- How to have a conversation
- How to play with toys
- How to focus on a task for more than two minutes
- How to hold a pen or pencil
- How to throw or kick a ball
- How to use a paperback
- How to follow a story
- How to interact with other children
Teachers are having to teach these basic skills on top of their already heavy workload. They could do without it.
When I started school aged five I certainly had all the necessary basic skills, as did my classmates, and there was no question of our needing special instruction. The idea would have struck us as ludicrous.
Unfortunately, unless screen use suddenly declines, it looks as if this shameful situation can only get worse rather than better.
I would add: how to tie their shoes and how to zip their jackets. Getting a bunch of kids ready to go outside should not require a lot of the teacher's time.
ReplyDeleteLinda
Linda: I had trouble learning how to tie my shoe laces but I think I managed it before I started school.
DeleteCovid did seem to be the beginning of the end of society as we knew it, right? I've seen teachers online say that their high school students don't know how to address an envelope or even know their own address! That is hard for me to believe, as even my very young grandkids could tell you their address.
ReplyDeleteBijoux: Covid had a lot of unfortunate consequences, including an explosion in mental disorders and the increasingly polarised political debates. Bad news all round.
DeleteI learned I was left handed, at least for using a pencil, when I went to grade one... Sometimes I wonder if I was really right handed, but didn't know it.
ReplyDeleteI was fine at conversations because I was in a big family—which my grade six teacher could tell, because I had a big vocabulary.
Sean: My father was very definitely left handed for his entire life. There weren't many conversations in my family, they were very taciturn.
DeleteCovid may have contributed to this but it certainly did not cause it. Ten year olds walking around with a phone in the hand, all activity scheduled and managed. Children no longer playing outside with neighborhood kids all day without parents tracking the on a phone. This all adds up.
ReplyDeleteSandra: Yes, children are so carefully monitored nowadays, with limited scope to just be themselves. Parental tracking has got out of hand. I used to be out of the house for hours with no parental supervision whatever.
Deleteit's sad that parents aren't doing more to get their kids ready for school.
ReplyDeleteMary: It is. There's a limit to what we can expect of teachers.
DeleteNick, these are skills requested in our Western societies. I have been in countries where children will never attend a school with parents too poor to pay the fees ,mostly bare foot and balls made of old papers or clothes. No books or pencils These children have a lot of other wonderfull skills .
ReplyDeleteAnd frankly to hold a conversation with a child of 5 makes me smile. Being conform in our countries is not always the base for free and self conscious children. Behaving as all the others is the law.
Hannah
Hannah: Well, I have little knowledge of how children are brought up in other countries, so I can't really comment. But certainly a high standard of numeracy and literacy is considered normal in most countries, and is usually the result of schooling.
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