Our children: Too much too soon

Four major ways parents fail their children are: 1) not supervising their use of the Internet; 2) not dressing them age-appropriately; 3) letting them have cell phones; and 4) over-scheduling their lives.

In short, giving them - and pushing them toward - too much too soon.

This from talk show host Regis Philbin, reading from a survey of moms. I couldn’t agree more.

Part of that over-scheduling is the fault of government and its push toward all-day kindergarten. This shameful deprivation of a year’s worth of childhood is merely a baby-sitting service for parents and a make-work arrangement for school employees.

Academic gains from full-day kindergarten diminish quickly and tend to be reversed during elementary-school years, according to an MSN report.

A study published in the journal Child Development, quoted in an MSN essay (Pushing Kids to Be Smarter Sooner) “used data from 13,776 children who were in the kindergarten ("K") class of 1998–1999. Though the reading and math skills of full-day K students tended to improve at a faster rate compared part-day K students, their lead evaporated once kindergarten was over. The academic abilities of the part-day K students actually increased at a faster rate between the end of kindergarten and the spring of fifth grade.”

Kindergarten is among the most misguided results of letting politicians decide how to educate children. There’s money in it for teachers and there’s convenience in it for parents, but forcing structured learning too soon is self-defeating. And that’s just politicians’ and parents’ earliest methods for turning kids off to classroom-acquired knowledge; there are plenty more over the next 12 years.