Some school districts seem to be doing their very best to suck all the joy out of educating our children while our tax dollars foot the bill.
Increased standardized testing has given our youngest elementary school children cases of stress and anxiety. Our teachers are no longer tasked with instilling a love of learning and curiosity in our children as they are preoccupied with raising test scores to boost their own evaluations.
All in a race to prepare our children for the future. But can’t our children just have some time to be children?
It all seems a little ridiculous to me considering the things we are taught in school. I mean, have you ever used the Pathorgeum Theorem in your life? Yeah, I haven’t either! But I did grow up to have to learn how to pay taxes which is something I wasn’t taught in school.
Apparently, some school districts are even attempting to turn our pre-school children into obedient workhorse robots.
Scary Mommy recently posted a letter they say that a mother shared from their child’s preschool.
The letter sounds as if it was written by someone who shouldn’t be allowed to teach young children because they have NO idea how young children are supposed to act. The letter basically tells parents how horrible their small children are and how it’s their fault because they don’t spend enough time teaching them to behave.
In short, it’s wildly insulting to the parents who are paying that teacher’s salary with their tax dollars.
Here’s the letter in its entirety:
“We made it through a really tough first month with tears, attitudes, unwillingness, not listening, not obeying the rules and especially, too much talking and not enough sitting in seats when asked to. We work on this every day at school, but we need help from home, too. We realize kids don’t want to sit and would rather talk and play when they want to; but that’s not how school works.
Preschool is preparation to go on to “big” school and these things are important there, too. We simply can’t say that our kids don’t like coloring and sitting still because Kindergarten and first grade have a lot of coloring. Please, work five or ten minutes each day with your child on this and you’ll see improvement. We have seen improvement with several kids already. We realize it’s a fast paced world and parents work, but the adults in the house have to be in charge and help the kids to understand this. Please, talk to your child about the importance of sharing, not fighting, keeping their hands to themselves, and learning to get along with each other. Remind them that once we pick up the toys that we don’t get them back out again, because we are done playing and going on to learning fun things.”
We’re playing the tiniest violin for you teacher. NEWSFLASH: 3 and 4-year-olds don’t sit still and sometimes don’t share and sometimes fight and don’t get along. And they cry… a lot. Because they are small children.
And it’s preschool they should be playing and you’re the one who is supposed to teach them how to interact with the world and in the act in the classroom.
Scary Mommy dissected the letter line for line and their analysis is super on point. You can read it here.
Their Facebook on the story has gotten thousands of likes and lots of educators and parents also weighed in on post agreeing that the teacher was wildly inappropriate.
“I think this teacher is probably either very new or being given a list of tasks the children must complete to be ‘testing ready’ or some BS like this. It is totally developmentally inappropriate,” said one Facebook commenter.
Thankfully, some school districts are doing preschool right. Like this one in Tennessee who focuses on teaching children things about nutrition and play which is exactly what young children should be taught rather than to sit quietly and obey.
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