Quick question for my European readers...

[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.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Do you have any idea about what early education was like in the DDR? Because from other things that I've heard, I suspect that the people who are saying that it sounds Soviet are probably right. I don't know how widespread Soviet educational philosophies were in other parts of Eastern Europe, though.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It sounds a lot like the Russian/Soviet sorts of schooling (even today). But the poster has compressed the early years of grade-school, and moved them to pre-school.

I say this from close association with a lot of Russian teachers, and some White Russian emigrés.

Preschool... no way in hell.

TK

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I do know quite a bit about that, though I feel kind of funny talking about it in public (for various reasons I won't go into here). Next time we have a private conversation, assuming that happens sometime in the next millennium, remind me, and I'll tell you about how it worked.

-J