Be Excellent To Each Other

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8309153.stm


Six strikes me as pretty old*.

*Your honour

Didn't do me any harm.

Bollocks, says I. Too many parents already don't teach their kids basic stuff like counting and reading at home, so delaying the time that kids get into school and HAVE TO learn these things is just stupid.

Think how well teachers could teach if they could focus on the subject matter and less on ensuring the kids can even read their textbooks?

I think it's a case of each child is different.

And with each child different areas come on at different rates

My eldest was able to make sentences from word cards before he was 3, but was unable to speak until he was closer to 4.

Other children are still needing daytime naps at 6 or 7.

Malc

Too many parents don't teach their kids anything precisely because they expect the school to do it for them.

It works in lots of other countries. Packing kids off that early can't be good for their psychological development. I was the youngest in the school when I started, and the headteacher (a psychotic old witch with a million years of experience) couldn't believe I was old enough to go. I did alright, but I think I just got lucky.

My mother was a teacher, and firmly believed that you give your child a huge advantage if they can read before they start school. And I started very young as well, I was three while practically all the other kids were 4, which combined with a December birthday meant I was invariably the youngest in almost all my classes for my entire education.

I used to get incredibly frustrated by kids who managed to stammer out one sentence a minute when we'd read aloud.

This is the case in France already.

And note that they're not suggesting that kids don't go to school until they're 6, just that the method of learning for 4-6 year olds is "learn through play" rather than structured, in-front-of-a-blackboard lessons.

So, are they suggesting something a bit like the North America kindergarten concept? That wasn't readily apparent from some these reports.

I think that put me off education for life. Sitting there bored out of my skull listening to some mong drain the joy out of some children's book. Why exactly do I come here every day, again?

So you'd have lost what by starting at 6, exactly? If the kids are with the parents for another two years, they'll have to teach them the basics, not just throw them off to school and forget about them until they're old enough to realise they've been had.

If the kid is just in daycare or at home until they're six when they abruptly enter a formal classroom, they'll have missed out two or three years when they could have gotten some crucial basic education in. Reading, writing, counting.

That's the evening....

Really? That's curious, the schools I went to used September as the cutoff point, so you'd have been quite old (but in the year below).

In an ideal world, yes. But I suspect a lot wouldn't bother.
But the kids will still go to school, just with a different approach to teaching.

I doubt it'll be any more abrupt than it is already. And at age 6, they'll be better prepared to deal with such a change.

It works fine in many european countries, where most kids are already learning another language by then on top. I really don't see a problem with it - shit parents are going to be shit parents whatever you do. Getting them to take more responsibility could be a very good thing for some kids.

Also, it'll make the gubmint's idiot decision to force everyone to stay in their shitty school until they're 18 slightly less imbecilic. At least they had a bit of a break at the start.

Hang on, what?!

I'll have to ask the full details, but yes, in OAC (final year of high school) everyone (except me and my best friend) were 18, we were both still 17.



What I'm saying is that a kid who's just dossed about until the age of six and then suddenly thrown into a formal classroom will struggle compared to a kid who's been taught to read and such at home and/or been in some sort of proper education (Kindergarten counts) for the last year or two.

Because at home you can take the time to learn to read at a pace appropriate to the child unlike in a first year/grade classroom where there's a curriculum to be followed, and the teacher is unlike to be able to give each kid individual attention.

So the ones with parents who can't be arsed to teach them anything will do even worse, and the ones whose parents are conscientious will do even better. That's not the goal we should be aiming for here, surely?

The guy was on BBC News this morning apparently. They insisted on doing the stupid "Strip it down until it's a lie" thing that the media is incapable of not doing - "Kids shouldn't go to school until they're 6?" "No, we think purely formal schooling shouldn't start til 6." "So kids shouldn't start school until 6!?" "No, that's not what I'm saying. Kids should go to school, but it should be done differently." "So kids should carry on starting school at 4?!" "Yes, but not with the current education scheme, until 6" "So kids..."

Incapable of the medium ground that the guy is actually proposing, just "carry on as normal" or "no school til 6."

Then the segment finished and they ran over the headlines, starting with "Expert thinks kids shouldn't start school until 6," with the guy actually still sitting there having been saying literally the opposite for some time.

Yeah, apparently my Sam (Dudesflame) year 10 (14 years old) will be the last set to finish at 16, anyone below him finishes at 18 now.

(I have the info through him over dinner, so might not be 100% accurate)

Also, children learn LOADS more through playing and doing, so I support this. Chloe loves to get on your knee and read a book already, she's not two yet, but it's fun, not formal.

Joans taught her to say Homer yesterday.

But you and your kids' kids aren't the major problem right now. If Dad and Grandparents were off down the pub, while Chloe was sat in front of cartoon reruns and mum was in the other room watching Corrie with a bottle of vino, how much would she be learning?

Christ - I'm 32 and learn(produce) more through fun than formalised stuff.

Craster, you're believing the headlines. The guy - allegedly - thinks kids should be at school, just not doing purely formal learning.

That the cat never wins.

L-LOL.

That was an imperious drive to the offside, sir.

Er, thanks?

It's a good thing, yes.

Indeed! Later entry to primary schooling is the norm throughout the rest of Europe. For example my girlfriend started school at seven. (Admittedly that was in East Germany, a country which doesn't exist any more. It's still the norm to start primary schooling at age 7 in modern Germany, however.) But, crucially, their educational outcomes for the most part completely trounce ours. If there's a way to educate our young kids that has been proven to work in practice in many other countries, I can't see the problem with advocating us emulating those other European countries.

I've seen some eye-popping stats on the effect birth month has on school performance -- hugely significant gains of a September (i.e. as old as possible) child compared to an August (as young as possible) one. Some parents go so far as to plan their conception time to try to avoid an August birthday.

I think I saw on Wikipedia that in Ontario you'd start Junior Kindergarten in the CALENDAR YEAR that you turned four. Which for me with my December birthday meant that yes, I'd be three when it kicked off in September, whereas if I'd been born a month later I'd have been going on five.

There was one kid in my school who'd gone straight from SK to grade two, so he also was a year younger (visions of Lisa Simpson vs Allison or whatever her name was)

Just one more area in which I am ENTIRELY MEDIOCRE, being an Apriler.

I'm an Auguster too. It eventually caught up with me when I had to repeat a year at uni
Still, I ruled after that.

Yes - we've discussed that at length on here. Interested parties can brave the search if they like

Interested parties rarely bother to RTFA when a clear link is posted, let alone use a search feature.

Two of my kids have July birthdays so are amongst the youngest in their respective classes, and once again I will say it hasn't really hampered them, they amongst the brightest in their classes too, so once again each child should be judged individually.

I'd suggest at the end of each term seeing if they are ready to move on to the next one, if not, keep them back. I would do this on a per lesson basis too, yes you might end up with some kids rushing through school at accellerated pace, whilst others take longer, but at least they would pick up the information. You wouldn't have the problem of kids being bored because the work is too easy or too hard.

And as far kids getting picked on for being held back, you make it not an issue. Everyone will have something they are not good at, everyone will take longer at somethings than others. You would of course have to expect some (15 years worth) of transitionary pains whilst people adapt to it, but when it becomes second nature it would be fine.

Malc

That would be unworkable with our class sizes. They're already far bigger than they should be.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't trump statistics, and exceptions don't mean there aren't broader general trends.

Lefty, mollycoddling mumbo-jumbo of the worst kind! Children should be force fed a diet of mathematics, science and critical thinking before they're even out of the womb!

Oh, I'm not trying to say that my kids are alright, so it's a load of junk, I'm merely saying that not all children who born later in the school year are worse off than children who are born earlier in the school year.

Maybe 99% are but I doubt it.

Children mature at different rates and lumping them all together based on their (school) birth year is silly.

Malc

No, but on average, they are.

But fuck the average. Seriously. Fuck them. Very few people are average, most people are above average or below average, and most people's education suffer at school because they are taught as if they are average.

Malc

And of course we make decisions based on averages and trending. Are there kids under 18 who are clever enough to work out who to vote for? Ones under 16 clever enough to have sex carefully and with full knowledge of the consequences? Yes. But because it's not the case for all of them, you apply rules based on what appears to be the most sensible approach - usually in a conservative fashion, because 15 year olds who can't have sex is better than 15 year olds who are all pregnant.

But it's bollocks. everyone should be treated as an individual, everything else is just prejudicial stereotyping, and that's normally considered to be bad isn't it?

Malc

You appear to have misunderstood this completely.

What month were you born?

Who's going to pay for someone to come round and individually quiz everyone's children on their awareness of electoral issues before granting them the vote?

I don't think I have, I was born in March, right in the middle of the school year.

Oh, and I'm obviously using average in it's most common form to refer to the mean, not the mode. That would make what I said silly.

Case in point Nearly all people in the world have more than the average number of arms.

Malc

No one, just have a little mini test in the voting booth, would only need to be about a dozen questions, make it multiple choice, and you have to get over X % right before you can vote, apply it to the whole population.

Malc

That all depends on how long the recession lasts, who gets voted in at the next General Election and what other work creation "projects" are given the go ahead.

I don't know; we seem to be pretty good at having both.

FTFY. With immediate laser effect.