Quote Originally Posted by Veronica View Post
Our Kindergarten teachers are having a huge issue with their classes this year. One teacher actually had a parent say something like, "I send my kid to school. That's where they are suppose to learn. It's your job to teach them, not mine."

Maybe this is just happening in my little corner of the world. But it does scare me to think about what our future is going to be like.

Veronica
Kindergarten over here is preschool (3-4 yr olds).
And the new entrant/junior school is the equivilent of American kindergarten classes.

And its not happening only in your corner of the wolrd, V. Its about what people value as "real" learning and unfortunately that tends to be measured in literacy and numeracy tests...


Have you seen the work being done in the Italian municipality of Reggio Emilia? That approach to teaching and learning with /working alongside pre-schoolers has been adapted big-time in New Zealand (the Reggio Emilia approach) with particulalr focus on the project appraoch where preschoolers follow their own interests and agendas and teachers support them in their research and understandings. I wish parents could see how much of this they already do themselves...

And also the work of Emmi Pikler (the Loczi Orphanage in Budapest) whose ideas Magda Gerber adapted and has taken back to Ammerican parents, and now the "Pikler Approach" is making huge impacts on how teachers work with infants in early childhood centres...

If only we could get out of the social paralyisis which seems to dictate what you have seen " that real learning happens at school " and are alarmed about. I'll join you and say 'bah humbug' to that idea!