One Dad Speaks Up To His Son’s Kindergarten Teacher

Are you one of “those” parents?

Greetings and Salutations!

We haven’t met yet, but we will meet soon. I need to apologize in advance because I am going to be one of “those” parents. You know, the ones who are constantly checking in, perhaps over protective to a fault.

In my defense I feel like I know a bit more about this whole school thing than most parents. Having taught kids in the same city where I grew up and now teaching teachers (who, in many ways, are just bigger kids) in a city far away from home, I have learned a good deal about what goes on in classrooms nowadays.

There is also the matter of me teaching university courses that deal with educational policy (yuk!) and educational psychology (wow!). Did you know that most of our current educational policy flies in the face of educational psychology, especially in light of recent advances in neuroscience?

Neuroscience, for example, tells us no two brains are alike, which makes me wonder why we are trying to make all of the children common.

That’s really why I am writing you today. I realize you have to make sure that my son should be able to “Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects),” as required by the state and federal government.

Truth be told, he can count to ten when we are counting Angry Birds, but he has some trouble with transfer. Everything above 12 is a mystery to him, but he’s eager to discover what goes on up there!

Based on what I’ve learned over the past 18 years in the field, I have to tell you, I don’t care if he walks out of your room at the end of the year and he can’t write numbers up to 20. He will pick that skill up as his life requires it.

He’s only 5, and we considered holding him back a year because, as I am sure you are aware, Kindergarten is the new first grade, and he’s a young 5, with a birthday in the summer.

It concerns me a bit that you are going to require him to “With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.”

I appreciate the guidance and support from adults, in fact I expect it, but I’m confused about him publishing his writing. You see, he can’t write.

Did you know there are countries that don’t teach reading and writing until kids are 7?

7 years old!

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