reading teaching doesn’t even begin until age seven. Difference in reading achievement between the two groups disappeared by age 10.
Research comparing Waldorf school students’ academic skills to those of public school students shows even more encouraging results. In a report exploring the value of the Waldorf approach for public school reform, Ida Oberman found that second-graders from four Waldorf-style schools underperformed in comparison to 10 “peer-alike sites.” Yet by eighth grade, these students could match and even outperform comparison sites on state school achievement tests.
If nothing is lost from academic achievement when training starts later, and some competencies even may be gained, why then the rush to begin it? Why buy toddler flash-cards, fund pre-K academies, and start kindergartners on reading and math when children could be otherwise engaged, developing other kinds of skills and dispositions, such as empathy and creativity?
Sir Ken Robinson, who led a British inquiry into how education might better foster innovation, explains that today’s schools are organized according to industrialized manufacturing principles. But humans are not machines. Worse, standardized approaches fitted to an old-fashioned, mechanistic, conformity-demanding view of the world stifle creativity. They punish those interested in questions not on the tests, producing graduates less able to think creatively than they did in preschool. To counter this, Robinson promotes an ecological approach.
Ecological thinking means considering us humans as part of a larger system, and as complex systems ourselves. Fostering more active outdoor play among our younger students honors this viewpoint.
Time spent outside protects children against what author Richard Louv of San Diego has termed “nature deficit disorder,” in which children less exposed to nature grow to fear and disrespect it, and cannot see themselves in connection with the larger world. Louv has reported that students at schools that hold classes outdoors show significant gains in social studies, science, language arts and math achievement. Studies also show increases in self-esteem, problem-solving abilities, cooperative play, and motivation to learn as well as reductions in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms when children spend more time with nature.
Moreover, fully embodied activities that can be engaged in outside, like running, gardening, catching grasshoppers, or even rolling sideways down a grassy hill can help children develop better body awareness, stimulate sensory integration, increase manual dexterity and foster visual capacities that may be hampered by too much indoor or screen time. In this way, more play can help ready the body to hold a pencil productively, form letters and numbers, orient them from right to left and grasp their meaning.
Source:
signonsandiego.com
Sebastian Suggate has studied the matter. He found that students from countries where reading is not taught until age six actually do better on standardized reading tests than those from countries that begin at five or earlier, as in the USA. Children who start even later catch up quickly: Suggate collected extensive data from about 400 students in New Zealand – some in public schools and some in private “Waldorf” schools, where reading teaching doesn’t even begin until age seven. Difference in reading achievement between the two groups disappeared by age 10.
Research comparing Waldorf school students’ academic skills to those of public school students shows even more encouraging results. In a report exploring the value of the Waldorf approach for public school reform, Ida Oberman found that second-graders from four Waldorf-style schools underperformed in comparison to 10 “peer-alike sites.” Yet by eighth grade, these students could match and even outperform comparison sites on state school achievement tests.
If nothing is lost from academic achievement when training starts later, and some competencies even may be gained, why then the rush to begin it? Why buy toddler flash-cards, fund pre-K academies, and start kindergartners on reading and math when children could be otherwise engaged, developing other kinds of skills and dispositions, such as empathy and creativity?
Sir Ken Robinson, who led a British inquiry into how education might better foster innovation, explains that today’s schools are organized according to industrialized manufacturing principles. But humans are not machines. Worse, standardized approaches fitted to an old-fashioned, mechanistic, conformity-demanding view of the world stifle creativity. They punish those interested in questions not on the tests, producing graduates less able to think creatively than they did in preschool. To counter this, Robinson promotes an ecological approach.
Ecological thinking means considering us humans as part of a larger system, and as complex systems ourselves. Fostering more active outdoor play among our younger students honors this viewpoint.
Time spent outside protects children against what author Richard Louv of San Diego has termed “nature deficit disorder,” in which children less exposed to nature grow to fear and disrespect it, and cannot see themselves in connection with the larger world. Louv has reported that students at schools that hold classes outdoors show significant gains in social studies, science, language arts and math achievement. Studies also show increases in self-esteem, problem-solving abilities, cooperative play, and motivation to learn as well as reductions in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms when children spend more time with nature.
Moreover, fully embodied activities that can be engaged in outside, like running, gardening, catching grasshoppers, or even rolling sideways down a grassy hill can help children develop better body awareness, stimulate sensory integration, increase manual dexterity and foster visual capacities that may be hampered by too much indoor or screen time. In this way, more play can help ready the body to hold a pencil productively, form letters and numbers, orient them from right to left and grasp their meaning.
Source:
signonsandiego.com
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