October 19, 2006
Why School Kids Seem So Much Bigger These Days
The NY Times examines the growing trend of holding back children a year before kindergarten. Some parents feel an extra year of pre-school has many benefits, as their kids are more confident and have more skills under their belt - not to mention their kids won't be the littlest or youngest in the class anymore. The practice helps with getting children into private schools (implication: private schools rather deal with more mature kindergarteners) and with sort of gaming the NYC pubilc school's rules. From the article:
Unlike many suburban districts, the New York City public schools are generally strict in placing children who turn 5 by Dec. 31 in kindergarten that year, and not the following year. Kindergarten is not mandatory, but children who are old enough for first grade will be placed in first grade. That rigidity has angered some parents, who maintain that in this day and age, kindergarten is no place for a 4-year-old.Interesting point, but since there's no conclusive evidence that says older or younger kids do better, who knows? Sometimes kids mature when they are around more children and have a more structured routine, some are naturally more mature. At the end of the day, it's always going to be about the individual child and what he or she is ready for.City public school officials defended their cutoff system, saying it was best for children.
“New York City is so out of sync,” fumed Marlene Barron, head of the West Side Montessori School on the Upper West Side and confidante of many a parent frustrated by the public school policy. “It’s ridiculous. They have the babies of the universe. When you have kids who are so young, of course they never can test as well as kids who are older.”
One private school official told the Times she was thinking about starting a "junior kindergarten" to keep up with the demand, but let's call it what it is: A pre-school post-graduate year. But what will be crazy is when the big 7 year old kindergartener pushes around the 5 year old. That'll be fun.
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"Reading is good, can we start the story now?" –Billy Madison
Kids gain in maturity when the family is mature. Other kids in additon to older kids will only intimidate a child that comes from an immature home. They, simply, don't have the tools to compete when they get to school. The age is irrelevant. Younger children can compete with older children if they have the tools. Meaning, someone has taught them how to use their brain.
These big kids this blog is referring too must be from dumb families that do not start the pre-schooling at home. They send their children to school with a blank dumb brain. And then the NYC system thinks that it is such a clever idea to start them in kindergarten late. That won't help them catch up. The worst thing a parent can do to a child is leave them to learn on their own. So when they are sixteen and a year behind the rest of the world mentally they will continue to behave immaturely and give in to mental intimidation.
Also if a child goes to a good day care, not a day care baby sitter, they should have more then enough pre kindergarten skills between home training and school. Now, if the NYC system knows that they are dealing with immature and poorer families, they should be honest and attempt to revamp the system to accomodate a failing school system. They should have "pre-pre-school" at 4yrs old in addition to daycare. Let them start, at least a summer or six months in advance, in a class that prepares them for kindergarten. Kinergarten should strictly prepare them for first grade. If they can not speak the language at all, then they should not enter school until they do. Or send language deficit children to special ed. courses until they understand the language at the appropriate level.
Children have been starting early and late for many years without problems. Why is this an issue now? Why is the percentage higher now?
> Posted by: the graduate
> These big kids this blog is referring too
*chortle*
Apparently "the graduate" skipped a day in English class...
LOL black kids are dumb
this is the dumbest thing i've ever heard of...i've got a december bday, and i turned out perfectly fine having gone to kindergarten when i was 5.
This trend pops up every so often -- 20 years ago when my brother was going to kindergarten the pressure to hold kids out (especially boys) was so great my parents had to have him take special intelligence tests to prove he was ready before the public school would let him enroll even though he was the legal age. Since he had an August birthday (the cutoff date where we grew up was Sept. 1) some of the kids in his grade were almost two years older.
Public school is considered free daycare for many parents...they send them sick, tired, dirty. Some parents have better things to do than to take care of them...like smoke crack!
And educating them...please, that's what we're paying these damn teachers for.
So that's a mentality I've experienced.
I think schools get more money by holding them in the system for one more year. I'll bet administrations in districts that are not overcrowded are pressured to do that.
Years from now, cultural anthropologists studying the parenting habits of urban American parents are going to label this the "retarded era" in American parenting. In the interest of giving our kids the best money can offer, we buy them multiple gaming systems, cell phones, laptop computers, iPods. We find every possible way to enrich them, from Baby Mozart to dance and music classes for two year olds. At the first sign of insecurity, we cart them off to $200 an hour psychotherapists and psychiatrists. Forty per cent of high schoolers are on Ritalin, Adderall and other stimulants. They can't sit still and can't concentrate, but we assume it's due to a "chemical imbalance." Parents have started taking their kids on "college tours" in the ninth and tenth grade. They plan family vacations around which colleges they can visit. SAT prep and private tutoring is a multi-billion dollar industry.
And now, a story about parents who hold back their kids so they start school a year later?
Sick. Very sick.
ridiculous. all that matters at the age anyway is correct social skills and coloring insdie the lines. Its only until 3rd grade when things start to change, and even then age doesn't make a significant difference.
Parents need to stop being so overzealous about getting their kids into "good private schools" and planning their future out and realize that a 5 year old needs little friends and little toys.
The old excuse "I was a product of my environment" will soon read:
I was a product.
That's how a lot of parents look at their kids...mostly the rich and the Republican...the parents in poor communities don't even look at their kids unless they first scream : Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
All typos aside, I agree with "graduate" that educating kids before they get to school is the only way to get them ready for it. Our library offers classes to parents of toddlers and preschoolers teaching them how to get their kids ready to read. The number of parents who come in to the library with screaming babies and toddlers and spend hours there without saying a word to them or offering them any kind of stimulus, then leaving with no books to read to their kids is disgusting. These are the babies who will grow up to bring down NYC's test scores, and it's all the parents' fault.
So your saying if you leave a child to learn on their own that they can't handle it??
Learning is a process of making mistakes and learning from them...you can't be sheltered forever.
School is basically a glorified babysitting system at this point in time..it won't matter in ten years when half the work is shipped overseas to underpaid workers.
The de-industrialization of NYC and the growth of the low paid service and retail industry means that workers don't have to be very skilled.
In fact, that is how the government wants it. The trillionaires running New York City know that if the schools properly educated people, then people would start to question why they are only getting paid poverty wages, why they do not have access to healthcare, and why they have to pay so much for substandard housing. To keep labor costs down, NYC will continue to not educate kids.