"This is not what [the researcher Dale Farron] is seeing in classrooms full of kids in poverty, where 'teachers talk a lot, but they seldom listen to children.'... Private preschools, even home-based day cares, tend to be laid out with little bodies in mind. There are bathrooms just off the classrooms. Children eat in, or very near, the classroom, too. And there is outdoor play space nearby with equipment suitable for short people. Putting these same programs in public schools can make the whole day more inconvenient. 'So if you're in an older elementary school, the bathroom is going to be down the hall. You've got to take your children out, line them up and then they wait,' Farran says. "And then, if you have to use the cafeteria, it's the same thing. You have to walk through the halls, you know: 'Don't touch your neighbor, don't touch the wall, put a bubble in your mouth because you have to be quiet.'... 'Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?' she asks. 'I mean, why? Why do we put so much pressure on our pre-K programs?' We might actually get better results, she says, from simply letting little children play."
From "A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to preschool" (NPR).
I'd never before noticed that phrase "put a bubble in your mouth." Here's an article about it. Excerpt:
You may have heard teachers use the expression “Catch a Bubble” or “Put a Bubble in your Mouth” when telling their kids not to talk or make any sound. This is a classroom management novelty that plays on that phrase, and it can be helpful when you’re experiencing a lot of distracting side conversations and interruptions....
Once students have a clear understanding of the expectations, you can introduce “Catch a Bubble” cards, where each student has their own card with 5 bubbles. These can either be displayed on a poster, or they can be taped individually to students’ desks instead. A student has to “pop” one by crossing it out if talking at an inappropriate time.
Whoever has any bubbles in tact [sic] at the end of the week is rewarded by getting to chew bubble gum in class on Friday afternoon! If all of their bubbles have been popped, they do not get to chew the gum with the rest of the class. I can only speak for my own students, but they LOVE getting the chance to do something that is usually never allowed at school. They do NOT love being left out of something fun that the rest of the class gets to do on Fridays. It really makes them think twice before they blurt and can really help minimize those disruptive side conversations during instruction....
You can evade the no-talking training by electing to train yourself not to like chewing gum — or even to feel contemptuous toward gum-chewers.
Sorry, but that sounds like the offense was farting. I can't believe that children wouldn't discover that humor and, thorough laughter, overthrow the system.If a student pops all of their bubbles, you could have them reflect on their behavior by filling out an “Oops, I Popped a Bubble!” slip.
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The problem is education is dominated by the government.
Remove the government from control of education and give parents vouchers.
All of these problems will be solved.
Stop pre-K. Let the kids play. Pre-K didn't exist when I grew up, ca 1958. Kindergarten was just a half-day, maybe three hours.
All I remember of kindergarten (first school back then) was nap time, the beginning of a period of boredom.
Universal pre-school is simply taxpayer paid day-care, and has not demonstrated positive long term benefit.
Academic advantages of going to preschool don’t last long, study finds
Researchers say most kids catch up during kindergarten
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/academic-advantages-of-going-to-preschool-dont-last-long-study-finds-100620.html
How long does the preschool advantage last?
Attending preschool boosts young children's math, literacy skills, but peers catch up in kindergarten, study finds
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005092335.htm
The problem surely is parents who bith need to have paying jobs. My mom didn't so no pre-k for me. As it was, kindergarten was easily my worst of 19 years of formal education. So boring. I am told I kicked the teacher first day. No memory of that. Just of napping on mats. Ugh.
Schools run for the convenience of the staff and teachers, not for the benefit of the children. It's an old problem, that seems to be more prevalent today.
"In spite of the fact that schools exist for the sake of education, there is many a school whose pupils show a peculiar "school helplessness"; that is, they are capable of less initiative in connection with their school tasks than they commonly exhibit in the accomplishment of other tasks."
--How to Study and Teaching How to Study (1909) by F. M. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
"The evil is most serious with young children because of their youth. Many of them, while making good progress in the three R's, outgrow their tendency to ask questions and to raise objections, in other words lose their mental boldness or originality, by the time they have attended school four years. But all along, from the kindergarten to the college, there is almost a likelihood that the self will be undermined while acquiring knowledge, and that, in consequence, one will become permanently weakened while supposedly being educated. In this respect it is dangerous to attend a school of any grade."
Blogger zipity said...
Universal pre-school is simply taxpayer paid day-care, and has not demonstrated positive long term benefit.
Same can be said for K-12.
'Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?'
Ooooh! Ooooh! I know! (waves hand furiously in air)
Most Americans (and just about every politician) has this ridiculous idea that "education" can make everybody competent and successful. If K-12 doesn't do it, then adding college must. If that doesn't work, starting earlier and earlier must work. It's a constant rachet. After universal day care, will we get summer enrichment? Education must be lifelong!
I heard once that studies have shown that pre-K schooling doesn't really help children in school later on. My mom was a stay at home mom in the 1960s and all of us kids did really well in school. I think the real reason for pre-K is to provide baby sitting for households that don't have a stay at home adult. The pandemic really pointed out the problems with child care when all the adults have to work and the kids can't go to the classroom.
I don't have a lot of memories of kindergarten. I remember that we had silver tricycles in the playground and a large sand box. I remember that one day I lost my milk money in the sand box and was extremely sad about that.
preschool [to] close the achievement gap
It's never worked except very temporarily, regardless of how far away the bathrooms are.
The problem is education is dominated by the government.
The problem is that IQ can't be raised because it's mostly heritable, almost entirely so for adults.
Remove the government from control of education and give parents vouchers.
All of these problems will be solved.
Kids in private schools have the same overall performance as kids in public schools, so LOL.
You mean the “Oops, I Popped a Bubble!” slip with the boy or girl gender conforming image on each?
Why is the govt spending all of this money on free pre-k. Much better to just give the money to families so one parent could stay at home. No waiting for the bathroom!
this is ludicrous. Don't these "experts" even understand the purpose of pre-K?
(half days! yeah, RIGHT!)
The purpose of ALL public education is simple. It is:
Provide babysitting
THIS is the be all, and the end all, of public education. Even indoctrination is just gravy.
The meat and potatoes of public ed, is Babysitting. Now; since public ed teachers, are just babysitters; asking them to ask questions, or provide 'play based learning' is Just Stupid. Grow Up People! Randi Weingarten runs a Babysitters Union
The first school I had was kindergarten, and there was no reading at all just music and art and napping.
I didn't understand the idea of putting a bubble in your mouth. Not at all obvious what it means. Thought at first it was something about keeping your mouth so motionless that it wouldn't pop a soap bubble. It sounds kind of sweet and light because a bubble is light and fun.
So I looked it up, and it is kind of disturbing.
“Please put a BUBBLE in your mouth!”
This works! My kids will blow up a pretend bubble in their mouth – because they do it at school. This helps when they cannot physically wait to talk or the other sibling is sharing. “I’m sorry, it’s not your turn, put a bubble in your mouth if you can’t have self-control.”
So it's a self-gagging technique. You close your lips and puff up your cheeks so you cannot physically talk. And the kids impose it on themselves.
I wonder how it makes children feel. How does it feel to be forced to physically gag yourself? If the teacher physically gagged the kids it would be horrifying. So in some ways "putting a bubble in it" is less horrifying. But being forced to physically gag yourself might be humiliating because you are forced to do it to yourself.
It sounds like it would be better if children could be taught to control themselves without having to physically gag themselves, but maybe that is too much to expect of some kids and maybe physical self-restraint is a good stepping stone to mental self-restraint. And, sometimes you just need to shut the kids up, so sometimes you have to do what is necessary.
I never even went to kindergarten. My parents farmed and the local one-room school house didn't have a kindergarten. Ended up salutatorian of my senior class. All that playing at home must have been okay.
I remember a study years ago whichpointed out the most important thing you could do for your child was to start reading to it at the earliest convenience. Are child developmental "studies" cyclical?
I'm not a fan of chewing gum. I'd rather have the side conversations - although, even better, if it's all naps, music and learning through play, there are not side conversations, just conversations.
Self, sensory, and social development, unmasked.
Just so we know what the issue was. In the middle class, the moms teach their children the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, the days of the week, the sounds of the alphabet, and simple counting before they go to kindergarten. Most of these children have a favorite dinosaur and many have a preferred animal, reflection hours of reading, coloring, puzzle-making and watching Discovery channel. It was argued in the Sixties that when parents both worked (or in the case of a single parent) moms wouldn't have time to sit with their children repeating and repeating until it sunk in. Their children would be disadvantaged in kindergarten and would fall further and further behind throughout grade school. And so there should be a program to give everyone the same start given to the children of the middle class by their mom. The program intended to give the same start was called Headstart. It did not prevent well-defined groups of non-middle class children from falling further and further behind the children of the middle class. In fact, the entire argument for the CRT-based curriculum is the assertion that an achievement gap exists between various defined groups of children starting in grade school AND THAT A CRT-BASED CURRICULUM WILL CLOSE THAT GAP. A Venn diagram would show a strong overlap between the group defined in the Sixties by class and the groups defined presently by race which show an achievement gap in school. In short, there's been an achievement gap between various groups clearly evident for my entire lifetime. It's less race-based than it was in the Fifties because so many minorities have entered the middle class and yet, strangely, the the gap is now declared to be race-based rather than class-based. In any event, nothing done in the schools has effectively erased the gap and the CRT-based curriculums, which promise to erase in a year or two the achievement gap built up over years of schooling merely by promoting different ways of talking and different books to read, are absolutely bound to fail. Ceasing to measure the gap will not erase it either.
A large body of opinion has thought all along that, in terms of closing the achievement gap, there is no substitute for an engaged adult who stays engaged for the whole of a child's time in school. These adults were and are, most commonly, parents or relatives so it's clear that the most workable solution will involve mostly parents and relatives and vouchers. Not, for example, a large, expensive, expansive bureaucratic apparatus enforcing racial division. Harvard wants us to pretend otherwise but why does Harvard want us to try methods other than those that formed most of the Harvard faculty and students? Maybe because Harvard wants its students to find employment and all Harvard is producing is Future Bureaucrats of Shameful Land? Something to think about.
Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?
I suspect it was someone from an Education Department at a University that is full of people who donate to NPR.
My kindergarten had nap mats, a bathroom attached to the classroom, and chocolate milk.
"'Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?'"
Progs trying to justify yet anther government program.
"Why do we put so much pressure on our pre-K programs?'"
Because we are paying, or are asked to pay, billions of dollars for them.
"We might actually get better results, she says, from simply letting little children play."
And then again, might not. What "better results"? Demonstrated how?
As Freddie DeBoer has long said, education doesn't work--not in terms of changing the ranking of kids or their ultimate level of achievement. As Charles Murray pointed out long ago, all this talk of programs and results is mostly education sentimentalism.
"A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to preschool"
Correct. We should forget about it. Let the kids play for free. If parents want child care, let them pay for it.
From the study cited by zipity:
"The present investigation examined the benefits of pre-K through the end of kindergarten for children from low-income homes who lived in a large and diverse county (n 2,581) as well as factors associated with a reduction in benefits during the kindergarten year. Results revealed that pre-K graduates outperformed nonattenders in the areas of achievement and executive functioning skills at the end of kindergarten, and also that the benefits of pre-K at the start of the year diminished by a little more than half. This convergence between groups’ performance was largest for more constrained skills, such as letter-word identification, and was attributed to the fact that nonattenders made greater gains in kindergarten as compared with graduates of pre-K. Importantly, convergence in the groups’ performance in kindergarten was not attributed to pre-K children’s classroom experiences in kindergarten. Convergence was, however, attributable to preexisting individual differences, and there was support for the notion that even though children’s skills are susceptible to improvement as a result of pre-K, their longer-term outcomes are likely to be impacted by factors that are outside the scope of early schooling."
Ah, yes--factors that are outside the scope of early schooling. Hence the DeBoer/Murray cold-shower skepticism.
When Dems come into power, suddenly the "experts" propose scrapping the traditional Dem agenda?
I heard a children's choir director once tell the kids to "use your marshmallow feet" when climbing up on the wooden risers. It was the perfect expression for stepping quietly. Put a bubble in your mouth reminded me of it.
Yes, journalists get a lot of mileage out of telling anxious parents - "You know why Finnish children do so much better than Americans? It's because they are so laid back and unpressured and let them develop and grow!" And then next week "Do you know why the children in Shanghai and South Korea just bury American kids on those international tests? It's be cause they are so disciplined and expect their children to work so hard!" Whatever stick comes to hand in order to pretend that genetics is not the primary driver (other than eating lead or head trauma or severe disease and malnutrition as infants, sure. Environment means something at the extremes).
The rich had the sort of genetics that enabled them to rise in the current dominant cultures - that is, NW Europe and their colonies, NE Asia, and Jews. It doesn't mean they are any better in the things the wise of every culture have said go into being a deeply valuable human being, all those horrible virtues of honesty, and kindness, and generosity, and piety, and personal responsibility, no. But academic success, fame, money, and prestige in our current system of rewards. It's mostly genetics.
All the blather about what preschools up through graduate schools are "better" other than the prestige of connections, has no measurable difference. None. Zero. Everything else is anecdote and feelings. Within the limits of a school being safe and having some expectations about something, the K-12 schools put out test scores at K that are exactly the same as 12, and it is the same in colleges. It does not matter.
I have been losing my temper over this with both liberals and conservatives for decades, and neither can produce research data that says anything different. People must deeply want to believe that the personal experience of themselves and their families is The Truth, regardless.
I've got the right, BTW. I had five, natural and adopted and spent a lot of $ on private schools. If I wanted to I could lie to myself to feel good about that. But the data just isn't there, except at the margins like prenatal trauma or social positioning for luck. Heritability, dammit.
I think her strongest point was about internal control. Kids from chaotic households need to learn self-control, how to understand consequences for actions and how to evaluate their choices. Not all low-income families have troubles, but a sizable number do have addiction issues, etc.. teaching little kids how to slow down and think could be useful.
My mother taught me to read. I was prohibited from reading at kindergarten and had to play with blocks. I was caught reading more than once. Once I claimed I was just telling a story.
I was also told that I was spelling my name wrong though that may have been first grade. I learned to ignore the opinions of authority figures other than my parents from this.
8:45-9:00 Imaginative S.T.E.A.M. Play
9:05-9:20 Morning Circle
9:30-9:55 Recess
10:00-10:20 Snack
10:20-10:50 Smart Circle
10:55-11:15 Music explolration
11:15-11:30 Story Time
11:30-12:00 Lunch
12:00-2:00 Nap
2:00-2:10 Rise and shine
2:15-2:30 Snack
2:35-2:55 recess
3:05-3:25 Science/Spanish
3:30-4:00 Fine arts/Curriculum Connection
4:00-4:15-Story time/Departure.
Putting a bubble in it is the same as someone telling you to put a sock in it. A mean spirited way to tell you that your comments are not worth hearing.
Three years old who are most educated upon entering Kindergarten sit bored while the class is taught to the most ignorant. Home schooled, pre_schooled, Head Start, doesn't matter. Kid knows all the dinosaurs, planets, alphabet in English and Spanish types of clouds counts to a thousand frontwards and backwards, tells time,simple addition and subtraction,hasta wait for the rest to catch up.
Dang. As a middle-class kindergartener going to a school built in the 1940's I did a lot of lining up and going through halls. I was having too much of a good time to realize how oppressed I actually was.
Can I be retroactively traumatized by the school district?
Many many years ago when I was raising my kids, I read a book called The Hurried Child - I don’t recall the author. It’s premise was that children are pushed into schools, desks, lines, silence etc before they are physically able to conform. In particular boys - haven’t got the body and brain maturity to sit still, be quiet, etc until they are at least 7 years old. It was the 80’s when millions of little boys were labeled as having Attention Deficit Disorder and drugged - for what in reality was normal behavior for their age
I quit kindergarten after a nun rapped my knuckles. It was about the third day of school and I decided I wanted none of it. As it happened, a florist and nursery owned by friends of my father was next door to the school. I had been there many times with him and they knew me. Instead of going to school the next day, I went next door to the nursery and offered to help the old man, a brother of the original owner, with his work. I did this until I heard the school bell at noon and told him I had to go. I went home and my mother never knew I had quit kindergarten until I told her years later. She sent me off every morning and I went to the nursery instead of school. They never called my mother and, fortunately for me, my parents bought a new house in November before winter got too much for the nursery.
First grade was a new world.
I remember when pre-K was called “nursery school.” I never went. I entered Kindergarten morning session at the local Catholic school. I remember the nun, but not really much of what I did in K. Then my daughter went to nursery school, at age 3. She was supposed to be potty-trained, but she wasn’t. I lied and said she was. Nursery school was, singing, drawing, snacks and story time. She attended for three years. And then went to K in the local public school. She started reading at age 4 so when she entered K she could read any book in the elementary school. I had started reading to her at age 6 mos. My husband thought that I was crazy.
Then my granddaughter comes along, and now she enters pre-k. A Montessori based system. (Costs more.). The big pitch for this school was the open space for kids to play and run around outdoors. The kids basically did the same thing my daughter did in nursery school. But pre-k with the outdoor space cost $12,000 a year.
She did not do well in the local public school system. Which is very highly rated.
During the pandemic year 2020 while virtual learning, my daughter watched the lessons and decided to home school her in the new school year. During home schooling she flourished beyond expectations. She now attends private school which she loves and is doing very well.
Glad she’s out of the government school system.
I volunteered at Head Start years ago. What the two little girls wanted from me most of all, was my attention and affection. One on One. They had no idea what a schedule was, lunch time, story time, nap time, etc. It was obvious that their home life was totally unstructured and they were mostly ignored. I was very sad for those two little girls when I left. But I think that this is typical in low-income, inner-cities, unfortunately. Wish it wasn’t.
Vouchers do not remove government from education. They spread government control to every other education option. Paying for education yourself is the only way to keep government out.
South Miami, 1955, only had "nursery school," a precursor to daycare. It was only found at institutions like churches; not found in a public school.
I remember it well.
Industrialization of child raising.
My five kids never had government preschool, three had home based preschool for fun. All except the last had half day kindergarten; she's in full day right now because the only half day programs cost money, which wasn't the case for the other 4. My kids test their peers out of the water; most kids are better off spending time with their mother and not in a classroom.
I had no pre-school. Pre-television, no Sesame Street. Nothing.
I spent 1st and 2nd grades in a one-room schoolhouse near Shanksville, PA with 30 kids, grades 1 through 8.
One male teacher. No aides. No running water. Outhouses in the back.
We were so poor, our Periodic Chart of the Elements on the wall showed only the Alkali Metals and the Actinide Series.
I listened to the lessons being taught to the kids in the higher classes.
Loved it.
Just ten years later, entering my high school senior year, I had just completed a college-level course in Chemistry that summer at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH, then the most hoity-toity of American prep schools.
THAT was America, back then.
Children of educated parents enter school having heard a million more words, hundreds more books, and countless more ideas than the children of uneducated parents. Nothing is going to overcome that.
The most common objection I hear from pre-K opponents is that it is government-funded daycare. So what if it is? Can you imagine how much worse our society and economy would be if the people who clean and secure our buildings, bag our groceries, and serve our meals didn’t get childcare help? This is one (of many) areas where libertarianism is just a name for people who think the bill of rights really is a suicide pact.
The emphasis on play vs curricular progress, including reading, persists in private kindergarten, as opposed to public school. It’s a very pronounced difference: kids from quality public K programs can usually read upon entering 1st grade where the only private school kids who can are those whose parents taught or tutored them to read.
My main hope for my kids in elementary school was that they emerge with a love of learning positively associated with schooling, and that they will have found some relatively happy accommodation between their individual autonomy and the non-parental authority figures and school rules without bitterness. Was going pretty well until the schools went fucking crazy and started imposing rules that must be rejected and opposed loudly by all good people these past 2.5 years.
Not that these institutions posed no threat before, but we’d managed to avoid the excesses of woke in our little corners, although we embraces the excesses of the covid regime like there was no tomorrow. It’s actually the elite public test-entry school that has fared by far the best as compared to the private and parochial schools as regards both covid and woke idiocy of late. Go figure.
In poor neighborhoods, the #1 benefit of Pre-K is free food.
Abolishment of government schools is what is needed.
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