| | | It isn’t that patently black and white koan.
I am not going to advocate for two year olds going to preschool (even though my daughter did at that age), nor am I going to condemn it. Children have very different circumstances and in most cases an attentive parent is the very best source of early childhood development.
Piaget developed a model for stages of cognitive development in the early 1900s which has been further refined since. Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages: the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2; the preoperational stage, from age 2 to about age 7; the concrete operational stage, from age 7 to 11; and the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and spans into adulthood.
Montessori schools, which you are familiar with, were among the first to fully implement this type of deliberate programing based on preschoolers stages of cognitive development. If the parent cannot be there for the child then fine, I would recommend this. But I see it as a failure of our society to support the healthiest circumstance for children.
In any event, the population we are referring to (multi-generational single parents living in poverty) are not only the product of poor education, they are the product of absent parents, extreme neglect, lack of resources and guidance. These are the same people who after 12 years of education can’t compose a legible paragraph. Adding a couple more years does not make them competitive with people like my daughter who was in calculus by 10th grade. The proper support system needs to be there first, for them to be able to benefit. |
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