SCHOOL ENTRANCE AGE
From still another area of
experimentation, a review of more than twenty comparative studies of early and
late school entrants suggests that children who enter later excel in
achievement, adjustment, leadership in general, social-emotional development, and
motivation. These studies have been made
of high-, middle-, and low SES youngsters, and
measurements have been taken at virtually all grade levels with substantially
the same results.
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Yet the work of many
researchers and much clinical experience suggests that young children are not
ready for visual-perceptive aspects of reading until they are at least eight
years of age, and for some children it may be as late as ten.
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Some children who cannot
adjust to the difficulties of near vision find reading so uncomfortable that
they give up trying to learn.
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He (Wepman)
suggested that if we in
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Note that when the research
in these areas--neurophysiology, vision, hearing, intersensory perception, parental deprivation, cognition,
and so forth--is interrelated, there is a remarkable similarity of findings
respecting age of readiness to leave home and go to school--seven or eight to
eleven or twelve. This integration of maturity levels (IML) suggests that until
the child has reached a chronological age of at least eight to ten, parents and
educators should question the desirability of formal schooling.
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Joseph Halliwell,
in his "Reviewing of Reviews of School Entrance Age and School
Success," wrote that
The analysis of the reviews
on entrance age and school success in the elementary school indicates
conclusively that...early entrance to first grade does result in lower
achievement... the advantages of postponing early entrance to first grade
programs as they are presently conducted are very real.
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Torsten Husen reported his study of
mathematics (and later language) teaching in thirteen countries. His
correlations were analyzed by William Rohwer, who
found essentially that the earlier children went to school the more negative
their attitudes toward schooling.
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The Stanford ECE (Early
Childhood Education) public policy research team, which worked in this field
for a number of years, could not find a single state that had early school
mandates based on replicable research.
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Most children, according to
replicated research, should not be in preschool or day care. As I shall show,
the best all-around development occurs in a wholesome home environment.
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Many researchers have
demonstrated that the child needs a simple environment with few distractions,
involving a relatively few people, adults or children. Urie Bronfenbrenner observes that the more people there are
around the child, the fewer opportunities he has "for meaningful human
contact."
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World Health Organization ECE
(Early Childhood Education) head John Bowlby suggests
that dangers from lack of close mothering may exist until eight years of age or
older.
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As a result of these and
other findings, Bowlby has concluded that even a
relatively bad home with relatively bad parents is generally better that a good
institution.
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Glen Nimnicht,
a chief Psychologist for Head Start, now suggests that "the early years
are crucial in the development of a child's potential ... But there's no
evidence that a young child needs to go to nursery school. It's my hunch that twenty minutes a day
playing with his mother does a preschooler as much good
as three hours in a classroom.