If you have opted to become a tutor specialising in preparing pre-schoolers for Kindergarten, you are probably going to make a lot of money via the increase in parents paying to have their four-year-olds tutored in literacy and numeracy in an effort to give them the upper hand upon starting school. All because of an assessment which is not a test.
Believe it or not, children actually learn a lot from play, which is why it is so important and at three and four years of age, children shouldn’t be constrained by formal tutoring. They probably don’t even want to be, because timeslots of formal learning really cut into play time and if given the chance to choose between the two, they will opt for play every time. Nevertheless, parents are pushing ahead with “lessons” for their littlies to get them “academically prepared” for school, hence the rise in enrolments at tutoring colleges for programs aimed at prepping pre-schoolers…for Kindergarten! Apparently a lot of it has to do with a compulsory (in all state schools and some private schools) assessment before they enter Kindergarten, which is part of the Best Start program designed to identify each child’s literacy and numeracy skills. Left to their own devices, most pre-kindies would score around the same here I think, the exceptions being the exceptionally bright, but the playing field will no longer be level now, let alone accurate, because those not shoved into tutoring naturally won’t score quite as well as the child tutored to within an inch of its life, which will probably cause them to be assessed unfairly. A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said however that the Best Start program was not a test and that children did not need tutoring to prepare for it and that tutoring makes it a lot more difficult for teachers to get an accurate snapshot of a child’s genuine numeracy and literacy skills.
But how much pressure should we put on pre-schoolers anyway? We are talking little kids here who still place more value on play than structured learning, something that will begin proper when they enter school and will continue for the next 10 to 12 years where they will learn to read, write, do maths, history, geography and the sciences. Years of study and cramming and exams ahead of them and if they go on to university you can add around another two to four years of that! And it will all begin in Kindergarten!
So why not just let them have those first four years to enjoy being little kids spending their days in play?
Sure, we would all like to see our children do well academically and helping them along at their own pace is a fine idea, but there is a big difference between assisting them at their own pace and compelled learning being imposed way too early; show me a four-year-old who has been forced into academic tutoring and I’ll show you a little soul who doesn’t know the difference between a mathematical problem and a hopscotch grid. Okay, maybe that’s a tad extreme but the point I’m making is that at pre-school age, they will learn far more from play than from structured tutoring. They will enjoy it more because the pressure won’t be there. Also, tutoring can send the wrong message to those kiddies who haven’t been, as in maybe they are not smart enough, and in a Kindy classroom of tutored children, those who did not take part in pre-school tutoring programs may be made to feel less than their peers. This is really unfair.
But there are always going to be parents pushing to get the advantage no matter how negatively it may impact on their children which makes me wonder who they are really doing it for?
Themselves, I think…
