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This is a very important point. I live in NYC; our older child went through the DoE Pre-K program. The teachers were great and fun, but there was so much empha

This is a very important point. I live in NYC; our older child went through the DoE Pre-K program. The teachers were great and fun, but there was so much emphasis on things like "pre-literacy" and attempts to make it into a curriculum-based education (masked in a Reggio Emilia philosophy of "playing to learn" -- it was like bad improv -- "what do you kids want to learn about" -- "did I hear someone say insects? What do you know, we have an insect unit all ready to go!"). We got negative feedback from the teachers and administrators about keeping our kids home when we could -- "they won't understand what's happening to the project they started on Wednesday if they don't come in on Friday". It was because of that that it was a negative experience -- this article nails it. It should just be childcare, which is great and necessary across all income levels! We are lucky enough to be able to afford a non-DoE program for our second child, and we were much happier with that.

flatiron 5y ago
our individual experiences are greatly different. I'm right next door to you in NJ, an hour train ride. I have a daughter now in 2nd grade, a son in public pre-k (special needs with autism), and a son in private pre-k. all three kids have absolutely learned a ton from pre-k. im always surprised at the things they know and talk about that i know they obviously learned there since i never taught it to them. both the public and private are very much in lined with your "its insect unit time" blurb above from my experience. to my children it has really kept them engaged. before i put my first kid into pre-k i said to my wife "well i don't care what they learn, i just want them to go and have fun and socialize" and she was the opposite and argued we should find a place that also emphasizes "kindergarten readiness" (whatever that is). as things would have it, she won. it was hard to argue against it since my parents didn't send me to pre-k or anything and i wasn't accepted into kindergarten my first go at it.
- sixstringtheory 5y ago
  I didn’t know there were qualifications beyond age and maybe the absence of a diagnosis. What else is there for public kindergarten?
  - flatiron 5y ago
    in NJ kindergarten isn't mandated. so they can just nope you out of it. you would then either pay for private, get diagnosed with X to go into special needs kindergarten, or wait it out until 1st grade. i was put in special needs and was integrated the beginning of 4th grade. as far as the test i don't remember what they did for me. my daughter breezed through it like it was nothing and obviously it seemed very basic to me lol!
- giantrobot 5y ago
  I think your wife's position captures the most important education aspect of pre-K: socialization. If kids can learn to share, communicate needs, and get used to schedules that's a huge boost for vast numbers of kids before getting to real school. Just being away from their parents for a while is an important adaptation for school. Consider a child with either far younger siblings or no siblings dumped into Kindergarten. They may not have any helpful social skills. If they have to spend their time learning them they're not learning actual education topics. It doesn't matter if the pre-K time was spent on bullshit lessons about insects or whatever. So long as the kids get to socialize and get a safe and relatively structured environment they're going to be far better equipped for school.
- ryanobjc 5y ago
  I live in hippy dippy trippy California, and I think we have it right here: preschool is about teaching/practicing kids social play skills and emotional literacy. In the 'nuclear family' age, without a ton of kids to play with, it's important for children to socialize, and learn how to negotiate play successfully, without resorting to kicking and punching and so on. Learning to identify feelings, take actions on them, etc. It's a lifelong course, so it's not being 'solved' in pre-school. In terms of curricula, yeah there's some stuff, but sometimes that curricula is "play in the dirt" and "lets find bugs". It's also a coop pre-school, so I attend the classroom, which is very awesome.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> live in NYC; our older child went through the DoE Pre-K program. The teachers were great and fun, but there was so much emphasis on things like "pre-literacy" and attempts to make it into a curriculum-based education Public funded pre-K (and TK) is a mostly safety net program to mitigate the educational disadvantage that children whose don't have a hone environment with parents with a high level of educational attainment, etc., face.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  safety net for education or for safety? One of the main points of the article is that the supposed educational benefits are probably not even real.
  - causi 5y ago
    It's bizarre anyone ever thought they would be. It's like trying to build a house and a foundation at the same time. We eagerly cram data into toddlers and then try to make high school teachers socialize the poorly-behaved in the most ass-backward scheme imaginable.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > One of the main points of the article is that the supposed educational benefits are probably not even real. Well, that's a claim it makes and relies on to an extent, sure. Of course, the support cited for that is a piece of educational research that the author low-key admits is neutralized by subsequent ed research, but where the author would like us to disregard the subsequent ed research because “as with all ed research, it can say what you want it to.” The main thrust of the article, though, is against licensure on the basis that it drives up cost, as if licensure isn't an issue for non-curricular daycare (and as if much of the licensure requirements for pre-K weren't centered around the safety part of their job.)
otoburb 5y ago
>>The teachers were great and fun [...] Isn't this sufficiently enough for pre-K childcare? If pre-K caregivers are able to make the program both fun and educational, I can't help but feel that this is extra gravy on top for a parent. Perhaps part of the issue is that "educational" is interpreted differently by families. For example, before the age of 5 (when children enter the K-12 system) some children have difficulty holding a pencil, so having more time working with pencils, crayons and scissors (!!) to improve motor skills could fall under the "educational" category during pre-K. >>We got negative feedback from the teachers and administrators about keeping our kids home when we could -- "they won't understand what's happening to the project they started on Wednesday if they don't come in on Friday". If one of the proported benefits of a "warm, safe and stimulating" environment happens to be socialization and instilling a sense of group belonging, then this sort of feedback might make sense. Having said this, I can also emphasize when teachers may not necessarily deliver the message in the clearest manner to parents.
derbOac 5y ago
Idk. We sent our daughter to pre-K to a educationally-focused place, and for her I would have welcomed all forms of rigor as early a point as possible. If [when] we were spending time with her we'd be doing that, and sending her to a babysitting program wouldn't be quite the same. I'm sympathetic to the author's arguments about licensing, although I think some level of licensure with child care is probably inevitable. If I were being honest, even though I'm licensing-skeptical, education and child care is one area where I think I'd look for it. Maybe not from individual teachers/staff, but for the program as a whole? I guess my sense is kids will learn a lot on their own, but they're not in a vacuum. They can't really learn what they're not exposed to.

flatiron 5y ago

our individual experiences are greatly different. I'm right next door to you in NJ, an hour train ride. I have a daughter now in 2nd grade, a son in public pre-k (special needs with autism), and a son in private pre-k. all three kids have absolutely learned a ton from pre-k. im always surprised at the things they know and talk about that i know they obviously learned there since i never taught it to them. both the public and private are very much in lined with your "its insect unit time" blurb above from my experience. to my children it has really kept them engaged. before i put my first kid into pre-k i said to my wife "well i don't care what they learn, i just want them to go and have fun and socialize" and she was the opposite and argued we should find a place that also emphasizes "kindergarten readiness" (whatever that is). as things would have it, she won. it was hard to argue against it since my parents didn't send me to pre-k or anything and i wasn't accepted into kindergarten my first go at it.

sixstringtheory 5y ago
I didn’t know there were qualifications beyond age and maybe the absence of a diagnosis. What else is there for public kindergarten?
- flatiron 5y ago
  in NJ kindergarten isn't mandated. so they can just nope you out of it. you would then either pay for private, get diagnosed with X to go into special needs kindergarten, or wait it out until 1st grade. i was put in special needs and was integrated the beginning of 4th grade. as far as the test i don't remember what they did for me. my daughter breezed through it like it was nothing and obviously it seemed very basic to me lol!
giantrobot 5y ago
I think your wife's position captures the most important education aspect of pre-K: socialization. If kids can learn to share, communicate needs, and get used to schedules that's a huge boost for vast numbers of kids before getting to real school. Just being away from their parents for a while is an important adaptation for school. Consider a child with either far younger siblings or no siblings dumped into Kindergarten. They may not have any helpful social skills. If they have to spend their time learning them they're not learning actual education topics. It doesn't matter if the pre-K time was spent on bullshit lessons about insects or whatever. So long as the kids get to socialize and get a safe and relatively structured environment they're going to be far better equipped for school.
ryanobjc 5y ago
I live in hippy dippy trippy California, and I think we have it right here: preschool is about teaching/practicing kids social play skills and emotional literacy. In the 'nuclear family' age, without a ton of kids to play with, it's important for children to socialize, and learn how to negotiate play successfully, without resorting to kicking and punching and so on. Learning to identify feelings, take actions on them, etc. It's a lifelong course, so it's not being 'solved' in pre-school. In terms of curricula, yeah there's some stuff, but sometimes that curricula is "play in the dirt" and "lets find bugs". It's also a coop pre-school, so I attend the classroom, which is very awesome.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> live in NYC; our older child went through the DoE Pre-K program. The teachers were great and fun, but there was so much emphasis on things like "pre-literacy" and attempts to make it into a curriculum-based education Public funded pre-K (and TK) is a mostly safety net program to mitigate the educational disadvantage that children whose don't have a hone environment with parents with a high level of educational attainment, etc., face.

jtbayly 5y ago
safety net for education or for safety? One of the main points of the article is that the supposed educational benefits are probably not even real.
- causi 5y ago
  It's bizarre anyone ever thought they would be. It's like trying to build a house and a foundation at the same time. We eagerly cram data into toddlers and then try to make high school teachers socialize the poorly-behaved in the most ass-backward scheme imaginable.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > One of the main points of the article is that the supposed educational benefits are probably not even real. Well, that's a claim it makes and relies on to an extent, sure. Of course, the support cited for that is a piece of educational research that the author low-key admits is neutralized by subsequent ed research, but where the author would like us to disregard the subsequent ed research because “as with all ed research, it can say what you want it to.” The main thrust of the article, though, is against licensure on the basis that it drives up cost, as if licensure isn't an issue for non-curricular daycare (and as if much of the licensure requirements for pre-K weren't centered around the safety part of their job.)

otoburb 5y ago

>>The teachers were great and fun [...] Isn't this sufficiently enough for pre-K childcare? If pre-K caregivers are able to make the program both fun and educational, I can't help but feel that this is extra gravy on top for a parent. Perhaps part of the issue is that "educational" is interpreted differently by families. For example, before the age of 5 (when children enter the K-12 system) some children have difficulty holding a pencil, so having more time working with pencils, crayons and scissors (!!) to improve motor skills could fall under the "educational" category during pre-K. >>We got negative feedback from the teachers and administrators about keeping our kids home when we could -- "they won't understand what's happening to the project they started on Wednesday if they don't come in on Friday". If one of the proported benefits of a "warm, safe and stimulating" environment happens to be socialization and instilling a sense of group belonging, then this sort of feedback might make sense. Having said this, I can also emphasize when teachers may not necessarily deliver the message in the clearest manner to parents.

derbOac 5y ago

Idk. We sent our daughter to pre-K to a educationally-focused place, and for her I would have welcomed all forms of rigor as early a point as possible. If [when] we were spending time with her we'd be doing that, and sending her to a babysitting program wouldn't be quite the same. I'm sympathetic to the author's arguments about licensing, although I think some level of licensure with child care is probably inevitable. If I were being honest, even though I'm licensing-skeptical, education and child care is one area where I think I'd look for it. Maybe not from individual teachers/staff, but for the program as a whole? I guess my sense is kids will learn a lot on their own, but they're not in a vacuum. They can't really learn what they're not exposed to.