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Comment by manojlds | Hacker News Reader

So to admit my daughter to pre kindergarten, the school expects her to know the alphabet already. Talk about pressure.

Well, some schools even expect the parents to be well educated.

That's not unreasonable if you want to select for high performing children. The correlation is very clear.

There are various correlations which are very clear, like parents wealth. The question is whether these are ethical. If every school filters for such criterion, would students from poor or uneducated parents ever have a chance at social mobility? Do we want such a society?

In the US, the voting majority seems to want such a society, otherwise we wouldn't have so many politicians cutting education and other taxpayer funded support to families in need.

Is that hard to teach..I mean..its the alphabet..Excuse my possibly ignorant questioning.

Depends on the pupil. I'm dyspraxic and never learnt the alphabet. It hasn't affected my life or career. Not sure what use it would be to me.

Not sure if troll, but giving the benefit of the doubt...

You are clearly posting a comment comprised of letters of the alphabet. How would one do so without knowing the alphabet, assuming you typed it out rather than dictated it. And well, you also read the original reply. So are you having all that dictated for you? Or are you implying the reading/writing does not require knowing the alphabet (which is difficult to believe, but who knows)?

About the use of an alphabet, have you used a dictionary or any other system that is alphabetically ordered?

Apologise I didn't make it clear. What I mean is learning the order of the alphabet. I was taught read, write and type without ever being able to memorise the alphabet.

The last time I used a system that is alphabetically ordered was in a CD shop 10+ years ago. Im not being sarcastic but I use a dictionary regularly, I just search for word using Google.

> never learnt the alphabet

By this, do you mean that you can't read? Or you can't remember the ordering of the letters? Or that you can recognize whole words but not as being made up of individual letters?

The order of the letters.

Yes, it’s ridiculous that kids can’t just be kids anymore, they already have to be a part of the hamster wheel by age 5-6. Knowing the alphabet at that age is far less important than gaining social skills by playing, and spending carefree time with other children.

Talking about pre kindergarten which happens at age 3 ish in India.

It is expected for them to know the English alphabet. English is not the primary language spoken in most of India, so it is more difficult than it might seem.

It takes months of constant reinforcement at that age.

Even worse if it is a foreign alphabet.

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