Heckler for today

[highlyeccentric]

I was telling Niamh that kids are starting school later and later these days... Heckler looks at the way the trend is heading:

I'M A bad mother. I'm made aware of this whenever I say that I may send my son to school a few months before he turns five. These days it seems that most parents think we should hold children back.

Apparently if they are a little older than their classmates they will feel more confident and be more emotionally and socially mature than their peers, giving them lifelong advantages. To send them to school early is certain to cause irreversible psychological damage, and any later attempt to rectify problems will only add to the child's already existing sense of failure.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that about half the children in each school year are younger than average. By sending them later we're just changing which group of children are the younger ones. So I find it interesting that I have never heard any attention given to any positives about being one of the younger children. For the majority of my primary school years I was the youngest in my class and I remember it being a great confidence booster whenever I outperformed my older peers.

While children are starting later, they are learning more and more things at preschool that once would have been learnt at school. When I was young, children went to preschool for a day a week in the year before they started school. The preschool program, from my recollection, consisted of free play, painting, a story or two and a dreaded compulsory nap. Any reading skills obtained before starting school were subconsciously absorbed from watching Sesame Street.

Now children often go to preschool for two years before starting school, for at least two days a week. Parents choose preschools based on educational curriculum, which may include science, music and movement, drama, language and literature and an optional nap. My niece learnt Mandarin at preschool. My second son is only 15 months old and is already onto his second portfolio at day care. I had never heard of one until I completed the HSC.

In 20 years we won't be introducing our children to formal schooling until they are 10 - but they'll be able to write computer programs, read Shakespeare and compose symphonies superior to Beethoven's before they get there.

I still don't know whether I will send my son to school at four or five. Before I decide, I would like to see a thorough analysis of all reliable research on the subject. Maybe I should ask my son to check it for me. Surely he would have learnt how to do that at preschool by now.
-Sally Latimore, SMH 17/4/07