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Comment by Thlom | Hacker News Reader

This is an aside, but is there a curriculum in kindergarten in your country? Kindergartens were closed for a couple of months in my country, but there were no virtual "teaching" at all. I don't know what in the lords name my kids would get out of any virtual teaching. It's not like it's a school where there's things to learn. They mostly play outside and at most learn to sit by a table and eat a meal, to get dressed and put on their shoes and how to hold a pencil. And stuff like that.

I find it interesting how different pre-school is in different countries.

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What you think of as kindergarten would be termed daycare in the US, or potentially preschool, depending on the age of the children.

In the US, kindergarten is the first year of compulsory education - traditionally children would go for half a day, but I think more and schools offer it as a full day now to take into account having both parents in the workplace.

> In the US, kindergarten is the first year of compulsory education

Usually, not.

It's generally the first year of free, available education which most people take advantage of because it's free.

First grade is usually the first year of compulsory education (e.g., in California a student must be admitted to kindergarten at parent request if they turn 5 before September 1 of the school year and to transitional kindergarten if they turn 5 between September 2 and December 2, but compulsory education starts at age 6.)

This is the first time I’ve heard of kindergarten being less time in school than any of the other grades. I went 30+ years ago, and never heard of anyone going for half a day.

Some states in the U.S. only fund 1/2 day kindergarden. Full day exists, but requires the parents to pay more for that.

Used to be half a day in my time. I suspect it is different in different countries.

I was in kindergarten in the early 90s and it was a half day. The school had two sessions though, so half the kids had morning classes, the other half had afternoon classes.

Other countries have "daycare" style unstructured environments for children up to age 7 though, which would encompass US kindergarten age.

In some states 1st grade or age 7 is when you have to go to school

My mother is a kindergarten teacher and was "teaching remotely", which was pretty much setting up a shared google drive with parents, sharing with them weekly activities and then asking the parents to send pictures/videos of the kids performing the activities.

There is indeed a curriculum here. It's obviously pretty lightweight and not very strict, but kids are expected to know things like animal names/sounds, the ABC, have some musical/coordination skills...

The US has decided that the way to increase the educational opportunity of disadvantaged kids is to put them into school earlier and earlier- there are programs which put kids into public education as early as 3 years old. The fear of 'falling behind' other countries has turned Kindergarten from an optional half-day of play and socialization to a full day program with a real curriculum- not just basic reading/math but in many cases science and social studies standards.

The unspoken implication here, which I've always found to be an ethical nightmare, is that the intellectual and activist classes in America have quietly decided that poor families are incapable of raising their children properly, so the state should step in and do it "correctly".

It is perfectly acceptable in educated circles in the U.S. to state that kids from "disadvantaged families", should be taken out of their families' homes from 7 AM to 7 PM to get "additional enrichment opportunities", in other words, raised by the state.

It may well be that you could increase grades and test scores this way, but I have some serious issues with the degree to which we're comfortable separating children from their families, because we've decided that we know what's best for everyone.

Reminds me of how the American government made a big push in the second half of the 19th century to remove Native American children from their homes and send them to boarding schools to "civilize" them.

> Reminds me of how the American government made a big push in the second half of the 19th century to remove Native American children from their homes and send them to boarding schools to "civilize" them.

One great resource to get your toes wet on this topic is to read the "Neither Dog nor Wolf" series by Kent Nerburn [1].

I was going to link to the Goodreads for the books, but when I went there just now it had full page ads that completely changed the styling of the page. So f that.

[1] https://kentnerburn.com/books/

People can't complain about achievement gaps and then also complain about the only ways to lower them. When one parent is in prison and the other is working nonstop, how is a kid supposed to learn from their parents all the things kids are expected to know by kindergarten?

I wasn't complaining about the achievement gap. I think we're placing far too much emphasis on academic performance at the expense of the individual families and certain social classes and cultures, all the while pretending that the very significant moral questions around this approach don't exist.

If we're going to have the state effectively raise the children of certain social classes in the name of academic and economic achievement, we need to be clear as day and openly state exactly what we are doing, and why we think it's the right thing to do.

My guess is that we haven't had this conversation thus far because to do so would reveal the arrogance of the educated classes in the U.S. and show folks just how little the elites think of them and their families.

In northern Europe 90+% of children between 1 and 6 attends daycare. Both the very rich and the very poor. It's a very good way for the kids to learn critical social skills and having fulfilling days. But I do appreciate the huge differences between the US and Europe, both in the labor market, family and welfare.

> complain about the only ways to lower them.

When you say "the only way", you are ignoring other solutions

> When one parent is in prison and the other is working nonstop

Should we be putting that parent in prison? Should we be forcing the other parent to work nonstop to provide for their family?

IMO in a complex, vicious feedback loop like this (namely, cultural and systemic discrepancies in outcomes and opportunities), you have to use every solution, weighted for effectiveness and weighted against backlash and unintended consequences. In some cases you really want state-provided educational daycare. In some you really want the parents to have more time with the kids, in some you really don't (I know personally of some cases in rural "red neck" towns where kids' parents were the worst influence in their lives). If non-violent parents are put in prison, that's a problem. If violent parents are not put in prison, that is also a problem. You have to address peer influences. You have to support families who have the potential to do well. You have to improve access to means of family planning (education, birth control, etc.). You have to try to persuade people to do things differently than the way that keeps them in poverty. You have to do all of these things.

And the school days have gotten longer and longer, and the homework both far heavier and far easier at the same time. They're optimizing for control, not education. The US upper-middle classes value themselves so highly that they think that total control by middle management will inevitably breed success.

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