The Three Year Old

This is an excellent article out of New Mexico. It's good to remember that play is a part of early education, and without play the education falls flat. More learning will come from a life time of play than a life time of work because people actually learn more from the things they love than the things that they hate.

Our view: Schedule in childhood'
The Current-Argus

A new recommendation from the Foundation for Child Development suggested that children begin attending a full day of preschool by age 3.

The children, according to the foundation, benefit from developed social skills, self-discipline, reading and math.

Voluntary, full-school PK-3, according to the foundation, also reduces the need for special education services, enables parents to build long-term relationships with important adults in their child's life and helps students prepare for the future workforce.

So why does the whole thing feel so wrong?

The concept of full-day preschool for 3- and 4-year-old children calls to mind a more extreme example of a group of pregnant mothers attending the world's first prenatal preschool class so that their unborn children can get an academic head start. And it only seems like a matter of time before infants will be forced to face their own wave of standardized tests.

Our society should look at preparing young children for the future but we should also look at, and pardon this strange idea, actually allowing children to be children. There's nothing wrong with letting kids hold on to a rattle for a few years before handing them a Calculus book.

Playing is an important aspect of development. Forming emotional bonds with adults is absolutely vital to young child development.

In an ideal world, a parent will play the pivotal role in most of this development.

As pointed out in a recent study, however, parents in a working society don't have the time to provide young children with all the developmental skills needed for kindergarten. Many fully responsible parents are simply unable to work 50-hour-a-week jobs without receiving some assistance raising their child. If millions of 3-year-old children are going to be spending
much of the day in someone else's care anyway, why not place them in a similar school environment where trained experts can help them develop?

Our society seems increasingly interested in placing more burdens of child rearing on the school district. Thirty years ago, young children ate breakfast at home. Today, most children eat breakfast at school. That's not because some families cannot afford to provide breakfast as much as it is because studies show the importance of children having a nutritious morning meal and that many families of all economic levels simply don't have the time anymore to provide that.

In the case of education, it is the duty of our society to find a compromise that balances the academic needs of children with the need to allow children to be children. We must find a plan that balances the societal fact that parents need to work but we cannot just use this as an excuse to pass child-rearing responsibilities on to the school system.

With such a difficult issue, St. Edward principal David Gomez seems to offer a good starting point on the debate. Gomez said his school's single requirement is that potential students be potty trained. Potty training before American history seems fairly reasonable.

Beyond that, the topic may still be a matter for debate. Half-day preschool for 3-year-olds and even full-day preschool for 4-year-olds may be possibilities, but a full-day PK-3 certainly seems to be an unreasonable extreme.