early pressures?
Being a young mum with a young kid, reading Ewan McIntosh’s post on early years learning (he points to a report from the Scot Exec) I thought-THANK GOD! I was wondering if it was just me who thought that kids were sent to school too early? At the moment I am getting pressures from umpteen different people that my son isn’t in nursery yet – bearing in mind he just turned 3 in Febuary! The idea of him being sent off to school next year for ‘formal education’ isn’t exactly a happy thought. I completely think that we have to get more in line with the European system where kids go off for formal education nearer 6, 7 or even 8 years old. 
The recent Lib Dem conference (here’s a fairly concise explanation) gave me hope where they seemed to be embracing early years learning with the ‘Active learning’ type approach. (I’m not an active Lib Dem fan, it just caught my attention). I just wish that societal pressures could be taken away from parents, where the majority of us have to ship our kids off to playgroup/nursery/school/ afterschool/breakfast clubs(!) in order to get the bread in. If we were offered a system which valued the fact that kids are kids and they have the rest of their lifes to grow up, I would be a lot happier.
April 15th, 2007 at 9:05 am
“If we were offered a system which valued the fact that kids are kids and they have the rest of their lifes to grow up, I would be a lot happier.”
I think the system, through the report published by LTS and the Exec, is offering that value for kids being kids and being able to learn from their play (something many of us have known for a while). It will take society time to catch up with that in general – “I wasn’t brought up that way…” – but society at large will catch up, I’m sure of it!
April 17th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Thanks for the positive comment! I too really hope that society will catch up