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  • Motherhood After Tenure: PRE-SCHOOL ANGST

    By Aeron Haynie July 30, 2008 8:58 pm

    This fall our school district will implement a four-year-old kindergarten program. I was pleased to hear this because my daughter just turned four and for once I seemed to be at the right place at the right time. Things got even better when her daycare was selected as one of the sites for this free program. As far as I was concerned, this meant that she would be staying where she is very happy but the county would pay for the mornings, four days a week. What perfect timing, I thought, since I’ll be on a full-year sabbatical at reduced pay this coming year.

    What surprised me was that none of the other mothers I knew were taking advantage of this boon or had enrolled their children in one of the sites. I was stunned. I mean, it’s free child care! I do not mean to disrespect any mother’s choice: each mother had her own very valid reason. One stay at home mother didn’t want her child to be away that many hours a week, another really liked a private pre-school, and another thought the program would be too disorganized. As the other mothers detailed their reasons not to participate, I felt guilty that I hadn’t given this more thought.

    As an educator, perhaps I should be more concerned about my daughter’s first forays into official learning. Although I conduct research on the scholarship of teaching and learning, I wasn’t sure I even knew the difference between pre-school and “four year old kindergarten.” Was I being short-sighted in thinking merely of the money saved?

    So I did some research and found out that there is little difference between preschool and four year old kindergarten (at least in our district); my daughter would be getting the same preparation for kindergarten either way. But maybe there were differences of quality between programs. Would a private pre-school better teach her how to tie her shoes, rhyme, or model clay?

    As a “Mama, PhD,” I want to give my daughter a great education and the happiest school experience possible. And hey, if there were an expensive, privately-run school that didn’t give tests, had lots of cool hands-on projects, took kids skiing or kayaking once a week, and served organic vegetables for lunch, I’d probably re-finance my house to pay for it. (There is one school like this but, alas, it’s in Missoula, Montana.) One the other hand, I spent the first five years of my own schooling in an unstructured, experimental school where I played all day long and I who didn’t learn how to read until I was in third grade.

    It’s funny how soon it starts, this competitive worry that your child might be left behind, might not be learning as much as she could, as much as other children are. As if learning is a race, a zero-sum game. I do think it’s hard to separate the urge to give your children “the best” from the desire for them to be “the best,” to have advantages that other children don’t. And what does that teach them?

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Comments on Motherhood After Tenure: PRE-SCHOOL ANGST

  • Posted by Ann M. Little , Associate Professor, History at Colorado State University on July 31, 2008 at 5:05am EDT

  • What the heck? Give it a whirl. It's only pre-school, and it sounds like it's worth a try. (You can always pull her out if it's not working and try something else, right?) If you were happy with the program there as a child care center, then you and your daughter are likely to be just as pleased with the program for 4-year olds.

    It seems like schools are trying to restrict kindergarten to children who are fully 5 and even going on 6, rather than just turning 5, and there are no ways of contesting the birthday cut-off dates in school districts any more. My sense is that this is due to the testing regime that children are subjected to now under NCLB. Kindergarten now is what first grade used to be, and schools want kids who are a little older and perhaps more developed so that they appear to test better. While I sympathize with schools and teachers and their desire to work with children who are more test-ready, I'm very concerned that this puts an undue burden on families who in cases of late summer or fall birthdays for their children, must either sacrifice another year of paid employment or pay for an additional year of private day care. Even for middle-class families this is a serious burden, to say nothing of what it means for poor families. You are indeed fortunate that your school district is helping families get their children ready for school in the 21st century in this very meaningful way.

  • It's only preschool . . .
  • Posted by Jean on July 31, 2008 at 9:10am EDT

  • It's only preschool? I thought that the whole impetus behind Head Start and 4 year old kindergarten was that it wasn't "only" preschool, that research showed that children enrolled in "good" preschools performed better, or something. I don't know.

    I similarly went to a school (pre-K through 7th grade) that was relatively unstructured and, indeed, I played a lot and it took me FOREVER to learn how to read - this was a private school that was pretty expensive and my working class parents made enormous sacrifices to send me and my sister there. When I started high school I was behind most of my peers in almost all subjects, BUT I learned some REALLY valuable skills at that school that enabled me to quickly catch up and really excel. I graduated at the top of my class. I was the first person in my family to get a college degree AND I went on to get my PhD. My early experiences in school, at this very unstructured, but exceptional environment, have affected the way that I do almost everything. Although I didn't learn some of the basics I did learn how to structure my own life, set goals, accomplish goals, reflect on and understand my own wants and needs and figure out how to live the life that would make me happiest. I am eternally grateful to my parents for this experience and thus, in picking preschool programs and schools for my own two children, I have spent a lot of time trying to find the “right” place for them.

  • Posted by Libby on July 31, 2008 at 9:25am EDT

  • My kids both did a free public pre-K, but in both cases it meant pulling them out of their earlier pre-school programs. In my daughter's case that was fine--we weren't thrilled w/the pre-school anyway--while in my son's case it caused a little angst, as he went from a play-centered full-day program to a much more structured, school-like program which only ran from 9 to 3. Still, we really didn't have the $$ to keep him in that center when the free option was there, and in the end he did transition to kindergarten very easily. I say go for it.

  • Posted by Aeron on July 31, 2008 at 9:40am EDT

  • Anne--I agree with you about the cut off dates for school. It's interesting that more parents are waiting, or "holding back" their children to give them an edge, whereas a while back, it seemed ambitious parents wanted their children to skip ahead.

    We have decided to keep our daughter in her current daycare/pre-school. She's happy there and that seems most important.

    Jean--I too feel that my alternative school changed my life (and made me very suspicious of all teaching-to-the-tests programs!) But these radical schools are few and far between. For most parents, the choices are between various traditional pre-schools. Please email me: I'd love to hear more about your experimental school experience! hayniea@uwgb.edu

  • Don't worry too much
  • Posted by AE on July 31, 2008 at 10:05am EDT

  • I wouldn't worry too much. Either way you go at it, your daughter has an educated, caring parent at home who is interested in her development. I am admittedly not a scholar of early childhood development, but that has to make a big difference.

    I myself was just on the right side of the cut-off line and went to Kindergarten at age 4. I didn't have pre-school, although I did have parents who worked with me at home on reading, singing, shoe-tying, art, etc. Worked out just fine. And Einstein didn't have pre-K or pre-school or 4 year old kindergarten either.

    Your influence as a parent is worth more than any program can teach her, so any decision you make will be a good one.

  • Posted by Audrey on July 31, 2008 at 12:40pm EDT

  • Our daughter (now 5) had been at daycare/preschool since she was 8-9 weeks old. We had an opportunity last year to enroll her in a private school in the progressive tradition, that is JK - 8. She was the youngest in JK (turned 5 in May) but loved it and really thrived. We are going the private route due to a 50% scholarship for university faculty -- I figured it was worth trying at JK and we'd go to public school if we didn't like it. That said, we loved it. I personally think you are doing the right thing by signing up for the new K class -- a more 'structured' learning experience can only go so far at that age but I preferred the exposure to various subjects and a 'real school' experience vs another year of preschool with less qualified (yet very loving!) folks.

    Jean, I'm curious, what type of school did you attend that was 'unstructured'--sounds like it served you well and that it was also of the progressive model?

  • Posted by Jenn , Mom! at Home! on April 18, 2009 at 6:15am EDT

  • I totally hear you on the angst part. I have faced the same and I figured sometimes you can use online tools to help with this. And by this I mean that you can basically get your kid in front of some good preschool websites, where they are taught based on their current abilities. Of late I have been going to this one called Raylit (www.raylit.com). The good thing about them is that adjust the learning in accordance to the kid's capabilities and age. They have a few more cool features such as having their characters call your kid by name and generally combining entertainment with learning in a neat way.

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