Can you remember how hard it used to be to get into kindergarten? Of course not. That’s because it wasn’t. You just went. And somehow you survived, maybe eventually getting into college, serving in the Marines, or starting a family.
Well, that was then. Now, the New York City Department of Education has set the bar to dangerous new heights. According to The New York Post, parents all over the Big Apple have been paying for tutoring services for their — sit down before you read any further — three-year-olds.
I don’t know about you, but this strikes me as child abuse masquerading as early education. If three-year-olds were meant to sit at computer screens to memorize sample test questions and their correct answers, they’d be born with mini-iPads attached to their tiny fingers. Why wait till they’re three? Why not start while they’re nursing, the better to teach them to multitask?
Here’s a vocabulary-boosting word these parents, tutoring services and the NYC Department of Education could study: “childhood.”
According to the Post, “Taylor Dior started cramming at age 3 for what some New Yorkers think is the most important test of her life — getting into kindergarten.”
Her mom, Chavon Peele, paid up to $79 a month to a private service for access to 1,000 sample questions that she says gave Taylor the skills needed to ace the city’s Gifted and Talented test.
They worked together 45 minutes most nights so that tiny Taylor, soon after turning 4, could discern patterns, do analogies, understand concepts such as “greater than,” and recognize a rhombus, among other tough tasks.
The city’s gifted kindergarten programs are so coveted — of 14,000 preschoolers who took the test this year, 2,700 snagged seats — parents bent on sending their kids to Harvard (in 14 years) are turning to commercial test-prep books and services like TestingMom.com, which Taylor’s mother used.
Harvard?
Future lawyers and community organizers all.
Attention all you teach-your-infant-to-read parents out there: If your child is still in the pick-it-up-and-throw-it stage, trying to teach him to read is a waste of time. (I was an on cross-country flight with a pair of earnestly dedicated parents patiently attempting to teach their toddler, in the merry midst of the above stage, to read. Curious George took a beating and the toddler couldn’t grasp the concept that pages weren’t for tearing and eating yet.)
Of course, I wasn’t there on the plane, and I didn’t witness the incident you describe; but, if the child wasn’t positively resisting the story (by which I mean, making too much noise to hear it, struggling to get away, etc.), then I think the parents were quite right to keep reading!
It’s not that easy to tell what a tiny child’s response means: I mean, you don’t expect them to sit still and listen the way a much older child would. If you judge the littlest ones by inappropriate standards, you may miss the right cues.
I’ll never forget how I almost gave up on “teaching” my younger child to recognize the sounds (not the names!) of the alphabet letters: I was determined to do with him what I’d done with his sister, who learned to read at an amazingly early age, and was amusing him for part of the time during the bath with plastic letters that would stick to the sides of the tub.
When I got around to asking him, “What sound does this one make?”, I discovered that every letter made the exactly the same (“MMMM”) sound! I started to laugh at myself, but gently, for ever thinking the same tactic would work with every child. … But then, suddenly I got the idea of asking him to “show Mama the one that sounds like ‘TUH’” or SSS or MMM–and he unerringly pointed out the correct one, every time. He would also go on to read early (before starting preschool).
Thank goodness, I didn’t insist that he had to prove he was “learning” something by looking only for one type of response.
So, it’s at least possible that the little child you saw on the plane was taking in something of Curious George, in addition to ingesting part of the paper …
“I’m a superstar, and I know everything!” said Taylor, who ranked in the 98th and 99th percentile on the two-part city test – sounds like another preening, narcissistic elitist in the making. Go give that kid some Play-doh NOW – Geez!
Yep. How often have I read blog comments that boil down to “I’ve got a degree and superior critical thinking skills and I’m well-informed and culturally sophisticated and intellectually curious and open-minded. Not like those stupid Republicans! Only people like ME should be allowed to vote!”
Little Taylor Dior: a liberal troll in the making…
How silly, contemptible and reprehensible on the part of the mom, to allow the child to have such an attitude!
Since little Taylor can successfully function at this level, though, I’m glad she scored well on the test, and hope it means she will be given challenges that are appropriate for her. (She shouldn’t be made to progress in lockstep with children her age–no child should.)
I’m assuming that most children of that age, if similarly coached, would be left frustrated and/or completely uninterested. I’d like to think the mother had some idea that little Taylor would take to it, before she undertook the coaching.
(However, if most children _could_ succeed at this, boy, we’d better re-think our attitudes towards what young children should be doing!)
I have to say, though, that my toddler daughter chewed on some pages–leading us thereafter to keep the regular books out of reach (till she pointed in their direction and pleaded, “Boo’!”; then we’d take them down and read); but we provided her with as many board books as we could. We read to her a lot, and she learned to read very young. At a certain point, chewing on the book was her way of displaying affection! (and/or a strategy for checking it out)
We didn’t have preschools you need to take a test to get into; our kids have turned out fine, though, in any case. But I don’t want to criticize a parent for exposing her child to concepts like “greater than” at an early age.
I do, however, think bragging about how well you did is infra dig. That’s a lesson little Taylor would do well to learn, too.