In the Guardian today, April McGreger writes about her son's kindergarten, which has cut lunchtime to 15 minutes and requires kids to remain silent the entire time:
When I questioned this policy, his teacher told me the short lunches allowed more time for electives and special academic programming that made their school best in its class. The intent was to maximize instructional time for the school’s prized technology and Spanish lessons — in theory, a good idea. That meant shaving minutes off other activities, and the school found that 15 minutes was not enough time to eat if the children were allowed to talk.
These are five-year-olds. This is insane. It's astonishing what people can talk themselves into when they become too insular.
That sounds insane. Our kids had like 2-3 recesses (depending on how wiggly the kids were on any given day), 2 snacks, and a lunch when they were in kindergarten. But I guess our district isn't nearly as competitive as others.
Worse. The kids _need_ to talk to each other. It's part of the developmental process.
If we're all wearing language translators in 2035, will parents still be pushing their kindergarteners to learn a second language?
But a universal translator won't help you with Darmoks.
Zing! His eyes were opened!
Kindergardener his arms wide open.
Roy at the Tannhäuser Gate.
😂
They had a dumb language.
That is nuts. I wonder where in NC this person lives. All my grandkids are in a large urban public school system in North Carolina. Two of my them go to a K-8 full immersion language magnet school. They are in the German program but there is also French, Chinese and Japanese immersion in that school. There is a second magnet school just like it on the other side of town and an entire magnet school devoted to Spanish immerssion. Those schools all have regular lunches as well as recess.
Another granddaughter goes to a regular NC public elementary that has excellent math enrichment for her. She also has a regular lunch and recess period.
Not allowing kids to talk would completely defeat an immersion program. (Though they could be forbidden from speaking english.)
it's north carolina; all they have to do is claim they're allowing kids 15 minutes of silent prayer during lunch and they'll get glowing coverage on fox
it'd be even better if they could work in 15 minutes of self-flagellation; baby steps...
All four of my grandkids go to urban public schools in NC. There is no religious indoctrination but really good educational experiences — art, music, academic enrichment for those who need it and remedial help for those who need that. We also have public pre-K programs. Their schools are very diverse and have a lot of kids who are not native English speakers but I am very impressed by how well the schools manage.
That being said all bets are off if the insane crackpot who is running for State Superintendent wins in November. North Carolina is a 50-50 state but also very gerrymandered. The Democratic Party has finally decided to stop ignoring this state and is finally pouring a lot of resources into getting out the vote which should help.
Your state needs to pour its own resources into winning. There is no outside 'Democratic Party' to do it for you.
Every state has their own party.
A very American solution. Bravo.
The Dickensian-villain style of raising and educating kids seems to come back into fashion periodically, alas. People who have thoroughly grown up and retain no vestige of childhood in their souls should not work with children, they should go get grown-up jobs and leave the kiddie jobs to those who are still at least partly kids at heart themselves.
And I say this as someone who is a pretty thorough grown-up. Self-awareness is very valuable.
That is an excellent recommendation - not only for teachers, but especially for administrator,, & particularly where the latter are associated with political parties or ideological movements.
Electives? Programming? What about the old kindergarten goal of socializing children, getting them to learn how to interact with one another in a civilized manner, learn cooperation, sharing, listening?
Yeah, I know. "Okay, boomer." But Wisconsin back in those days had one of the best education systems, from K12 through college, in the nation.
THIS
Bluntly - this is stupid. 5-year-olds take 15 minutes to settle down and if you have ever been around a group of 5-year-olds - they need to be reminded to eat as they are social and want to ....wait for it......talk. Oh, my golly ever try to stop a group of 5-year-olds from talking? Why would you want too anyway? This is just as dumb as when the Irvine school district decided that 5-year-olds should start with cursive and then block writing. My son's handwriting to this day is crap. But the good news is that he rarely ever writes anything anymore - totally covered by text and email. Next.... 5-year-olds with eating disorders because they were forced to cram down lunch......I'm 65 and I need more than 15 minutes to eat lunch.....and I kind of like talking while I eat....cause I try to be social.......
Yep. Kids need a social life as much as they need a formal education, and schools should be set up to encourage that, not suppress it.
When I was in first grade or so we would bolt our lunches so we could run out to the playground. So we must have had a longer lunch period, but no so much leisurely eating.
That was my experience. Lunch took about 10 minutes and then it was out on the playground for the rest of our one hour lunch break.
April McGreger's son:
Fear is the opposite of what kindergartners should be feeling at school. That's the age they need to enjoy going to school. It's the age they are most creative. They should learn to write letters and numbers and spell their name, but most of all they need to play.
When my son was that age we visited several schools to see what might be the right fit. We avoided any school with too much emphasis on academics. Whenever there was a classroom that was too quiet, we crossed that school off our list.
Absolutely everybody of any age should enjoy going to school. And that should be more of uh, right rather than a privilege to strive for.
The idea that you can get everyone to enjoy any one thing, especially every day, is so interesting to me. Has it ever happened in human history?
That doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile goal.
Path of least resistance. Shave time off of lunch rather then get the teachers’ union to lengthen the school day.
Question: have you ever served on a school board or otherwise directly delt with the parents of those children? I don't mean to sound snarky -- I rate you as one of the better commenters here -- but your questions lead me to suspect that you haven't.
Indeed, I have not. I myself am the product of private schools. My wife and I had the luxury of being able to send our two children to private Montessori school from pre-k through junior high in the case of the older and upper elementary for the younger (no junior high offered at that point) at which points they entered the local public school system.
I am thinking that "lengthen the school" day is your way of saying "make teachers work longer hours without increasing their pay." And of course unions are evil for arguing against that.
This kind of thinking, along with the notion that teachers are only working when school is in session, are the two biggest gaps in public understanding of public school teaching.
I’m cynical enough to think it would be difficult even at increased pay. From either or both sides, union and funding. Edit windows precluded updating the original.
There's a definitional issue. When I was a school kid back in the dawn of time we didn't have playground supervisors; the teachers were expected to supervise the kids at lunch, with the result that the teachers didn't get much of a lunch break. They managed to get some food inside themselves, but at least some of them were on duty throughout the lunch break so it pretty much had to be considered paid time.
These days, teachers are mostly off-duty at lunch time, and therefore presumably on unpaid time. If the lunch break was lengthened and the beginning and end of the school day adjusted to keep classroom time the same, that's not a longer working day, as measured in hours worked, so it shouldn't be a problem for the teachers' union. Indeed, I would expect that the teachers' union would have an issue with 15 minute lunch breaks, when most jobs get at least a half-hour and many get a whole hour.
I wasn't going to bring this up, but what the heck.
https://www.additudemag.com/the-right-to-recess/
The ADA will come into play, here.
If I had kids, I would be the most dreaded parent in the administration offices, short of the book banners.
If they really want to "maximize instructional time for the school’s prized technology and Spanish lessons," they very likely need to lengthen the school day.
If they can't do that, they need to accept the fact that the available school time they do have needs to be managed in a sane manner.
Insularity has nothing to do with it.
The latest hobbyhorse in schools is "rigor." By that, I would mean precision thinking. But what they mean is slam them with a ton of work, and pitch it at a level that is beyond their ability to comprehend. It is truly amazing the number of college math classes that have been pushed down into high school and even middle school. What can a 6th grader be expected to comprehend regarding matrices and linear algebra?
I always monitor the kid's school for this to nip it right in the bud.
She doesn't say the school name, but it seems to me it must be a charter school. You need the ability to penalize students who don't follow the rules, and publics couldn't boot students who don't speak. Moreover, most unions--even the weakest ones--demand teachers get 30 minutes for lunch.
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