Trees for the Forest

Back in August and September I wrote about my reservations about E. starting school (here and here). My husband had suggested over the summer that maybe we keep her home a year and have her start Kindergarten late. I don't know what I didn't like about the idea more - starting her late so she was a year older than all her classmates or not being able to throw ourselves into the excitement of her first year of "real" school.

Now I'm wishing I listened.

It's not that E. isn't ready intellectually for school - she is. She's extremely bright and willingly does her school work. She's socially ready for school. She loves her school friends and from what I've seen and been told, they love her. She doesn't have behavior issues, either. She's been "clipped down" (a discipline system involving clothes pins, animals, alliterations, and a little bit of public shame...I have very mixed feelings about this whole deal) only twice the whole school year, and it was for excessive talking (certainly not a quality she gets from her mama).

No, there is something deeper here, something that really bothers me, because when a kid like E. comes home every day exhausted and starts each day begging to stay home, even after half the school year has gone by, there is a larger problem. And all I can look to for an answer to the problem lies within what I hear coming out of my girl's mouth.

"Mama, school is too long!"
"Mama, I'm so tired!"
"Mama, I didn't get to play today at all. There's no playing at school."

Imagine, for a moment, being five or six again, and imagine spending a whole day in a place, away from your secure little home with your mama and daddy, where you are expected to work for much of the day. Didn't we dissemble child labor some hundred years ago? Isn't the minute work of cutting and pasting and putting together something that went away with little hands at the conveyor belt?

Yes, yes, I know I'm exaggerating a bit, but again I say put yourself in the little light up sneakers of that five or six year old that is within you and imagine what effort it must take to be at work for four or five hours out of your school day. And to think that this is only the beginning of the school journey - it's not as though things get any easier after Kindergarten. Don't you think all this would leave a not so sweet taste in your little mouth when it comes to school? Do you think you'd want to come back every day if hours of academics you weren't ready for was all you did?

And that's just it - our little ones aren't ready for many of the academics that are presented to them in Kindergarten today (never mind that these are full days that are stuffed full, rather than the formally traditional half day). Concepts within language arts and mathematics that five and six year olds aren't ready for yet are being pushed, and are pushing out exploritive learning, arts, and movement. What kids need the most at these earliest stages of "formal" learning - hands on and physically and intellectually engaging activities - have all but disappeared.

I'm starting to feel desperate and sad. I don't know what to do for E. What changes can be made at the level of her classroom are limited, and what am I against the whole school, against a district, a state, a national policy? The only truly beneficial things I can think of is to take her away.

Now, I don't know what we will being doing. I don't know if we will home school. I don't know if we'll look at the very limited options for private schools in our area. I don't know if we'll just stay where we are and do our best to soften the blow that school will deliver and try our damnedest to protect E.'s intellectual curiosity. I just don't know.

Do you?

(If you're curious to hear more about the changes happening in education these days, this article featuring a talk given by Diane Ravitch on Common Core is fascinating.)