BBC NEWS | Education | Reading and naughtiness ‘linked’
So let me get this straight; if at the age of under 5, you are not emotionally mature enough to have good pre-reading skills, then going into a classroom environment is not good for you? Oh, and while we are at it, if you aren’t emotionally mature enough for that setting at that age, your pre-reading skills won’t get better in the next two years you spend in that environment.
They are good, these Educational Psychologists, aren’t they? Someone should give them a job doing that kind of thing. Uh-oh… someone did.
I’m not sure that’s a very accurate interpretation of this article!!
Yes, I was just reading that and sighing too.
OMGoodness! What tangled webs they weave. Sigh…
And to think that many of the boys we know round this way who are automously educated don’t want to start reading until they are 7 plus, but in the meantime are building up huge vocabularies, good memories for narrative and complex argument and are not developing behaviour difficulties to boot…well, you know, what do I know! I don’t have a degree in ed psych so I couldn’t possibly have any angle on the glaringly obvious.
Astonishing.
*shakes head in despair*
Well it isn’t an entirely inaccurate one, but it wasn’t supposed to be a deeply academic critique – it was supposed to be the flippant reaction of a home educating parent who thinks most of what goes on in school is a fair old bit of bollocks.
Which, of course, you are almost guaranteed to disagree with, anonymous 🙂
PS – jax – i know you were sighing with me, not with the comment which is now above yours – it was in mod and i only just found it!
No, I agree that a *lot* of what goes on in schools is total bollocks.
However I think I’ve got a pretty balanced view of schools, my opinion of schools hasn’t changed because my daughter attends 4 days a week. Likewise my opinion of the many benefits of HE hasn’t altered.
Your comments about this article, barely relate to the article and I’m baffled as to how you would have a problem with a study that conludes that children struggling with the cognitive skills for reading should be given extra help, considering the input you gave to Fran’s reading.
And where did you get the bit about ed. psyc’s from?!!!
You sound like a member of defensive home educators 😉
Well. I am perfectly entitled to be a member of that. It is exactly what i am. HEers have to defend themselves a lot more than schoolers.
My opinion, based on having read the article, is that they’ve missed something out. My opinion is that what they missed out is that if you are struggling with the emotional maturity to begin reading then a classroom, with or without extra academic help, is perhaps not the place for you at that time. My opinion is that a child bored or frustrated by being asked to acquire skills he is not ready for, does not need to be in a restrictive, sitting down place where the ideal opportunities for releasing his frustration are bullying and troublemaking.
And the comment about ed psychs comes from the fact that i once had a run in with an unbelievably narrow minded and up himself one over Maddy, who was of the opinion that i was imagining all the things that worried me, despite the fact that he’d just done a series of tests that laid out in back and white numbers EXACTLY what i was worrying about. He said, however, i would ruin her life by HEing her, because “children like her” needed the structure of school or they became naughty and difficult. And then when i refused to do his bidding, he wrote a report where he a) spelt all my children’s names wrong and b) put things like “Maddy sleeps with no bed clothes and is left alone while awake at night.”
This report is going to be based on work done by such people, who no doubt would find it impossible to believe that their precious system is probably not the best place for some children at a particular time.
He was obviously a crap ed psych, the three I know are all very pro HE.
But Dr Terri Moffitt isn’t an ed psyc (as far as I can google (and granted my powers of google are limited so I’m quite prepared to be proven wrong)) and it certainly doesn’t tell us that in the article. This study doesn’t say that children who lack the cognitive abilities for reading *should* remain in school, neither does it say they *shouldn’t*. What kind of a shite system would we have if children who weren’t “ready to read” (which is what this study talks about) were denied a place in school?!! HE just isn’t what all families want, even if everyone knew about the merits, many families would choose school. So given that, this study seems to make some very sound suggestions; that such children identified as not coping with reading are given special help…you’re problem is??
I’m sorry you had a crappy assessment for Maddy (you should complain to the BPS if you feel this ed. psyc was unsafe) but that doesn’t mean all psychologists are assholes or that the work they do should immediatly be viewed with such suspicion. In the same way that I know you’ve had a rough time at the hands of some doctors but I also know you don’t think they’re all assholes.
Anyway, hope you have a lovely week 🙂
And yes, you’re right HEers do have to defend themselves continually and it *is* a drag, but I reckon your life, this puddle, is just a far better defence than shredding schools continually 😉
I’m not shedding schools constantly. I’m shredding a largely inflexible system, quite rightly, IMHO. I’m not saying that people should be denied a school place. I DO think though that people who have unready children should be supported to keep them out of it, and nurture them in different ways, rather than being given the impression, as they quite certainly are, that school is the default and that they must throw their children to it, come what may.
Let’s see, how many parents of children, when called in to schgool because their child is performing badly and behaving badly are told “you know, you don’t have to have him here, you could keep him at home for a couple of years till you think he is more ready for it. We’ll give you lots of support doing x,y,z.”
It doesn’t happen nearly often enough. It is one size fits all and i had a conversation today which exactly bears this out. The special help, if it comes, is no use because it is underfunded, without enough time or resource and not fully implemented; too limited and sparing and when it doesn’t work, the parents start getting accusations thrown at them that it ALL stems from their overprotectiveness/permissiveness etc etc etc.
I also sat in a lot of parent group meetings in Maddy’s two years at nursery, listening to parents saying that their children weren’t ready for school and then shrugging helplessly and saying “but what can you do?” And my own experience of bringing Amelie back out speaks volumes for the fact that they don’t have much else to offer. I went in and asked them to offer her more to stimulate and interest her and they had NOTHING else to offer and no time to think it up in. I suspect that this article is a nice new angle for them to wash their hands of children in trouble – “you need help because you are naughty and weren’t ready for school, here comes our one size fits all fixit package, oops, it didn’t fix you, you must be a failure after all.”
TBH, i think you are far more defensive than i am. I’ve had 3 children in preschools, i’ve known a plenty of parents who do/don’t think school is the best place for their child next and more than anything else it annoys me that when we see problems in young children starting school, what gets offered is MORE rigid structure, not more opportunity to develop into a person freely. And no one mentions HE to worried parents- the idea of children being better off outside the system is not to be mentioned.
And in answer to your remark about my intervention in Fran’s reading – she was just 6 when that started and i deemed her individually ready – which is a very dfferent thing doing it at 4 regardless.
*How* am I more defensive Merry? I made sure you knew it was me when I made the comment as I gave you my well know email. I haven’t once attempted to dismiss the many benefits of HE, I was quite open about why Pip went back to school and that those reasons had nothing to do with what I beleive is philosophically completely sound!!
I have no interest in defending schools or schooling wholesale.
I would love to see EO forms distributed with nursery/playgroup info but even within that scenario the reality is that the majority of people would choose school. Just look at how many know about it and school their children or do it and then return to school. I entirely agree that the system needs massive change to meet the educational and social needs of all children attending.
But to reiterate, I think your post misrepresents this study; it makes a link between children who have struggled with reading and “naughty” behaviour. It suggests that such children should be targeted for extra help in gaining those reading skills. The cynic in me says that this is more in the interests of crowd control than meeting the needs of the individual and obviously it would be better if the study concluded that HE should be discussed for children not emotionally ready for school (and actually that may be a different group of children from those identified in this study anyway), but even then I propose that most parents would rather the reading help. If this study guides policy, that would surely be good. If some of those kids have an easier school life because they receive additional help learning to read, then that’s got to be good.
Reading my 2nd comment back I can see that my tone could be read to be more confrontational than I intended, I’m sorry for that 🙁
I think the way in which you could be seen to be more defensive is that you come to a place where home ed is being practised and explained and post as defensive school parents anonymous…
could be wrong there, but that would be one of my first guesses. If that isn’t confrontational in and of itself, regardless of the tone of successive comments, then I don’t know what is. It’s all very well to say that Merry knew who it was, but the rest of us didn’t. Odd game to play, I’m afraid.
I did say, some time back, that it was little more than a flippant remark based on my first thoughts on reading it. I do flippant reactions on here quite a bit 😉 It gets me into trouble.
But you know, i am passionately anti-school system. Even if HE wasn’t perfect for my child, and i have made 2 very independent decisions on that so far, i would still not make a decision for school easily. If you want people who are going to be positive about the implementation of quick-fixes in schools, i suspect a home ed blog is probably not the place for it 🙂
I’m not only pro-HE, i’m more than that. I respect everyone’s right to do what is best for their child and make positive and informed choices, but for me, schools are not places that do education well. I’d make a mockery of myself if i pretended i thought otherwise. It isn’t that i’m narrowminded or uninformed, it is simply that this, HE v school, is my one true passion.
If my children had had anything more expected of them in nursery and preschool than playing, they wouldn’t have gone. In fact the reason Fran didn’t take up the place offered to her at Maddy and Amelie’s nursery was because at that time they still did worksheets everyday, at 3 years old. And i firmly believe that Fran would have struggled to read more and for longer in school and that that struggle would have harmed her.
I’m a Charlotte Mason enthusiast – i think formal education should start, at the earliest, at 7. I’m better at saying that in theory than i am at relaxing into it, but i do believe it.
If literacy hours countrywide are not providing good reading results, i just fundamentally don’t believe that more of it will help. They don’t have the resources to do it. To me, it is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted without even noticing you’ve accidentally shut 16 small mammals into the pen and left them to starve while you go and chase the horse.
I’m sorry Jax, it was a reference to Sarah’s blog and considering the traffic there, I didn’t think anyone would *not* know it was me really. It was supposed to be ironic, but I guess if you didn’t know who I was it wouldn’t be.
Lol… 🙂