Is my child ready for school?

This post is a summary and review of the book, "Better Late Than Early" by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. This book gets so much praise among homeschoolers. For years, it was on my to-be-read list, but I thought it was just another set of experts and their opinion on how I should be teaching my children. Sometimes, really most of the time, I get tired of that sort of reading.
Better Late than Early is different.
It is just a presentation of research. Research that was intended to show the benefits of early schooling, but didn't, and out of obligation to the public was published anyway. It does make for dry reading if you don't love academic research.
So, I'll share my take-away points:

• To remove children from their loving parents/home environment before the age of 8 is detrimental. 
• Later readers are better at comprehension because they have a chance to develop the analytical part of their brain before tackling reading.
• States pass laws to require school attendance at 6, 5, 4 years old with no research to back the decision.
• "...the most powerful stimulus to a child's development is warm, continuous mothering." (17)
• "Parents should make up their minds what kind of children they want, and what sacrifices they are willing to make.... They should consider carefully how much they risk when they place their children in environments over which they have little control." (24)
• "There is sufficient evidence from sound educational research to challenge the validity of school laws that require children to be in school before age 8..." (27)

Keep in mind as you read these quotes and summaries that the original goal of this research was to collect evidence IN FAVOR of early schooling. The author's intention was to provide SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE for legislators who were passing or considering passing earlier mandatory school attendance laws. When they couldn't find any, they published what they did find.

• "...not even the 'best' schools compare favorably with a good home." (27)
• Home provides a 3-dimensional experience of real living; school is a 2-dimensional alternative (Louise Ames, Gesell Institute psychologist)
• When parents place their freedom above the needs of their child, some children sense this rejection
• Over time, children accept these replacement parents and will take their word, and accept their values and morals over those of the parents.
• Early schooling (before age 8) requires taking a child from a safe, secure, stable environment and putting him in a crowd where he is expected to suddenly establish a large number of new relationships - psychologically, children ages 3-8 are simply not mature enough to do this well
• Early childhood education dollars would be best spent teaching young parents; giving them the confidence to parent.
• "There is much more to be gained [as a society] by having professionals help parents develop a sense of adequacy with their children than by placing children in environments that substitute for the parents and home." (39)
• Glen Nimnicht, principal psychologist for Head Start was initially a strong proponent of early schooling. After experimenting with early education in Head Start, he concluded, "There is no evidence that a young child needs to go to nursery school... twenty minutes a day playing with his mother does a preschooler as much good as three hours in a classroom." (44)

If you love reading academic research reports and want to seek out the primary sources for the studies and research that Raymond and Dorothy Moore collected, I highly suggest their book Better Late than Early available on Amazon or your local library. Get it and see for yourself. Until then, I'll continue...

• I'm going to repeat this point: TWENTY MINUTES OF PLAYING WITH HIS MOTHER DOES A PRESCHOOLER AS MUCH GOOD AS THREE HOURS IN A CLASSROOM -I just wanted to emphasize that one. So, feel free to stop reading and go play with your babies. You can come back to me later.
• "Children are creatures of simplicity and routine. Care from a variety of adults is confusing and creates anxiety." (48)
• Children need to gradually build attachments beyond mother & father - not be thrown into a sink-or-swim environment.
• "... children thrive better in bad homes than in good institutions." (50) 
• Let's read that last one again, children thrive better in bad homes than in good institutions! 
• So, even if you think you are the worst parent on the planet - your child is still better off with you than in any institution - Wow! Parents, you are important!
• "The child who is involved in home duties feels needed and finds self-respect in carrying his share of the family load." (58)

Praise for chores! 

• Children age 6 & 7 often do not see well enough to read for long periods of time
• With students in grades 1-6, one optometrist recorded half had visual, perceptual or refractive problems severe enough to cause reading difficulty. 90% of them were boys, who happen to develop 6-12 months later than girls.
• A 50 year study in Texas found a correlation between earlier school entry and development of myopia - there were similar findings in Japan

Does your child have trouble seeing in the classroom? Maybe he's not ready to be there.

So, what does this have to do with Vacation Education and unit studies? Well, I think there is clear praise for homeschooling here, at least in the early years. I think if the research were collected today, the findings would continue to support the home over institutional education into much later years as well.

Our unit studies are designed to revolve around real-life experiences and encourage family togetherness. They are made to be done as family activities with a family trip as the centerpiece. 

I have just a few more points to share from the Moores about Better Late than Early and their research findings.

• Studies in the teaching of music find the average child is ready to begin violin at age 8.3
• He is physically able at 8.2
• He is responsive to the study of music at 9.5
• He will make the most progress of all if he starts at 11.5 (p.75)
• Rohwer found everything needed for high school could be gained in 2-3 years (essentially the middle school years) with NO formal education provided prior. (79)
• "The so-called basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic must be considered to be strictly secondary to sound basic development fo mind, emotions and body." (83)
• Douglass Malcolm says reading problems would be about 2% if instruction was delayed until age 9 or 10 - this is consistent with results in Scandinavia, where children historically enter school no earlier than seven (86)
• University of Michigan psychologist Willard Olson found children of the same age vary as much as 4 to 5 years in maturity and readiness for school tasks; 25 years later, Harvard's Jerome Kagen came to a similar conclusion.

I want to stop here and plead with parents who choose to send their children to school - I'm sure you have your reasons, so I won't question that - but, I beg you to ask why the educational model continues to push for earlier and earlier starts in academics when so much evidence points to its detrimental effects on children - YOUR CHILDREN!

And, on the same note, homeschooling parents - are you modeling the social experiment that is American education in your home? If yes, take a moment to ask yourself why? 

I'll close with one last quote from the Moore's book and again suggest that you read the research for yourself on Better Late than Early

• "Premature teaching often results not only in damage to the child, but also in an enormous amount of wasted effort by parents and teachers who feel compelled to teach skills and facts too early." (78)

If you are ready to start some fun educational activities with your family, you can find some of my best activities in the unit studies at Currclick - author Corinne Johnson