August 26 2014
My first born great granddaughter, Ezrial, started first
grade today. In June when I read about
some kindergarten curricula in Valeria Strauss ‘s Washington Post Blog I
sent her an email describing Ezrial’s kindergarten in Klein School district m
Houston. As a Sweat Shop Kindergarten. Apparently that phrase put a frame on
what many parents and teachers were dismayed at what they were seeing in kindergartens
near them.
Google Sweat Shop Kindergarten and you’ll be amazed at the
response the term is getting. As they say in web talk it’s going viral.
One labor group is shocked that I would use a phrase from
labor history to describe kindergartens. So I thought I’d take this space to
explain my use.
It is no coincidence that the campaign in the United States
for universal, free compulsory education coincided with the union movement’s
campaign to end child labor, which was widespread and pulling down wages of
adults. Kathryn Patterspn’s masterpiece Lydie, is the story of children working
in the New England textile mills.
Kindergartens came late to America- the term borrowed from
the progressive educators of the enlightenment in Germany of the mid-19th
century was apt: Kinder garten, a garden for children. It became a bridge
between home and school. A place in school for children to spend a few hours with
other five year olds, learning to socialize and play. Piaget said "play is the
work of children". Vygotsky said "In play a child is a head taller than himself."
In Highland Park Michigan,
where I started my research and where Henry Ford had his first factory, every
kindergarten had a fire place and its own play yard. Often there was a piano
and autoharps and rhythm instruments for the children to experiment with music.
Early kindergartens had sets of hollow wooden blocks big enough so it took two
children to lift and maneuver. There was a sand box and a water table. And there
were easels and finger paints and plastic clay for playing with art. And of
course there were trikes and wagons in the play area.
But what has happened
in the last decade and a half has turned kindergarten into something quite
different. No longer is there time or even a place for play. The half day has
turned into a full day- difficult for little children in need of a nap. Naps
are gone, no more rug to gather and hear a story or sing a song. Children are
sitting at desks- all day doing work sheets. Kindergarteners are bringing home
more work sheets for homework. They are learning phonics rules before they have
had a chance to find out what reading and writing are for. And they are being
tested on their ability to name letters and sound out two and three letter nonsense
syllables the first week of kindergarten.
They are counting by 2’s and 5’s- chanting them anyway-
before they have a sense of number or
one to one correspondence - There is no sand box or water table, no play house
to pretend in. And kids who are barely five are getting report cards saying
they may be retained – in kindergarten. And the old joke of flunking sand box is hauntingly true.
There is only work. What kind of work? School work. That’s
why I call what is happening in Ezrial’s school a sweat shop kindergarten. We
have taken the children out of the factories and put them now in factory like
kindergartens.
Ezrial’s lucky. She can play school with the school work.
She doesn’t mind being praised for doing something meaningless well. She was
six in January; some of her classmates are almost a year younger than she is.
But when she comes home from school she’ll run around the house with her sister
and brother or jump on the trampoline in her back yard.
Let’s give the right to be little kids back to our littlest
scholars.
