10 ms·

Kindergarten Has Become the New First Grade

64 points by chrismealy 11y ago

littletimmy 11y ago
This is one part of a much larger trend of dismantling all niceness in American life. EVERYONE now works much harder than they used to: workers work more than 10 hours a day with similar or lesser benefits, college students work much harder to get the same jobs, where we had one breadwinner supporting an entire family we now have two struggling to support families. Even kindergarten kids work harder than they ever have in history. It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not a sustainable system. All benefits of the lower classes working really hard will keep accumulating to the top until society collapses on itself. Or maybe not; we could return to a stable feudalism. In any case, the solution to this obviously is that kids should not have preschool, but their parents (particularly the mom) should stay home with the kids and play. That interaction with parents teaches kids far more than a lowly paid preschool teacher will. That's how it was done for centuries. That's what works.
- europa 11y ago
  Why (particularly the mom) should stay home with the kids and play ? Why not dad?
  - mkrfox 11y ago
    Or one of two dads/moms. All kinds of variety in families.
  - sremani 11y ago
    why not both stay home ? :)
  - VLM 11y ago
    Looking at the divorce stats and custody stats and child support payment stats, major societal and legal changes would be necessary if you want the kids to stay home with ex-dad instead of going to day care while mom works. The related cultural issues are more complicated than the change itself.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- debacle 11y ago
  We really lack the labor demand in modern times for a return to feudalism. Arguably the current system is better for the wealthy than feudalism was.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    It's funny to see so closely spaced, the two observations: - Two-income households are struggling to make ends meet - We don't need all the labor we have The two statements would seem to support eachother. But what if all households switched to single-income? Then we would need all the labor we have. Presumably pay would rise to match.
    - debacle 11y ago
      That's a bit of a prisoners' dilemma, isn't it?
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not a sustainable system. Or it's a more sustainable system. The American lifestyle in the past was mostly propped up by slave labor, both domestically and abroad. The reason the standard of living for the middle class is lower now is in part because of increasing equality. (Ignoring the massive wealth gap domestically, which almost certainly will be unsustainable in the long run.)
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    Some argue that the "system" exacerbates inequality because rich (maybe including middle class) people can afford to hire people and services to cover for when their personal desires interfere with their kids' development. That is, rich people can hire nannies, drivers, coaches, tutors, move to safer neighborhoods (less time spent on teaching Junior how to not get mugged or killed), and install security systems. They can upgrade old-and-maybe-not-safe foods and products with expensive better-safe-than-sorry alternatives. Even given the premise that all of this is the middle class coming down to Earth, going forward, it's another question entirely if families are generally better off with an at-home parent.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > This is one part of a much larger trend of dismantling all niceness in American life. Maybe you mean "quality of life" instead of "niceness"? I find that niceness is incredibly overemphasized, especially in early childhood education and media. Often things are unpleasant, but good to do.
  - ambicapter 11y ago
    I don't think you and OP commenter are talking about the same thing.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      I think so, yeah. I was saying there's probably a better way to describe OP's take.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Considering that our civilization is greatly advanced over what came before, looking to the past for "what works" seems sort of silly. Appeals to tradition don't provide a very compelling basis for arguments with people who prize reason.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    To be fair, neither do appeals to abstract things like "progress" and "modernity". You need somewhat objective improvements for something to be better. Both "it's new" and "it's old" are fallacious reasons to prefer something.
    - laotzu 11y ago
      I would assume oldmanjay is referring to the objective increase in life expectancy we have seen since the industrial revolution. However, it remains the been seen whether or not this is a valid example of "progress" considering the on going process of ecological self destruction of the human race and/or the imminent threat of nuclear holocaust.
  - laotzu 11y ago
    >Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society. -Lame Deer
- TheGirondin 11y ago
  >parents should stay home with the kids and play. That interaction with parents teaches kids far more than a lowly paid preschool teacher will. Do you have kids? I have a 2.5 year who has been in a small day care setting (about 10 kids) for 2 years. The effect it has had on her social (and even academic) skills have been pretty amazing. She is learning so much more about how to deal with other people, social interactions, ect than she ever could staying at home with me. >[One parent staying at home with the kids] was done for centuries. Not really. Preindustrial revolution life was much more communal and based around large, multi-generational family units.
  - nugget 11y ago
    What would you recommend to parents who don't want to assign their very young (.5-1 yr old) children to what most folks think of as old school traditional daycare? Do you think daily structured group dates supervised by a rotating parent or guardian would have this same effect? What were the key ingredients that you think made your child have a good experience and concurrently gave you as parents confidence in the process?
    - VLM 11y ago
      Assuming your request is genuine and not rhetorical if you live in a decent area the well funded local library has seemingly continuous story reading and kids activities, all completely free (well, free aside from being rich enough to buy a house in that area and pay the related high prop taxes), and when they need to get out and run, the muni parks and rec dept has a fairly staggering variety of classes for minimal to zero fee for residents ranging from formal classes to playground games and toys. Parks and rec has or had a mandate that part of the building code was no house is more than a couple hundred feet (maybe a thousand feet?) from a free muni park, basically every subdivision has a park with kids actively in it, however minimal the park may be. At the very low age you specify the selection is somewhat limited and usually they demand a parent participate with the kid WRT bathroom issues etc. When the kids get older there is more fun to be had, (semi-)organized sports and minecraft night at the library and movie night at the park (they use a projector and screen) and after school clubs and stuff. A condo downtown means the kids will have nothing to do, but the burbs are a lot of fun as a kid and also as a side effect of the cost of entry, they're also relatively safe.
- Futurebot 11y ago
  I don't agree with your last paragraph, as I have different values, but as far as your first one: this is the essence of 'hypercompetition', and it's bound up with our winner-take-all system / superstar effect. Anyone who hasn't read "Twilight of the Elites" and "Average is Over" should do so. Winner-take-all society: http://prospect.org/article/talent-and-winner-take-all-society http://prospect.org/article/talent-and-winner-take-all-socie... The superstar effect: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html?_r... Non-stop retraining: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-... My personal preference would be to accept this as the new reality and give better societal supports to allow people to compete (as Twilight of the Elites makes clear, you need more equality of outcome to enable equality of opportunity vis a vis education, tutors, etc.) like debt-free college and retraining programs, GBI, a more comprehensive unemployment system, etc. Rather than trying to roll the clock back, we should instead embrace it and allow people who want to be part of the race to have the tools to compete, while allowing those who would rather not to step away without starving and becoming homeless.
amelius 11y ago
And has the Ph.D. become the new Master's?
- sevensor 11y ago
  No, but the Masters definitely reads as a B.S.++. I think the Ph.D. is qualitatively different. It puts you at risk of looking over-specialized, while opening you up to jobs that require that degree of specialization.
- Balgair 11y ago
  If not now, then soon. The MS/MEng is for sure the new BS. I had a hiring manager from a local firm come in and say: "Yes, we are hiring entry level talent right now, masters students like you guys are in high demand and...." The sentence betrayed his logic, that a MS is now entry level. When asked if there were questions, one student said:"Wait, are masters now an entry level requirement or preference?" He relied:"Yes, they are a requirement, and they are entry level not just in terms of comapny structure, but in terms of pay too" This was bioengineering, by the way.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Bioengineering has rather high barriers to entry and an oversupply of highly qualified workers. You see the same thing in any field that attracts more workers than it needs.
    - Balgair 11y ago
      Wow, I did not know that! Do you know how much there is an oversupply of workers? I'd love to see the stats and whatnot, as I am in the field.
      - Retric 11y ago
        https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/2011-profile-engineering-statistics.pdf https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/co... 4,066 undergrad in 2001 got a bio engenearing degree. +1,558 masters. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedic... 22,000 total jobs 2014 (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedic...) There does seem to be steady growth in the field. But supply is definitely outstripping demand.
dfabulich 11y ago
It's weird to read an article like this today, dated January 2016, in light of Congress passing ESSA two weeks ago, eliminating most federal rules around national standardized tests. http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-congress-overwhelmingly-approves-new-federal-education-law/91650 http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-congress-overwhe...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Dismantling the federal rules doesn't dismantle the state rules which, whether or not they were in part designed to meet the federal requirements, exist independently. Nor does it, more to the point, rewrite the actual school curricula or transform classroom practices that were shaped by the system produced by the old federal rules and associated state rules. This is largely an advocacy piece about how practices should be changed (focusing on what is viewed as negative about current practices); it makes as much sense to see it now -- when the federal rules allow practice to change -- as any other time. Where is the weirdness?
- pacbard 11y ago
  ESSA just removes the federal requirements for proficiency levels set by NCLB (i.e., 100% of students will be proficient by 2011/2012 and all the safe harbor calculations that came with this mandate). ESSA, however, it stills requires states to test in grades 3-8 and 11 and to develop success indicators including test scores, school climate (e.g., suspension and expulsion rates, graduation rates, and completion of advanced courses (e.g., AP/IB courses). The biggest change is that state will have the freedom to develop their own local set of success indicators rather than relying on the federal department of education to tell which schools are successful and which are not. If you are in California, take a look at the CORE districts to have an idea about where the CA department of education is heading towards in regards of school and district accountability measures. Back on topic: Kindergarten is actually still optional for California' students (see, http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kindergartenfaq.asp http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kindergartenfaq.asp and CA Ed Code Section 48010). There is some push in Sacramento to make kindergarten mandatory but the initiative is still gaining support. It is known that children from low social-economic status are at a disadvantage ausually nd start kindergarten with a developmental gap worth between 1-2 years of instruction. Making kindergarten compulsory and pre-kindergarten optional is a step in the direction of strengthening early education and hopefully closing the achievement gap from an early age (in fact, we can already tell in 3rd grade which students will be successful and which will struggle by their reading test scores).
thewarrior 11y ago
Two articles on the front page. One lamenting that college graduates don't have any real skills and the other saying that Kindergarten is now harder than ever.
- qntty 11y ago
  Maybe not unrelated New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.
  - chrisdbaldwin 11y ago
    > ... children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning. And yet we pretend this isn't by design! The US system is based on 18th-19th century's Prussian system which was used in their military to create more obedient soldiers. That's why school is soul crushing and so many children suffer in school. We are teaching them obedience above all else. The system stinks.
    - cafard 11y ago
      I think that the Prussian bit is overdone. For one thing, the Prussian government was not trying to create more obedient soldiers--it had ample & brutal discipline for that--but literate ones. For another, it was the widespread literacy that US reformers were looking at.
  - lintiness 11y ago
    maybe their "attitudes toward school were deteriorating" because they were in classrooms slowed by the non-preschool students. it's always seemed to me that policy like "no child left behind" is fundamentally misguided: teaching for average rather than excellence. isn't society better served by a few outstanding students meeting their maximum potential than it is by the group meeting some mean?
ideonexus 11y ago
I found this article very frustrating. Everything the author is complaining about comes down to one issue: the ratio of Teachers to Students. And yet, she does not mention this once. > A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating... overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning. The problem here isn't that preschoolers were more "school ready," the problem is that the school system isn't prepared to handle "school ready" students. School ready kindergartners have just come from a preschool like that of my sons, where state regulations require a 1:10 teacher to student ratio [1], and they are now in a 1:20 or worse ratio public school [2]. When a teacher is going over material some students have already mastered, those students zone out. > Unfortunately, much of the conversation in today’s preschool classrooms is one-directional and simplistic, as teachers steer students through a highly structured schedule, herding them from one activity to another and signaling approval with a quick “good job!” The author claims that providing a conversational class room is "relatively cheap to provide." But this isn't something a teacher can just change their teaching strategy and accomplish. This kind of interaction requires focusing attention on a student at the expense of the other students--so it takes more teachers. It is laughably naive to claim a teacher can have personalized dialogue with 20 kindergartners at once. > Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s kindergarten guidelines... One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. And yet, the Common Core only requires children know a number of sight-words, basic phonetics, and the concepts of reading (words are separated by spaces, we read left-to-right, etc.) [3]. The standards, which everyone loves to criticize but no one seems to know what they actually say, are quite easy to meet. One of my preschoolers has easily mastered the Kindergartner recommendations with nothing but teaching him that the alphabet, words, reading, and books are fun--but it takes personalized time to encourage that attitude. [1] http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STARS/Kits/3to4centerteachertochildratiochart.pdf http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STAR... [2] http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411 http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411 [3] http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/ http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/
vlunkr 11y ago
This is a really disturbing trend to me. If you learn to read one year earlier then the last generation then.. what? What long term effect will that have on your life? Kids are learning so much at that young age already, even if they aren't sitting a desk learning from a certified teacher. It's cliche, but we need to let kids be kids for a while.
- ebiester 11y ago
  Most of us here, I would venture to guess, learned to read before Kindergarten. We can look at the group of people who learned to read as early as 2 already.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    I wonder if this is true. In spite of doing well on measures of intelligence (particularly verbal) I was not an early reader. edit: I had no patience for it but would spend most of my time building things out of wood/nails and legos.
  - Retric 11y ago
    I don't think I could 'read' before 3rd grade, as far as I can tell it had minimal long term negative impact. For reference I got an 800 on the English part of the PSAT. PS: I also started to speaking at 3. There seems to be a huge emphasis on progressing as fast as possible, but in the long term a year or two has little meaning.
- lakeeffect 11y ago
  It's common now for parents to put their kids in Kindergarten at the age they used to start first grade. My kid just made the cutoff but my wife wants to hold him back and some of his friends parents with kids born in January or march are holding their kids back a year.
  - Glyptodon 11y ago
    Just keep in mind things can cut both ways. To this day I somewhat regret my parents doing this as throughout my entire K12 education I always ended up making friends that were a grade or two ahead since my classmates were much less mature. Which was ultimately frustrating. However, such experiences are certainly not the norm. In my case it had more to do with emotional and physical maturity than the academic.
grandalf 11y ago
What is Kindergarten for? What is school for? Any approach is going to have consequences. For most Americans, the purpose of both is primarily daycare and also a bit of socialization.
sergiotapia 11y ago
This is the case almost everywhere else in South America. You start with pre-kinder if you wish, but most start at kinder.
anigbrowl 11y ago
This is a very US-centric article. Lots of other countries start out education with a fair degree of desk work, rote memorization (eg of the alphabet, basic addition and subtraction), expectations of being able to read by the end of the first year and so on...and they're doing fine. My education in Ireland would probably have seemed pretty Dickensian by the author's standards (although we also had unstructured time, physical play and so on), and yet Ireland consistently does well on measures of academic achievement and in terms of cultural capital. My parents both liked reading (thanks Mm & Dad) so I was lucky enough to be able to read before I went to school at age 4, and the idea that it's bad for kids' brains to teach them to read before 5 or 6 just seems laughably delusional to me. I would have resented anyone trying to interfere with my reading at a young age and certainly plan on teaching my own kids to read should any come along. The article's suggestion that kids can't identify any similarity between the veins in a leaf and those in their hand because they're being subjected to too much book learning strikes me as bizarre. Of course one shouldn't generalize from one's own experience, but given the highly standardized nature of the educational curriculum I grew up with, if it was so bad I'd expect that to have manifested in the form of intractable social problems or declining international rankings by now.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
The biggest problem with modern formal education is that all of the incentives are screwed up. There's a race toward optimizing certain "metrics" and making progress on paper to the detriment of actual learning. Sometimes I wonder whether the educational system actually helps more than it hurts. So much of "education" is not about learning, and in fact turns students away from learning. It's amazing that the system works at all really.

64 points by chrismealy 11y ago

This is one part of a much larger trend of dismantling all niceness in American life. EVERYONE now works much harder than they used to: workers work more than 10 hours a day with similar or lesser benefits, college students work much harder to get the same jobs, where we had one breadwinner supporting an entire family we now have two struggling to support families. Even kindergarten kids work harder than they ever have in history. It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not a sustainable system. All benefits of the lower classes working really hard will keep accumulating to the top until society collapses on itself. Or maybe not; we could return to a stable feudalism. In any case, the solution to this obviously is that kids should not have preschool, but their parents (particularly the mom) should stay home with the kids and play. That interaction with parents teaches kids far more than a lowly paid preschool teacher will. That's how it was done for centuries. That's what works.

europa 11y ago
Why (particularly the mom) should stay home with the kids and play ? Why not dad?
- mkrfox 11y ago
  Or one of two dads/moms. All kinds of variety in families.
- sremani 11y ago
  why not both stay home ? :)
- VLM 11y ago
  Looking at the divorce stats and custody stats and child support payment stats, major societal and legal changes would be necessary if you want the kids to stay home with ex-dad instead of going to day care while mom works. The related cultural issues are more complicated than the change itself.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
debacle 11y ago
We really lack the labor demand in modern times for a return to feudalism. Arguably the current system is better for the wealthy than feudalism was.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  It's funny to see so closely spaced, the two observations: - Two-income households are struggling to make ends meet - We don't need all the labor we have The two statements would seem to support eachother. But what if all households switched to single-income? Then we would need all the labor we have. Presumably pay would rise to match.
  - debacle 11y ago
    That's a bit of a prisoners' dilemma, isn't it?
Alex3917 11y ago
> It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not a sustainable system. Or it's a more sustainable system. The American lifestyle in the past was mostly propped up by slave labor, both domestically and abroad. The reason the standard of living for the middle class is lower now is in part because of increasing equality. (Ignoring the massive wealth gap domestically, which almost certainly will be unsustainable in the long run.)
- humanrebar 11y ago
  Some argue that the "system" exacerbates inequality because rich (maybe including middle class) people can afford to hire people and services to cover for when their personal desires interfere with their kids' development. That is, rich people can hire nannies, drivers, coaches, tutors, move to safer neighborhoods (less time spent on teaching Junior how to not get mugged or killed), and install security systems. They can upgrade old-and-maybe-not-safe foods and products with expensive better-safe-than-sorry alternatives. Even given the premise that all of this is the middle class coming down to Earth, going forward, it's another question entirely if families are generally better off with an at-home parent.
humanrebar 11y ago
> This is one part of a much larger trend of dismantling all niceness in American life. Maybe you mean "quality of life" instead of "niceness"? I find that niceness is incredibly overemphasized, especially in early childhood education and media. Often things are unpleasant, but good to do.
- ambicapter 11y ago
  I don't think you and OP commenter are talking about the same thing.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    I think so, yeah. I was saying there's probably a better way to describe OP's take.
oldmanjay 11y ago
Considering that our civilization is greatly advanced over what came before, looking to the past for "what works" seems sort of silly. Appeals to tradition don't provide a very compelling basis for arguments with people who prize reason.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  To be fair, neither do appeals to abstract things like "progress" and "modernity". You need somewhat objective improvements for something to be better. Both "it's new" and "it's old" are fallacious reasons to prefer something.
  - laotzu 11y ago
    I would assume oldmanjay is referring to the objective increase in life expectancy we have seen since the industrial revolution. However, it remains the been seen whether or not this is a valid example of "progress" considering the on going process of ecological self destruction of the human race and/or the imminent threat of nuclear holocaust.
- laotzu 11y ago
  >Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society. -Lame Deer
TheGirondin 11y ago
>parents should stay home with the kids and play. That interaction with parents teaches kids far more than a lowly paid preschool teacher will. Do you have kids? I have a 2.5 year who has been in a small day care setting (about 10 kids) for 2 years. The effect it has had on her social (and even academic) skills have been pretty amazing. She is learning so much more about how to deal with other people, social interactions, ect than she ever could staying at home with me. >[One parent staying at home with the kids] was done for centuries. Not really. Preindustrial revolution life was much more communal and based around large, multi-generational family units.
- nugget 11y ago
  What would you recommend to parents who don't want to assign their very young (.5-1 yr old) children to what most folks think of as old school traditional daycare? Do you think daily structured group dates supervised by a rotating parent or guardian would have this same effect? What were the key ingredients that you think made your child have a good experience and concurrently gave you as parents confidence in the process?
  - VLM 11y ago
    Assuming your request is genuine and not rhetorical if you live in a decent area the well funded local library has seemingly continuous story reading and kids activities, all completely free (well, free aside from being rich enough to buy a house in that area and pay the related high prop taxes), and when they need to get out and run, the muni parks and rec dept has a fairly staggering variety of classes for minimal to zero fee for residents ranging from formal classes to playground games and toys. Parks and rec has or had a mandate that part of the building code was no house is more than a couple hundred feet (maybe a thousand feet?) from a free muni park, basically every subdivision has a park with kids actively in it, however minimal the park may be. At the very low age you specify the selection is somewhat limited and usually they demand a parent participate with the kid WRT bathroom issues etc. When the kids get older there is more fun to be had, (semi-)organized sports and minecraft night at the library and movie night at the park (they use a projector and screen) and after school clubs and stuff. A condo downtown means the kids will have nothing to do, but the burbs are a lot of fun as a kid and also as a side effect of the cost of entry, they're also relatively safe.
Futurebot 11y ago
I don't agree with your last paragraph, as I have different values, but as far as your first one: this is the essence of 'hypercompetition', and it's bound up with our winner-take-all system / superstar effect. Anyone who hasn't read "Twilight of the Elites" and "Average is Over" should do so. Winner-take-all society: http://prospect.org/article/talent-and-winner-take-all-society http://prospect.org/article/talent-and-winner-take-all-socie... The superstar effect: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html?_r... Non-stop retraining: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-... My personal preference would be to accept this as the new reality and give better societal supports to allow people to compete (as Twilight of the Elites makes clear, you need more equality of outcome to enable equality of opportunity vis a vis education, tutors, etc.) like debt-free college and retraining programs, GBI, a more comprehensive unemployment system, etc. Rather than trying to roll the clock back, we should instead embrace it and allow people who want to be part of the race to have the tools to compete, while allowing those who would rather not to step away without starving and becoming homeless.

amelius 11y ago

And has the Ph.D. become the new Master's?

sevensor 11y ago
No, but the Masters definitely reads as a B.S.++. I think the Ph.D. is qualitatively different. It puts you at risk of looking over-specialized, while opening you up to jobs that require that degree of specialization.
Balgair 11y ago
If not now, then soon. The MS/MEng is for sure the new BS. I had a hiring manager from a local firm come in and say: "Yes, we are hiring entry level talent right now, masters students like you guys are in high demand and...." The sentence betrayed his logic, that a MS is now entry level. When asked if there were questions, one student said:"Wait, are masters now an entry level requirement or preference?" He relied:"Yes, they are a requirement, and they are entry level not just in terms of comapny structure, but in terms of pay too" This was bioengineering, by the way.
- Retric 11y ago
  Bioengineering has rather high barriers to entry and an oversupply of highly qualified workers. You see the same thing in any field that attracts more workers than it needs.
  - Balgair 11y ago
    Wow, I did not know that! Do you know how much there is an oversupply of workers? I'd love to see the stats and whatnot, as I am in the field.
    - Retric 11y ago
      https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/2011-profile-engineering-statistics.pdf https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/co... 4,066 undergrad in 2001 got a bio engenearing degree. +1,558 masters. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedic... 22,000 total jobs 2014 (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedic...) There does seem to be steady growth in the field. But supply is definitely outstripping demand.

dfabulich 11y ago

It's weird to read an article like this today, dated January 2016, in light of Congress passing ESSA two weeks ago, eliminating most federal rules around national standardized tests. http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-congress-overwhelmingly-approves-new-federal-education-law/91650 http://edsource.org/2015/in-bipartisan-vote-congress-overwhe...

dragonwriter 11y ago
Dismantling the federal rules doesn't dismantle the state rules which, whether or not they were in part designed to meet the federal requirements, exist independently. Nor does it, more to the point, rewrite the actual school curricula or transform classroom practices that were shaped by the system produced by the old federal rules and associated state rules. This is largely an advocacy piece about how practices should be changed (focusing on what is viewed as negative about current practices); it makes as much sense to see it now -- when the federal rules allow practice to change -- as any other time. Where is the weirdness?
pacbard 11y ago
ESSA just removes the federal requirements for proficiency levels set by NCLB (i.e., 100% of students will be proficient by 2011/2012 and all the safe harbor calculations that came with this mandate). ESSA, however, it stills requires states to test in grades 3-8 and 11 and to develop success indicators including test scores, school climate (e.g., suspension and expulsion rates, graduation rates, and completion of advanced courses (e.g., AP/IB courses). The biggest change is that state will have the freedom to develop their own local set of success indicators rather than relying on the federal department of education to tell which schools are successful and which are not. If you are in California, take a look at the CORE districts to have an idea about where the CA department of education is heading towards in regards of school and district accountability measures. Back on topic: Kindergarten is actually still optional for California' students (see, http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kindergartenfaq.asp http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kindergartenfaq.asp and CA Ed Code Section 48010). There is some push in Sacramento to make kindergarten mandatory but the initiative is still gaining support. It is known that children from low social-economic status are at a disadvantage ausually nd start kindergarten with a developmental gap worth between 1-2 years of instruction. Making kindergarten compulsory and pre-kindergarten optional is a step in the direction of strengthening early education and hopefully closing the achievement gap from an early age (in fact, we can already tell in 3rd grade which students will be successful and which will struggle by their reading test scores).

thewarrior 11y ago

Two articles on the front page. One lamenting that college graduates don't have any real skills and the other saying that Kindergarten is now harder than ever.

qntty 11y ago
Maybe not unrelated New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.
- chrisdbaldwin 11y ago
  > ... children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning. And yet we pretend this isn't by design! The US system is based on 18th-19th century's Prussian system which was used in their military to create more obedient soldiers. That's why school is soul crushing and so many children suffer in school. We are teaching them obedience above all else. The system stinks.
  - cafard 11y ago
    I think that the Prussian bit is overdone. For one thing, the Prussian government was not trying to create more obedient soldiers--it had ample & brutal discipline for that--but literate ones. For another, it was the widespread literacy that US reformers were looking at.
- lintiness 11y ago
  maybe their "attitudes toward school were deteriorating" because they were in classrooms slowed by the non-preschool students. it's always seemed to me that policy like "no child left behind" is fundamentally misguided: teaching for average rather than excellence. isn't society better served by a few outstanding students meeting their maximum potential than it is by the group meeting some mean?

ideonexus 11y ago

I found this article very frustrating. Everything the author is complaining about comes down to one issue: the ratio of Teachers to Students. And yet, she does not mention this once. > A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating... overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning. The problem here isn't that preschoolers were more "school ready," the problem is that the school system isn't prepared to handle "school ready" students. School ready kindergartners have just come from a preschool like that of my sons, where state regulations require a 1:10 teacher to student ratio [1], and they are now in a 1:20 or worse ratio public school [2]. When a teacher is going over material some students have already mastered, those students zone out. > Unfortunately, much of the conversation in today’s preschool classrooms is one-directional and simplistic, as teachers steer students through a highly structured schedule, herding them from one activity to another and signaling approval with a quick “good job!” The author claims that providing a conversational class room is "relatively cheap to provide." But this isn't something a teacher can just change their teaching strategy and accomplish. This kind of interaction requires focusing attention on a student at the expense of the other students--so it takes more teachers. It is laughably naive to claim a teacher can have personalized dialogue with 20 kindergartners at once. > Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s kindergarten guidelines... One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. And yet, the Common Core only requires children know a number of sight-words, basic phonetics, and the concepts of reading (words are separated by spaces, we read left-to-right, etc.) [3]. The standards, which everyone loves to criticize but no one seems to know what they actually say, are quite easy to meet. One of my preschoolers has easily mastered the Kindergartner recommendations with nothing but teaching him that the alphabet, words, reading, and books are fun--but it takes personalized time to encourage that attitude. [1] http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STARS/Kits/3to4centerteachertochildratiochart.pdf http://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/hcsd/documents/ChildCare/STAR... [2] http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411 http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbquestRT?rep=Kq1411 [3] http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/ http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/

vlunkr 11y ago

This is a really disturbing trend to me. If you learn to read one year earlier then the last generation then.. what? What long term effect will that have on your life? Kids are learning so much at that young age already, even if they aren't sitting a desk learning from a certified teacher. It's cliche, but we need to let kids be kids for a while.

ebiester 11y ago
Most of us here, I would venture to guess, learned to read before Kindergarten. We can look at the group of people who learned to read as early as 2 already.
- grandalf 11y ago
  I wonder if this is true. In spite of doing well on measures of intelligence (particularly verbal) I was not an early reader. edit: I had no patience for it but would spend most of my time building things out of wood/nails and legos.
- Retric 11y ago
  I don't think I could 'read' before 3rd grade, as far as I can tell it had minimal long term negative impact. For reference I got an 800 on the English part of the PSAT. PS: I also started to speaking at 3. There seems to be a huge emphasis on progressing as fast as possible, but in the long term a year or two has little meaning.
lakeeffect 11y ago
It's common now for parents to put their kids in Kindergarten at the age they used to start first grade. My kid just made the cutoff but my wife wants to hold him back and some of his friends parents with kids born in January or march are holding their kids back a year.
- Glyptodon 11y ago
  Just keep in mind things can cut both ways. To this day I somewhat regret my parents doing this as throughout my entire K12 education I always ended up making friends that were a grade or two ahead since my classmates were much less mature. Which was ultimately frustrating. However, such experiences are certainly not the norm. In my case it had more to do with emotional and physical maturity than the academic.

grandalf 11y ago

What is Kindergarten for? What is school for? Any approach is going to have consequences. For most Americans, the purpose of both is primarily daycare and also a bit of socialization.

sergiotapia 11y ago

This is the case almost everywhere else in South America. You start with pre-kinder if you wish, but most start at kinder.

anigbrowl 11y ago

This is a very US-centric article. Lots of other countries start out education with a fair degree of desk work, rote memorization (eg of the alphabet, basic addition and subtraction), expectations of being able to read by the end of the first year and so on...and they're doing fine. My education in Ireland would probably have seemed pretty Dickensian by the author's standards (although we also had unstructured time, physical play and so on), and yet Ireland consistently does well on measures of academic achievement and in terms of cultural capital. My parents both liked reading (thanks Mm & Dad) so I was lucky enough to be able to read before I went to school at age 4, and the idea that it's bad for kids' brains to teach them to read before 5 or 6 just seems laughably delusional to me. I would have resented anyone trying to interfere with my reading at a young age and certainly plan on teaching my own kids to read should any come along. The article's suggestion that kids can't identify any similarity between the veins in a leaf and those in their hand because they're being subjected to too much book learning strikes me as bizarre. Of course one shouldn't generalize from one's own experience, but given the highly standardized nature of the educational curriculum I grew up with, if it was so bad I'd expect that to have manifested in the form of intractable social problems or declining international rankings by now.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

The biggest problem with modern formal education is that all of the incentives are screwed up. There's a race toward optimizing certain "metrics" and making progress on paper to the detriment of actual learning. Sometimes I wonder whether the educational system actually helps more than it hurts. So much of "education" is not about learning, and in fact turns students away from learning. It's amazing that the system works at all really.