Posted on 09/17/2009 8:14:47 AM PDT by kingattax
The state Assembly has passed a bill that would require Wisconsin children complete kindergarten before entering first grade.
Bill sponsor Rep. Jeff Smith, an Eau Claire Democrat, says the requirement is designed to ensure kindergarten students attend class. Because kindergarten isn't mandatory now, he says students aren't bound by truancy rules.
Not many children would be affected by the requirement. Each year, an average of just 117 first graders haven't been to kindergarten. That's about one-third of 1 percent of the total number of first graders as of last school year.
The Assembly passed the measure 53-44. It goes next to the state Senate.
Well, that way they can learn how to properly nap. It will come in handy should they choose to work for the CT DOT.
But if those average-117 children were forced to attend kindergarten, then that means dozens of unionized-tenured employees to serve them!
I’ve never understood the need for kindergarten, we never had it when I was growing up. People took care of their own kids and didn’t need state baby sitters.
The article says nothing about homeschooling. Will this requirement for kindergarten allow for homeschool kindergarten?
Next up - mandated Day Care.
From what I can tell, kindergaten has changed a lot from when I was a kid. We pretty much learned our letters, numbers, colors, shapes and how to eat milk and cookies and nap, in my half day kindergarten class.
The children in my kids’ classes were being taught basic math and how to read, by the time they finished kindergarten. They didn’t even have a nap time in the full day program.
I oppose mandatory Pre-K (which I think can be a big waste of time), but kindergarten seems to be the new 1st grade.
“The article says nothing about homeschooling. Will this requirement for kindergarten allow for homeschool kindergarten?”
We are in our 27th year of home schooling, have home schooled all seven of our children, and we taught them all to read before age 5.
To waste time on such legislation for 117 children state-wide is quite ridiculous. I believe there must have been a much different motivation for this; and ulterior motive, if you will.
It lowers the compulsory education age. This is all part of socialist get-the-kids-away-from-family-as-early-as-possible-and-under-state-indoctrination kind of thinking.
I think that's the key, given the small number of children specified. A lower initial age (or higher terminal age) for compulsory schooling means that homeschoolers have to jump through whatever the state's hoops are for another year, and private-school attendees have to pay the fees for another year.
I have no choice but to agree with everything you both said.
My mother seemed to think I needed to start school at age 3, so I attended a private nursery school (half day as I recall, and might not have been 5 days a week) and later attended a private school kindergarten (probably also just half day, but was definitely 5 days a week). I had certainly been taught at home how to read very well before I started kindergarten at age 4. There’s not necessarily a connection between believing children should start formal schooling early, and believing the state should be educating/babysitting children from a very early age. My mother didn’t work outside the home at that time, she just had it in her head that formal education was so incredibly important that it should be commenced without delay (I don’t agree). I don’t know how old you are, but my mother is 82 and she attended school before first grade in both Boston and a rural Iowa town. Preschool is not a new idea, though the notion that the state should make it mandatory certainly is.
I’m working from the assumption that the legislature is animated by the hope that this action will please their donors, the education unions. Perhaps the additional requirement will put a few more kids in public school kindergarten classrooms. 117 more bodies isn’t many, but it’s some, and lots of little payback actions add up.
As Mr. Leland pointed out, a great many homeschooled and private schooled children can read before they reach mandatory schooling age. So can many children who will attend public school. Particularly once you’ve got the first child reading, the others will pick it up no matter what.
I wasn’t thinking in terms of campaign donations as you point out, but I’ve got to agree with that as well.
Mr. Leland is perfectly correct about children reading prior to “formal” school attendance.
Our district has full day kindergarten (not all districts in VA have it yet) and I wondered if it was going to be of any use, but our daughter couldn’t wait to go. By the 3rd week of school she was spending as much time during the day in the 1st grade she was in kindergarten. She was by no means special others were doing it as well, it was just the principal at the time believed the children that could read and write should to be subjected not the boredom of the others being taught such skills.
The differences in children's achievements at various ages are a problem for any institutional instruction. However, one can see it getting worse with earlier schooling, as children who gained the skills more slowly are frustrated by expectations they can't yet meet, and children who acquire skills more quickly are bored and hostile. It's unfortunate that so many children, by the time they're 7 or 8 and could really take on interesting academic material, have already "had it" with school.
PING
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