Pro
By Brynn Kolada / Feature Editor (2007-2008)
Kindergarten is the most important time in a child’s development, especially when it comes to socialization and early childhood education.
By putting a group of kids together for an entire school day, rather than a half-day, they are forced to make friends, discover how to share, confront challenges they face head-on and learn how to read and write with one another.
All-day kindergarten could do no harm and would only enhance the learning and growth that the kids would experience in their first encounter with the world of formal education. Not only would the kindergarteners become more socially adept at an early age, the all-day kindergarten format would be more convenient for parents who work full-time.
The proposed fee for a student to attend all-day kindergarten could prove to be significantly less than the price of an afternoon daycare or alternative education center. There would be less commuting from place to place throughout the day, and a stable, safe environment of learning is conducive to boosting the education of young children.
Also, those families who have more than one child do not have to return to pick up their children from school multiple times throughout the day.
Simplifying the schedules of parents and creating a regular agenda for the young students to follow from kindergarten through sixth grade will help students adapt to changes with ease because they know that their schooling schedule will remain the same year after year.
Because the additional half-day of class would not be a review of the previously discussed material, the students would have the benefit of learning more subject matter in the regular school year. Those who choose to participate in all-day kindergarten would be better prepared and would have a better base of knowledge to build off of in the years to come. By offering all-day kindergarten, the school district would be setting itself up for continued and increasing success in the future.
Students would be better prepared to take on more challenging courses, and it could potentially increase the amount of honors and AP students in the high school.
All-day kindergarten would set a trend in motion that could raise the level of education throughout the whole district.
Especially with students who begin kindergarten at a disadvantage, whether it be because of a learning disability or other extenuating circumstances, all-day kindergarten would provide an opportunity for students to get on the same page as the other students their age.
An extra half-day of attention and more time to try additional exercises can raise a student’s proficiency significantly before they move on to first grade. All-day kindergarten is a worthwhile experience for students and could do no harm to the educational process.
Those who choose to take part in it will benefit greatly with increased repetitions and extra attention. Students, parents and the district will all profit from all-day kindergarten at one point or another during the student’s 13 year education at Bexley.
Con
By Nick Kolada / Backpage Editor (2007-2008)
First and foremost, children, in most cases, do not enjoy school. This is not to say that some children don’t enjoy learning, but that the actual process of learning in modern society is generally unbearably boring.
There are two main reasons why we should not accept the proposal for a full-day kindergarten class (aside from it being the 5-year-old’s version of Guantanamo Bay).
Ultimately, kids will be deprived of two steps that are necessary for development: they will not be eased into the idea of going to school, and they will be socialized by friends and teachers rather than parents and family.
The first problem is that these children will be exposed to what we will call “the cold shower effect.” Imagine this from a child’s perspective.
You are hanging around your house, mostly with your mom, for your entire life, and then all of the sudden you are in preschool. This is a very large change in your life.
Then you go to kindergarten and are once again exposed to a very drastic lifestyle change. When this happens, inevitably some stress is put on the child.
The all-day kindergarten will put much more stress on the child and will not give him a chance to dip his feet into the idea and get used to modern schooling.
It is like taking a cold shower. If you wait long enough, a warm shower will become cold, but you can bear it because it got colder over time. This is like easing your way into school by going for a half-day in kindergarten and then transitioning into full-day by first grade. If you were to get right into a freezing cold shower, you would have a very hard time staying in the shower. This is the same way that a new kindergarten student would feel in full-day.
The second major problem is that at kindergarten age, children are still socializing at a very rapid rate. We should put this socialization in the hands of the parents as much as possible if we strive for strong family values. If one kid is a bad influence in the class, the whole “bad apple” theory is multiplied by two with all day kindergarten. Children should acquire their values from their parents, and the full-day system prevents that process.
Along with that, there is the problem of over-socialization. This is when a person becomes too sensitive to society’s boundaries.
Since a teacher is paid to teach the values of the society as a whole (good manners, generosity, etc.), the children will become overly sensitive to things like bad words and political incorrectness.
When these things are learned from our parents, we tend to learn the real aspects of them such as when someone saying a person is black rather than African-American is not inherently racist. The problem with over socialization is that it leads to poor self-esteem and other such disorders since it is impossible to match every requirement of society.
The issue is simple. Can a child of 5 or 6 really take the full day? Even if there are positive aspects to it, we should not risk the long term effects of such an institution. This is especially true in a place like Bexley, where the added academic achievement is not a necessity because of an already above average secondary school district. It is simply not right.