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Student Fails To Recognize Strengths
December 22, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
What to do
when children can’t see their own
abilities.Read
more...
Red-Shirting At Kindergarten Level
April 21, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: Pre-School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My daughter is contemplating keeping her 3 yr. old from starting kindergarten at age 5. She’s in a lottery-based, pre-K program for 4 yr. olds. If he doesn’t win entry into the pre-K program, he will then have 2 yrs. before kindergarten (starting at age 6, instead). This pre-K is extremely academic. Children are learning such things as the States, etc., and, it’s expensive. Do you have any advice on red-shirting boys for kindergarten? |
The Assessment: From beginnings in college sports, coaches red-shirted an athlete to keep the player from playing for a year, most notably to give the athlete time to gain physical and cognitive as well as emotional maturity.
The term has been pushed down to pre-schoolers whose parents must decide whether to put their children in kindergarten at the age of five or wait to give them a developmental advantage.
The reason a five-year-old would need a developmental advantage in kindergarten is because it’s no longer designed for five-year-olds.
It’s structured to please researchers and educators who think the solution to our educational system’s failure is to get to kids sooner. They have colluded in convincing parents that pre-school and kindergarten are the places to set firm foundations to prepare your child for college. What nonsense!
This concept has become so accepted as fact that even bright people with common sense are drones in the belief that if your child is not reading by kindergarten either you are a failure or something is wrong with your child.
You can see this in the volume of over-prescribed addictive medication and the proliferation of special education classes to correct what natural development and appropriate expectations would have done on their own. Had I not lived the reality of this myself many times over, I might have become a Stepford Wife to the “more, and sooner, is better” curriculum.
Can children sustain the pressure of a pushed-down curriculum? Yes, in the same way girls who have started their menstrual cycles at age 11 can tolerate a pregnancy at that age.
What To Do: Children have different ages: Chronological, physiological, psychological, emotional, education-learning ready, cognitive, social (with known children), socialization (with new adults and new children), experiential, language skills, spiritual, empathetic, sensorimotor, listening for directions, new challenges and more.
After visiting the classroom in which you plan to place your child, ask yourself whether you feel he/she is “age appropriate” in the majority of the categories above. If yes, just understand that your child is in development and will continue to develop. Once in school, indicate to the teacher any areas of concern but take care to do so in a positive way and not a negative one. The good thing about pre-school is that should you believe you have made a mistake, you can pull your child out at any time without it being in their record.
If you do not believe your child is ready in most of the categories, then your answer is clearly red-shirt.
By the way, placing a child in a school of any level without visiting it is like buying a gold mine off the promise there’s gold in those hills. You’d better inspect it first to make sure it’s not fool’s gold.
And, if you pull a child out, ask yourself if maybe you had excessive expectations before you look to a problem with the child. Should your child do well, that’s great for you and the child. If not, don’t get discouraged. Some of the world’s great leaders and thinkers were late bloomers, even failures before great success (President Abraham Lincoln).
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