Long hrs in preschool/daycare harmful
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Long hrs in preschool/daycare harmful
| Sun, 03-19-2006 - 3:09pm |
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051101/news_1n1earlyed.html
Very interesting. Particularly the difference in the middle to upper income kids vs low income.
"I personally feel children need the nurture of their parents and the home," she said. "Those early years, that's when they are bonding to their family. That nurturing, only the family can give that."
I tend to agree.
MM, WOHM to B&E, 7.24.03

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Education needs more of a national agenda and federal support. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1972 has never been fully funded as was promised when it passed. The costs fall mainly on each municipality, and secondarily on each state. If handicapped kids still can't get a fair shake, what can we expect for GT kids?
It's probably not so much that most districts can't afford it, although there are many which cannot. But when education is funded mainly at the local level, it's hostage to the warring constituencies in each locality. In my town, for instance, the sizable senior population resists passing the ballot initiatives to bring funding into line with budget projections. And that's for both regular and special ed.
Edited 4/23/2006 9:28 am ET by sabinamarianne
Ahh, we had a particularly unfortunate situation for that first year of first grade. The teacher was about to retire--I think she wasn't even supposed to be there that year except her 401K had tanked the year before and she needed to beef it up a little--so it might be safe to say she had already mentally checked out, and she was as traditional as they come, which meant she didn't have a flexible bone in her body at first. She was also given a rather needy bunch of kids, including a handful of the very lowest readers. She had never in her thirty odd years of teaching, ever seen a kid like mine. You could tell she sometimes felt awkward around him because she was intimidated by his intelligence.
I honestly don't remember any math or science going on in first grade that year. It was all reading and soft social studies units. (You know, like Who Lives In Your Neighborhood stuff.) It would have been nice not to have been so reading focused. I think it had a lot to do with our district adopting the new curriculum and the latest pressure to do well on standardized tests.
I wouldn't say that ds doesn't have any fond memories of that year. Hey, anything that got him out of a house full of little kids, stinky diapers, and Barney on TV was a good deal. I just hated watching his zest for learning get dampened.
Jennie
"She had never in her thirty odd years of teaching, ever seen a kid like mine. You could tell she sometimes felt awkward around him because she was intimidated by his intelligence."
And again, I know you're talking about a very highly gifted child, not just an early reader, but that's just unacceptable.
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I don't think everybody reads at the same level eventually, but I think interest as well as aptitude play into reading abilities, don't you? Lots of people aren't interested in reading, say, Prosser on Torts, or medical textbooks, or the kind of computer books my dh finds fascinating.
However, I completely agree with travsmom that early reading doesn't necessarily lead to better reading. I've seen that with my own kids and with their peers. And while your son taught himself to read (as did travsmom's), many kids these days who read early simply have competitive parents who pushed them into academics early. I've seen kids turned off on reading because of this, and I've seen kids who read early because their parents taught them but who who weren't doing any better than the other good readers by 3rd grade.
The hardest thing I have found it to find books that are challenging in volume and text but are age appropriate in content.
PumpkinAngel
Oh, you've misunderstood. This school is an "excellent" school. The kids score the highest on the standardized tests in our district. Our district is in the top five of our state. We are in one of the most the prestigous high school districts in our area--which means we have those nice property values. Awards coming out of our ears here. A top notch district from all accounts.
But I couldn't get my kid's needs met. It was a sucky situation, not necessarily a sucky school.
As far as other parents go, I didn't talk much to anyone else, at least not parents of other first graders. (I was talking with other people from around my state who had similar concerns.) To be honest, no one else seemed to have quite the same problems I had.
Jennie
No, but what would you have the principal do? Put him in a class where the teacher was of obvious higher intelligence? How exactly do you suppose that would go over?
We had all sorts of meetings, with the teacher, the reading specialist, the gifted program teacher. We had all sorts of accomodations in place. But for some reason he still ended up sitting through Hat, Cat, Sat. I will be perfectly honest and say that had I not three other little children, it probably wouldn't have happened that way.
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