Oh dear heavens, I cannot tell you how much I detest that phrase. Regardless of whether a child is gifted, shouldn’t it be a point of shame for a school that a student who enters kindergarten reading at a third grade level is still reading at a 3rd grade level (or even only a 4th grade level) 3 years later? That the child who was learning multiplication at 5 is still learning it at age 9?
Yes, I understand and am not arguing that an early reader or early mathematician is necessarily gifted.
However, even if not clinically gifted, some children are early learners who soak up information and knowledge and want to learn. Whether people consider them well prepared, houthoused, or some other term with which I am unfamiliar is really immaterial. These children have shown a propensity for learning, and in many cases a desire to do so.
Just as you can’t teach a child to be gifted, you really can’t teach a child to learn earlier than they are willing/ready. I know plenty of parents who wish it were otherwise, and their children have been some of the best prepared students in my son’s school. No matter how many flashcards they threw at little Sally, or how many Kumon sessions little Johnny attended, she didn’t start reading until grade 2 and he didn’t understand multiplication until grade 3.
So, even if the early learners are “only” well prepared, why is it a point of pride that schools simply allow them to stagnate for 2-4 years while the other students play catch up? Why shouldn’t those students also be given an appropriate education, based on their abilities and level of learning?
I support free, universal education, and I believe that teaching is one of the hardest jobs there is. I would never be able to deal with the parents, much less the administration. Not to mention the idiotic state and federal legislators who impose ridiculous requirements on educators without ever having spent one day as a teacher trying to corral 25-30 sugar-hyped 8 year olds.
Even so, I find it shameful that educators perpetuate the myth that everything does- and worse, that everything should- even out by 3rd grade. How this nasty little idea ever made its way into schools of pedagogy is beyond me, and I honestly do not understand how educators don’t see the subtext to those comments. How are they blind to the fact that this statement means that a child learned little to nothing on their watch? How do they not see the laziness implied in this statement? How do they not see the poor light in which it casts their own talents, the school at which they teach, and the system in general?
I admit I’ve never had the patience to discuss this with teachers, even those in my own family, but I’d love to know the answers.
And PS, the idea is rampant at private schools in our area as well, so I don’t think this is just a problem for the public school system.
