My oldest son is 6-years-old. This week, school starts here in our hometown. We homeschool our boys, so heading back to school doesn’t carry quite the same shift in our lives as it does in the lives of most people with children. That said, my oldest son is now entering First Grade.
A friend of mine, who’s son attends a local public school, stumbled upon this list and forwarded it to me asking, “Would our boys be ready for first grade in 1979? I can hardly believe how quickly things change.”
I took a look, and found myself a concurrently amused, startled, and curious. This list asks less about a child’s academic skills than about his overall physical, social, and emotional development.
As someone who has a PhD in Education and has studied various academic trends, I found this list for first-grade readiness particularly interesting. It made me wonder, why as a society are we pushing academics on our children so much earlier than we have in the past? Does today’s average kid graduate with more knowledge than they did in the 1970s? (I’m guessing the answer is no, though I know of no study to answer one way or the other).
In any case, here for your perusal is a list of questions to see if your child is ready for all-day first grade [Copied in whole from HERE]. Answering yes to 10 out of the 12 questions indicates readiness.
- Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction?
- Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth?
- Can you child tell, in such a way that his speech is understood by a school crossing guard or policeman, where he lives?
- Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?
- Can he stand on one foot with eyes closed for five to ten seconds?
- Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels?
- Can he tell left hand from right?
- Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?
- Can he be away from you all day without being upset?
- Can he repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once, as “The boy ran all the way home from the store”?
- Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly?
- Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?
My answers for my 6-year-old son:
- Yes, he’ll be almost exactly 6 years, 6 months old.
- Yes, his first two permanent teeth are coming in now.
- Kind of. He can find our house once we get nearby, but we live on a long mountain canyon road. It’s 3 miles to the edge of town and several miles farther to downtown. It depends on where the starting point would be.
- Yes.
- I think so, but I’d have to ask him to show me. He can definitely do this with eyes open, but closed? I really don’t know.
- Yes.
- Not consistently.
- I don’t know. Again, we live on a mountain canyon road outside of town. The closest thing you might consider a block to our house would take approximately 12 miles to circumnavigate. Can he find places on his own? If they’re nearby. He can go and find things on his own in the market and then find his way back to me. He can walk to and from our neighbor’s by himself. Most parents I know don’t allow their 6-year-olds to walk anywhere by themselves. Again, I’m not sure how to assess this for my child.
- Yes.
- I’ve never tested this, but I’m almost positive he can. He can recite long passages out of books from memory. I’d be surprised if he couldn’t repeat back a sentence.
- Yes.
- Yes.
Looking at this list, I think my 6-year-old can do most of these things. But he’s just on the cusp of many of them, and there are several I’m not sure about (I’ll have to ask him when he gets home).
It’s startling how much standards for how to assess First Grade Readiness have changed in the last 36 years. Today’s kids face a lot more academic pressure even at the young age of 6 than their counterparts did even a generation ago, and the kids of the past were expected to have more self-sufficiency than today’s children.
I realize that society constantly changes and evolves, but this list makes me wonder, are we moving in the right direction?
What do you think? Would your child be ready for First Grade in 1979? Do we expect too much academically of kids today? Do we expect enough of them socially?
I find this so interesting – I do think we have sacrificed resilience and independence for academic excellence. I too wonder if that’s the right balance. The question these days would be “if you let your six year old travel alone would you be judged a very poor mother?”
Unfortunately, I think you’re right. There are a lot of people who judge parents poorly if those parents trust their children to do things on their own (even something so simple as having their child wait in the car for them while the parent runs inside for a minute).
I do think there is far too much pressure academically on small children, disturbing really. Recently I chatted to a young mum who was telling me she was concerned that your 4 year old would be behind at school next year because she doesn’t know her letters! Apparently she says they must know this before they enter school or they fall behind! As I didn’t know if this was try I asked a group of ladies (parents, grandparents and Scripture teachers) if this was true, they said no, many of the children don’t know this. (I also homeschool so I had to ask ‘further afield’)
The pressure today is huge. I have friends with kids in kindergarten who are concerned about the implications of their children’s grades. I feel fortunate to be able to operate outside of that.
We definitely place too much emphasis on academics and I think 1979 has more of the right idea. To me, physical health, awareness of the world and emotional stability are way more important and that seems to be what they were addressing back then. I’m not sure that “book smarts” are worth quite as much as we think they are. A holistic education is what I’m aiming for with my kids.
Incidentally, my youngest wa a full year younger than 6.5 when she began Year 1 and 4.5 when she started school. Fail! x