Let kindergarten be kindergarten
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
When I was in kindergarten in 1957, we spent the mornings doing art projects or playing in the dress-up corner or running around outside or watching our lima beans sprout. (This would be our first and only science projects in all of elementary school.) Perhaps we'd trace letters and numbers or circle the picture that didn't belong, but we weren't taught to read, write add or subtract. We were too young. And we went home for lunch and stayed there.
In 2016, the study, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” noticed that teaching reading and writing to five-year-olds had become the norm. Some worried the higher expectations could backfire, writes Elizabeth Heubeck in Education Week. But kindergarten has become even more academic, "even as a fair number of kindergartners today struggle with basics like emotional regulation and fine and gross motor skills."
Who struggles most? Boys.
The kindergarten readiness gap -- five-year-old girls are more prepared than five-year-old boys for classroom learning, socializing, paying attention and sitting still -- may be responsible for the K-12 achievement gap, writes Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times.
"Kindergarten — which used to involve play time and multiple recesses, and was often a half day, with a nap — began to look much different" in the early 2000s, she writes. "Researchers at the University of Virginia compared kindergarten in 2010 and 1998. They found that in just over a decade, teachers had allocated much more time to academic subjects and desk work, and less time to art, music and activities like blocks or dramatic play." In 1998, 31 percent of teachers said students should learn to read in kindergarten. That rose to 80 percent 12 years later.
Richard Whitmire wrote about the problem in 2011, Why Boys Fail, and Richard V. Reeves discussed the consequences in 2022 in Of Boys and Men.
To prepare students for kindergarten -- and to provide more jobs for teachers -- some states are adding pre-K classes in public schools. I can't help thinking it would be better to let kindergarten be kindergarten -- lots of movement and play, no worksheets -- rather than to extend traditional classroom-based schooling to even younger children.
My twins are doing well in college - 4.0 and a 3.8 after two years...great universities. My oldest daughter did well in college, too School was/is easy for my daughters. My son, John - a twin, would've benefited from another year in preschool. He wasn't ready for kindergarten. He didn't catch up with his sisters until second grade. My wife, who stayed home for the first five years with the twins, said she was done! Off to school with both of you.
After thirty-one years in the classroom, I noticed that most boys who had difficulties in elementary school were usually the youngest in the room. Generally acceptable behavior and attention were lacking. Medication was the norm.
Joanne, didn't you…
The Reeves's solution would be to have boys start later in kindergarten versus girls. However, urban school districts have banned the practice.
This is going to sound very "Get off my lawn", but: I went to half-day kindergarten in the 1970s. It was basic play and learning the routines of school. There may have been some academic instruction, but it was minimal. I am now in my 50s. I am fine.
Let them play with blocks and play kitchens and duck-duck-goose and tag (all of which convey important lessons for academics and beyond, of course).