Quick question for my European readers...
Mar. 10th, 2007 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivka...is this person smoking crack, or what?
While I agree with the general consensus that it's a bad idea to push your kids too much, I have to say that when when I was in preschool (in Europe) we all had to learn how to read, write, learn multiplication tables, long division, addition, subtraction, inequalities, a foreign language, AND we played a lot.
It was pretty much the norm to know how to read and to have basic arithmetic skills *long* before you entered elementary school, and we never felt like we weren't having fun.
So if I had a choice, yes, I'd definitely want to send my kids to that kind of a preschool. It's not about being ahead of everyone else (because, like I said, in my case, I was just average when I could read when I was three). It's about the fact that no one can learn like a child can, and you only have a certain number of years before your brain starts turning into mush. Why waste those years with nothing but play?
Is it really "just average" for Europeans to be reading at three, and doing long division before the age of five? I've always been under the impression that Europeans are more likely to have a "let children be children" philosophy than Americans, but I'll admit that I don't have much to base that impression on, besides the big progressive educational philosophies (Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emiliana) all being European in origin.
(Obviously, I'm not going to run out and buy a lot of flash cards if she turns out to be correct. I'm just curious.)
NB: I don't think we're talking about a radical cultural disconnect about which ages constitute "preschool," because this is someone who now lives in the United States. She never specified where in Europe she is from; she included all Europeans in this comment and her further elaborations upon it.
While I agree with the general consensus that it's a bad idea to push your kids too much, I have to say that when when I was in preschool (in Europe) we all had to learn how to read, write, learn multiplication tables, long division, addition, subtraction, inequalities, a foreign language, AND we played a lot.
It was pretty much the norm to know how to read and to have basic arithmetic skills *long* before you entered elementary school, and we never felt like we weren't having fun.
So if I had a choice, yes, I'd definitely want to send my kids to that kind of a preschool. It's not about being ahead of everyone else (because, like I said, in my case, I was just average when I could read when I was three). It's about the fact that no one can learn like a child can, and you only have a certain number of years before your brain starts turning into mush. Why waste those years with nothing but play?
Is it really "just average" for Europeans to be reading at three, and doing long division before the age of five? I've always been under the impression that Europeans are more likely to have a "let children be children" philosophy than Americans, but I'll admit that I don't have much to base that impression on, besides the big progressive educational philosophies (Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emiliana) all being European in origin.
(Obviously, I'm not going to run out and buy a lot of flash cards if she turns out to be correct. I'm just curious.)
NB: I don't think we're talking about a radical cultural disconnect about which ages constitute "preschool," because this is someone who now lives in the United States. She never specified where in Europe she is from; she included all Europeans in this comment and her further elaborations upon it.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-11 01:13 pm (UTC)I'm in Sweden, I'm an american. I'm taking teacher education classes with a bunch of other exchange students at my swedish university.
From what I have learned of other school systems (and we just finished presenting our home system to our classmates) this person is totally smoking crack.
In Holland they have a similar sort of pre-school that we do, though a year younger - and pretty much they play and work on social interaction and sitting quietly and 'school prep' sort of stuff.
In Sweden, it's about the same, but at 6... very similar to my experience in the US (MI/OH early 80s).
Germany - similar
Japan - don't think it was covered, they mostly focused on the high school and testing aspects of their ed sys.
Poland - were anyone to come close to this, I'd bet with the polish school system, at least judging by the complexity and holy-shit level of achievement expected of their students. However, I know they don't start 'long division' that young, though they may start English and certainly do similar sorts of learning that we have in the US.
That's it for my classmates, and I can't speak for much else.