Kindergarten Woes

  Tuesday's class left me with a great deal to ponder.  I found it interesting that periods of education are created and perpetuated to act as stepping stones to the next level of education and life itself.  I wonder where the stepping stones end?  I'm thinking only with death.  It seems that from birth to death educators, psychologists, and perhaps it is simply innate to our being,  all life gets broken down into stages.  I do not believe this is necessarily a bad thing, who does not look forward to the landmarks such as coming of age to drive, graduate high school, retirement, etc.

    I say this because in reflecting on the addition of kindergarten to the school system, I think of what it was before compared to what it is now.  Before, as we discussed in class, it was a preparation to enter the more formal school setting.  A period to "tame the savages" by giving them the experience of having structure in their day.  It had a somewhat social worker feel as the teachers visited the students' families at home, helped mothers learn the standards of the "American Way" in regard to cleanliness, raising children, being a good American in general, etc.  As stated in Tinkering Toward Utopia, "Reformers expected the kindergarten to be a cure for urban social evils as well as a model of education for young children." (p.65)  As the craze grew, and outside funding was accepted, the purpose of kindergarten shifted.  Suddenly it gets to be a great deal like the grades above it.  The kindergarten that I remember as being a day (actually I was the last of the half-dayers in Rock Hill) of kickball and butterflies has become a day of math and phonics.  Apparently, children must have started having problems with the transition because the cycle of education, going back to Tyack and Cuban's talk of education moving through cycles, created a new grade.  Pre-kindergarten and programs such as Head Start are commonplace today.  In Rock Hill, there is a school, Central Child Development Center, created for children approximately four to five years of age who are "behind" by today's standards.  Children have to be accepted to the school.  Not only is their ability to recognize colors and say their ABC's a factor, but their socioeconomic standing is part of the process, because it is for under privileged children.  Here we go taming the savages again!  I's not that I am condemning such programs, but I wonder why we started demanding so much more from our kindergardeners.  Our "child gardens"  seem to get forced to bloom so much earlier than before.  Has the privilege of childhood left us as more of these stepping stones are placed in our paths?