[Strutz]

Why can't Johnny read? Maybe it's his parents' fault

By Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun September 23, 2010

$1:

If it's late September, it must be education angst time, when all around us there is worry about the kids, about their education, about the economic and cultural roadblocks they face on the path to success, about whether they are prepared for the big scary world that awaits them as they walk into their first classroom as a kindergartner.

There are certainly more than a few newly released studies on the topic: the latest this week from the distinguished Clyde Hertzman, who has long been doing important work on neighbourhood-based child development as the director of the University of B.C.'s Human Early Learning Partnership program.

Hertzman's most recent data indicate there are too many five-yearolds in B.C. entering the school system woefully lacking the most basic of social and emotional skills, including an inability to communicate. It's not entirely clear what the specifics are, but anyone who has or knows a kindergarten or Grade 1 student and who has been involved in the school system of late will have their own tales of the crisis.

Scratch a teacher today and you'll hear about an increasing frustration with kindergartners and Grade 1 students who can't tie their shoelaces and don't know how to put a straw in a juice box, who can't spell their names, recite the alphabet or recognize the numbers from 1 to 20, who show up with lunch boxes full of expensive junk food instead of a sandwich and a piece of fruit, and who -- and this, they will tell you, is rampant -- are late for class every day.

Here's one anecdote from a kindergarten class this week in a reasonably affluent Vancouver suburban neighbourhood: During the meet-the-teacher
session, attended by parents and the 25 or so students, the children were asked for a show of hands on various skills, from shoe-tying to letter and number recognition, which the teacher tested by using flash cards. In every instance, only one child, the same child, put up his hand to signify he was capable of the task.

In another class, in another school, a Grade 1 teacher spent her meet-the-teacher session lecturing parents about their chronic tardiness, and about their kids being unable to put on their own shoes or hang up their coat, reminding them that she is a teacher and not a babysitter.

With some disturbing exceptions, most children in the Lower Mainland live in homes with heat and light and food and television, with DVDs and computers, and in communities with public libraries and neighbourhood houses and playgrounds and ready access to programs that will not only help them become better parents but will ensure their children reap the benefit of a society that recognizes the importance and, often, the difficulty of raising well-adjusted kids.

Hertzman notes that this so-called new vulnerability cuts across all socioeconomic and geographic lines, not just those new to the country, or single parents, or low-income families, the

clusters typically cited in child development studies as often struggling the most.

And there's no question things have changed: In my suburban neighbourhood, like many in the Lower Mainland, there are pockets of both prosperity and poverty, and each elementary school has its own unique demographic. The grade school my kids attended, 20 years ago, was singularly populated with affluent, well-tended youngsters, who could speak English and spell their own names. Today, it's classified as an inner-city school with more than a dozen ethnicities and languages, providing unprecedented challenges for educators.

Hertzman and other experts will also tell you that many youngsters today are showing up in class with all manner of learning disabilities, and for that we need to find the fix, be that more programs, more teaching assistants, more provincial funding.

But surely there is something more troubling afoot when so many kindergarten students across the province don't possess even the most basic social and communication skills that have long been expected of a five-year-old.

Surely there is no excuse for not teaching your children good old-fashioned manners (hello, goodbye, please, thank you, excuse me) or the other skills they should have mastered by the age of five or six (tying shoe laces, washing hands after using the toilet, sharing toys, respecting elders, listening).

And the average taxpayer -who may or may not approve of the move to all-day kindergarten, who may think it's either the best way to give our kids a good start or nothing more than state-funded child-minding -is left to wonder: Why aren't more parents doing their job?

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Johnny ... story.html

[Dragom]

Concerning. Think it's neglect or a spreading unwillingness to let their children grow up?

[martin14]

Surely there is no excuse for not teaching your children good old-fashioned manners (hello, goodbye, please, thank you, excuse me) or the other skills they should have mastered by the age of five or six (tying shoe laces, washing hands after using the toilet, sharing toys, respecting elders, listening).


Sadly lacking these days.

[Zipperfish]

Not concerning. Kids are the same as ever. So they can't tie their shoes at 5 anymore--ever heard of velcro? duh!

The rise in learning disabilities is mostly due to too mnay psychologists with too little to do. We didn't call it "Attention Deficit Disorder", we called it "stupid."

[BartSimpson]

Dragom Dragom:

Concerning. Think it's neglect or a spreading unwillingness to let their children grow up?

Absentee parents is the problem. Prior to WW2 kids grew up with their mother's undivided attention and she typically taught them the basic skills they needed to succeed in school. Now the parents both work because, of course, it is highly unfashionable for a mother to be a "Stay at home mom" and there's a vast amount of social pressure against women who choose to be home with their kids.

We are reaping what we as a society have sown.

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

The rise in learning disabilities is mostly due to too mnay psychologists with too little to do. We didn't call it "Attention Deficit Disorder", we called it "stupid."

My grandmother, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 94, once said that if a kid can't pay attention then you just have to hit them harder is all.

I know her advice is impolitic these days, but she was right in that regardless of your 'disabilities' it's your problem to function in school or in society.

[Brenda]

Kids will be kids. They all develop at their own time. I couldn't tie laces till I was 8, my kid was 4, my other was 7. My mom was a stay-at-home-mom, so am I. One could read and write before she was 4, the other took a year longer.

I went to school full time when I was 4, so did my kids. Lazy kids? Lazy parents? Nah. Lazy teachers.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Absentee parents is the problem. Prior to WW2 kids grew up with their mother's undivided attention and she typically taught them the basic skills they needed to succeed in school. Now the parents both work because, of course, it is highly unfashionable for a mother to be a "Stay at home mom" and there's a vast amount of social pressure against women who choose to be home with their kids.

We are reaping what we as a society have sown.

I think it has far more to due with the high cost of housing and that many families struggle with only one income, than it is due to it being unfashionable. Of the one parent families I know of (half a dozen or so), all of the parents who work earn in excess of $100,000 per year, allowing the mother to stay home and raise the kids. Jobs like that either take a lot of experience and/or education.

In an ideal world, it'd still be that way (one stay at home parent - one working to support the family), but inflation has priced houses (as well as many other things) out of reach of most single income families. Even with a daycare bill of up to $1000 a month, it still makes economic sense to have both parents work.

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

Kids will be kids. They all develop at their own time. I couldn't tie laces till I was 8, my kid was 4, my other was 7. My mom was a stay-at-home-mom, so am I. One could read and write before she was 4, the other took a year longer.

I went to school full time when I was 4, so did my kids. Lazy kids? Lazy parents? Nah. Lazy teachers.

Lazy parents.

I can say so from first hand experience.

While my mother taught me to read and by age five I was reading her anatomy - physiology textbooks I was pathetic at math and I had poor study habits.

When, due to family problems, I had to live with my grandmother for two years she taught me short division, business algebra, geometry, basic trig, basic calculus, and she also required me to learn piano, French, Latin, and Gaelic.

I went into eighth grade after that with more advanced math skills than my math teacher (not fun) and I also had a far better grasp of English due to my instruction in French and Latin (Gaelic was pretty useless to me).

My parents could've taught me all that except that both of them worked and that both of them had issues. My father was an alcoholic and my motrher was preening narcissist with a socialist-liberal bent that eschewed structured education.

While I had bad teachers now and again, any problems I had with education were started well before I attened school. And the advantages I had were given to me by my grandmother.

[CanadianJeff]

Bart your post is a total fallacy of hasty generalization. Your lone experience does not mean that the root of problems is always lazy parents.

[Mustang1]

Lazy parents. Without a doubt - countless articles have been published about how parents couldn't care less about whether a child reads at home, learns manners or develops a sense of self as long as they become a good little accessory and don't demand actual work.

[Mustang1]

CanadianJeff CanadianJeff:

Bart your post is a total fallacy of hasty generalization. Your lone experience does not mean that the root of problems is always lazy parents.

I don't always agree with Bart, but his anecdote rings true. Parents want society to raise their children unless it interferes with their antiquated worldviews or it requires them to adopt the role of actual parents not "buddies" or "pals".

[Choban]

Andy, alot of families cannot make ends meet with only 1 working parent,to say it's unfashionable isn't really true, as a parent I can honestly tell you that my wife and I don't give a shit about what's fashionable. It's alot harder to earn a living now than prior to WWII, I'm lucky that as a Family we can afford to have my wife CHOOSE to stay at home, it's still hard, alot of sacrifices along the way but we do as we must, when the little one is in school my wife will go back to work.

I do tend to blame the daycares though as they don't foster an educational environment, and it's hit and miss on the quality of care these kids receive (as we have all seen in the news), whereas a stay at home parent can teach daycares just feed and watch and charge a stupid ammount to do so....

$1:

The rise in learning disabilities is mostly due to too mnay psychologists with too little to do

I so agree with you on this.

[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Brenda Brenda:

Kids will be kids. They all develop at their own time. I couldn't tie laces till I was 8, my kid was 4, my other was 7. My mom was a stay-at-home-mom, so am I. One could read and write before she was 4, the other took a year longer.

I went to school full time when I was 4, so did my kids. Lazy kids? Lazy parents? Nah. Lazy teachers.

Lazy parents.

I can say so from first hand experience.

While my mother taught me to read and by age five I was reading her anatomy - physiology textbooks I was pathetic at math and I had poor study habits.

When, due to family problems, I had to live with my grandmother for two years she taught me short division, business algebra, geometry, basic trig, basic calculus, and she also required me to learn piano, French, Latin, and Gaelic.

I went into eighth grade after that with more advanced math skills than my math teacher (not fun) and I also had a far better grasp of English due to my instruction in French and Latin (Gaelic was pretty useless to me).

My parents could've taught me all that except that both of them worked and that both of them had issues. My father was an alcoholic and my motrher was preening narcissist with a socialist-liberal bent that eschewed structured education.

While I had bad teachers now and again, any problems I had with education were started well before I attened school. And the advantages I had were given to me by my grandmother.

When I see that one child gets into pre-school 2 half days a week (at 2.5) and can read and write before she goes to kindergarten fulltime (at 4) and she loses what she was able to do within the year, do you blame ME for that, or the kindergarten teacher, who thinks that "being artsy" is more important? Sorry, lazy teacher.

I have a pretty intelligent child, who has always been ahead, and thus bored to death in school. Do you think she gets extra attention in school? HELL NO! Lazy parent, huh?
Sure

When a teacher yells "sorry, I am not a babysitter" I think you are in the wrong profession as a kindergarten teacher.

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

When I see that one child gets into pre-school 2 half days a week (at 2.5) and can read and write before she goes to kindergarten fulltime (at 4) and she loses what she was able to do within the year, do you blame ME for that, or the kindergarten teacher, who thinks that "being artsy" is more important? Sorry, lazy teacher.

I have a pretty intelligent child, who has always been ahead, and thus bored to death in school. Do you think she gets extra attention in school? HELL NO! Lazy parent, huh?
Sure

When a teacher yells "sorry, I am not a babysitter" I think you are in the wrong profession as a kindergarten teacher.

Well, then I guess you understand the people who choose to home school.