There were a couple of posts recently on the parenting list-serv that I co-moderate about how to deal with kids who seem to be academically ready for kindergarten but who miss the arbitrary birthday cutoff set by local school districts. This is of interest to me, since Jonah misses that cutoff by about six weeks, and he is clearly "academically" ready for kindergarten--whatever that means.
The first poster asked about the pros and cons of starting a kid "early." I put my two cents in, since she asked. My philosophy has been that first of all, it doesn't matter at this point in their lives. I refuse to believe that whether my kid goes to kindergarten now or next year (and whether it's a public or a private school) has that big an impact on his future success. There's SO much that goes into that; kindergarten or pre-K can't be the determining factor. And secondly, there's more to kindergarten than "academics." My nonexpert opinion is that academics are probably a pretty minor part of kindergarten. Social adjustment, learning routines, figuring out how to be one of 22 (or more, in some places) kids in a group – all of these things, as well as others, are just as important, or maybe more important, than learning ABCs and 123s.
The first poster didn't realize that the districts around here are all pretty strict about the cutoffs, and once she learned of that, she was pretty content to let it go. The second poster, however, was actively looking for ways to get around it – primarily via private schools. In particular, she was looking for private schools that did not also conform to the same age cutoffs as most of the public schools. It really riled me up. I started to write one response to her (not an answer to her question, but a reason why she shouldn't try to get her kid into kindergarten early). I then started composing another response to her in my head, this one a kind of snarky dig at private schools and how they'd probably overlook their own "guidelines" about cutoffs if someone was willing to put down $20K to send their four-year-old to kindergarten.
I managed to hold myself back when it suddenly hit me that this was ALL ABOUT ME and my issues. I try to reassure myself that we're making good decisions about this, but Jonah is currently reading Harry Potter #3 and adding up our Yahtzee scores in his head. In school (he's in K1, the Boston Public Schools equivalent of pre-K), they're not even close to reading and for math, they are counting. When I talk about him, I worry that people will think I'm bragging. I'm not. I'm simply amazed.
Certainly there are things Jonah could stand to work on. He's not so into art. (That may be my fault. I'm not so into (making) art.) As a consequence, his writing skills are not so great (even for an almost five-year-old) and he's not so keen on working on them.
But. What if he should be in a private school? What if we should push him more? What if it DOES make a difference what we do for pre-K? It feels so much more important because he's not an average kid. I think having a child on either end of the bell curve must make it so much harder to know if what you're doing is right. Or enough.
Or does everyone feel this way?
1 comments:
My totally non-expert opinion is you are doing the right thing. It is easy to get sucked into competitive schooling (or competitive activity scheduling or potty training or whatever we'd like to use to measure our kids against others) but competition is just not the point of kindergarten. I am sure Jonah is learning in his K1 class, even if he is not yet learning long division. If he is doing well, you are doing your job perfectly.
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