David Anderson49 said:I honestly think grading kids in first grade is totally counterproductive—it’s pure idiocy, really. I was lucky enough to go to a school modeled after the French system back in the day, where everything in those early years was handled through play and drawing. Even the educational experts say that's the superior way to do it. It feels like we just have this sick obsession with pressure here, which ends up causing kids actual trauma sometimes. At best, they just end up scared and confused. I used to laugh at some of the parents who would drill their little ones to read and write before they even stepped foot in kindergarten. Look, I get wanting them to be educated, but forcing a five-year-old to master literacy before school starts? That’s just insane.
So, here I am, my daughter is seven and she’s already getting grades finalized. One subject is a solid B, but for everything else, it’s hovering between a C and a B-minus... and this is first grade. My experience as a parent has been exhausting; I feel like I'm dealing with an eighth grader instead of a little kid.
And don't even get me started on the rules—apparently, according to the handbook, a teacher isn't allowed to help a student if they don't understand a question. They're supposed to figure it out themselves. Every single question? That's what the teacher told me. To me, it sounds completely nonsensical. No one is asking for the answer to be handed to them; they just want the question to be explained. And some of these questions—mostly math—are so convoluted I swear they were designed by a masochist. I went through a college program where we dealt with heavy-duty math and mechanics, and I can tell you for a fact that some of these problems are just abnormal for that age group. Plus, some kids are a year younger than their peers, yet they're treated exactly the same. There is zero individual approach in our school system.
Another huge issue is how they cram every random bit of information into the curriculum later on instead of letting kids specialize early. For instance, we have young people who can tell you the capital of Papua, but we lack actual skilled professionals.
Our education system is regressing when it should be moving forward.
It isn't idiotic to grade them—it's idiotic to grade them poorly.
If I recall correctly, first grade isn't actually "first grade"—kids at that stage are essentially going through a "pre-school transition year," where they are gradually moved from that kindergarten phase of "just playing all day" into a phase where actual learning begins. Besides, if we had school without any kind of grades, it would just feel like another year of daycare for most children (not all, obviously, but enough of them). And frankly, which of us adults takes our jobs seriously if there isn't some sort of accountability mechanism in place?
What’s truly problematic—aside from the curriculum being fundamentally misaligned—is that those first four years should be about instilling a foundation for how to approach learning... basically ensuring that even if they don't love it, they at least don't grow to hate school. As it stands now, kids are coming out of fourth grade as nothing more than a mindless heap of memorized facts—and quite often, they're functionally illiterate.
I can say with certainty that some of the questions are abnormal (for that age group).
Can you give me a few examples?
Having an engineering degree from MIT isn't a guarantee that someone can explain math to a six-year-old. No, I'm really not joking.