Keeping Your Child at Home
The alternative to sending your child to preschool, of course, is to keep her at home with you until it is time for Kindergarten. Michael Smith, the president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, says "Young children are better off at home. We are in danger of over institutionalizing them. A child will develop naturally if the parents give the child what he or she needs most in the formative years -- plenty of love and attention. In this way, the brain can develop freely."
Advocates of keeping preschoolers at home are quick to bring up standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act as key reasons for keeping your preschooler away from state-funded or public pre-K programs. Some say the only way for a government to rationalize funding for these programs is through testing, even at the preschool level. And while the tests are vastly different from the fill-in-the-bubble variety currently used in elementary schools as a standard testing method, they are still tests. If you think preschool is still crayons and swing sets, you may be fooling yourself.
Just as in elementary schools, government-funded pre-K programs have certain standards that must be met in order to be considered for more public funding. The preschool curriculum can now include activities and standards for reading, writing, math, science and social studies. It's not the same preschool you attended as a child.
Standardized testing and public funding has parents running scared, and doing almost anything to give their child an advantage when he gets to elementary school. If this means putting him in a pre-K program that promises the child will be reading before he starts Kindergarten, parents will pay top dollar. If it means tutoring and early intervention therapies for normal preschool behavior, parents will do it.
Instead of providing a loving and comfortable atmosphere for children to grow and learn about the world around them at their own pace, we are forcing children to grow up too quickly. Kindergarten curriculum used to be based on school readiness. Children would learn to sit quietly, find their names on their cubbies, respect others and make friends. Now, Kindergarteners are expected to arrive at school on their first day already well-versed in these simple skills. Kindergarten is for reading, writing and arithmetic; no time for fostering early friendships, learning empathy or practicing social skills.