Putting Pressure on Preschoolers
Early Childhood Education Gets in the Way of Learning
From a desire to give children an early advantage, some parents focus on abstract academic subjects before a young child has had sufficient experience exploring the concrete, physical world, and absorbing concepts through immersion.
With the conventional emphasis on academic learning over imaginative play, children are learning numbers, letters, word recognition, and counting at increasingly young ages. However, this does not necessarily result in a child who comprehends reading and mathematical concepts any earlier than a child who did not learn ABCs and 123s at a young age.
Children learn math and reading in stages. A very young child, rapidly learning to communicate, will become aware of numeric and alphabetic symbols. This might happen while a parent reads to the child, while watching television, while playing with toys, etc.
A child must first learn to recognize letters and numbers before learning to read words and calculate mathematical problems, and before moving on to read with understanding and perform more complicated computations with real world application.
The Case Against Preschool
As children near preschool and kindergarten age, parents might begin to feel pressure to meet official early learning and developmental milestones. If they respond to this pressure by attempting to coerce young children into accomplishing these goals, they pass on that pressure to the children.
Some young children initially rebel against coercive teaching. Others give in to their parent's or teacher's urgings at the expense of their natural curiosity and love of learning. When an adult appears discouraged by a child's progress, the child may likewise regard him or herself as a failure.
Alternatives to Early Education
Generations of unschooled children have proven that they learn naturally to read, write, and do mathematics according to their own personal schedules, in their own ways, for their own reasons. They learn these subjects through a continuation of the same methods – playing, exploring, trying things out, and asking for guidance – used by very young children.
Some children are interested and ready to learn to read at five or six years old. Other children learn later. In any case, the outcome is a person who can read and do mathematics, and hopefully one who enjoys using those tools to accomplish personal goals.
Attempts to coerce earlier learning in a child who is not yet interested or ready will likely be met with resistance and the development of a negative association with the subject, which might hinder future learning. Even when coercion does elicit early academic performance, the results might include unnecessary stress and harm to the child’s self-image.
Children learn "the basics" over time through real life experiences such as listening to stories read by their parents, cooking, gardening, solving puzzles, building, creating art, experimenting, etc. The progression of basic academic skills proceeds naturally according to children’s needs, natural abilities, and interests.
Related Reading
For more information on unschooling see Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning.
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