In my day, only a handful of us kids attended nursery school, as pre-school was known back in the day, and kindergarten was truly a “children’s garden.” Half day only and all about play, socializing, milk and graham crackers, naps, too. We sang, banged on triangles and handheld drums, made clay handprints and art of all sorts, and, oh, that “kitchen,” “grocery store,” and oversized sandbox!

As for reading, it took the form of story time. Every day, seated on the floor at the foot of our teacher. Just listening, imagining. No reading instruction whatsoever.

Long ago and long gone, kindergarten now “the new first grade.”

Case in point, one of my student teachers assigned to a kindergarten classroom in one of Pennsylvania’s best districts: Over the course of the semester and in accordance with the stated curriculum, he started by having the children label pictures of flowers, houses, and the like. Though simple sounding enough, a few “failed,” and a couple teared up.

A few weeks later, it was on to placing commas in a series. Really. (Remember, some couldn’t even write one word!) Some cried, most squirmed about in their seats, one landed on the floor.

And for my last observation, he taught quotation marks around written dialogue. Honest, and, despite his creative use of elbow macaroni, total frustration reigned.

And no wonder…

Enter Dr. Leonard Sax, a practicing family physician, psychologist, and author of four books for parents. An MIT Phi Beta Kappa graduate, he holds both a medical degree, a PhD in psychology, and leads workshops for teachers, parents, medical personnel, and other professionals who work with children and teens.

What follows are excerpts from his November ’22 “Should Boys Start Kindergarten One Year Later than Girls? written the Institute for Family Studies:

… Parents were asking me why their sons hated school so much. As I learned more about each boy’s situation, I was surprised to find that our local public school kindergarten was now requiring children to learn to read and write…

“What were they thinking? Don’t they know that boys that age aren’t ready to sit for an hour and learn about diphthongs?” I wondered. But, as I researched the topic, reaching out to colleagues regionally and then nationwide, I learned that this trend was sweeping the country. By 2010, researchers found the trend was pretty much complete. As late as 1998, only about 30% of kindergarten teachers expected their students to be able to read by the end of the school year. By 2010, 80% of teachers expected their students to be able to read. Kindergarten had become first grade…

Should your son start kindergarten at age 6 rather than age 5? What about your daughter? My own views have evolved over the past two decades. I’ve now visited more than 460 schools over the past 21 years, and I’ve learned that girls are not the winners here…

There’s growing evidence that the acceleration of the early curriculum, beginning with pre-K and kindergarten, is harmful to both girls and boys… When kids are drilled on academics at four and five years of age, they lose their enthusiasm for learning. Early-childhood educator Erika Christakis, reviewing the evidence in The Atlantic, concluded that “the same educational policies that are pushing academic goals down to ever earlier levels seem to be contributing to… the fact that young children are gaining fewer skills, not more…”

Dr. Sax’s conclusion: ALL kids should start kindergarten at age six, not five, and that we should backpedal this pre-K and kindergarten push to smarten up our littlest students.

I say, “Here! Here!” and worry for kids of all ages…

~ With thanks, Carol