The Privilege of Delaying Kindergarten

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how glad I am that we delayed kindergarten for our summer boy. Actually, he ended up doing two years of kindergarten, one at a forest school 100% outside, and one year in a traditional classroom. Then I got to thinking about that, while I’m grateful we could give him that time, what a privilege that is.

Delaying kindergarten, also known as red shirting, has become a privileged choice of educated and economically advantaged families in the United States.

Once upon a time, education experts touted the equity of full-day kindergarten programs, Head Starts, and Preschools for All. The idea began noble enough. Who could argue with the goal to provide an academic leg-up and reduced childcare costs for low-income and at-risk families?

In decades past, most early education occurred in the home. Public kindergarten was half-day and preschools were called nursery schools, basically childcare for older children to maybe learn the alphabet. As more families needed to dedicate both parents to income-earning jobs, schools stepped into that gap, attempting to provide that early learning and childcare equitably across the socioeconomic board.

But then, typical American capitalism weighed in and schools had to provide measurable results in order to justify the costs. Instead of just providing safe places to play and explore, places to simply be loved and cared for while parents were at work, places where we nourished the emotional well-being and rolled with the natural curiosity of children, schools were required to crank out academic achievement at levels far beyond the psychological development of their students.

And now the script has flipped. Kindergarten isn’t what it used to be, and people are catching on. The studies show it, and parents see it. It’s just too advanced and too much sitting for five and six year olds. Educated and well-off parents are either paying top dollar for an extra year of childcare or choosing to keep one parent at home at significant income loss in order to delay traditional school until their children are more ready developmentally because they can see the detrimental effects of force-fed early academics and can afford to intervene for their children.

Where once the opportunity to enroll students in early education for all seemed an academic (early learning that was no longer feasible at home) and economic (free childcare) advantage, delaying kindergarten has now become the privileged choice (available only to those who can swing the cost of an extra year at home), while the underprivileged are back to being stuck with a suboptimal option for their children.

And I want to call it like it is—a privilege–because it makes me so sad. To some extent, public school will always have to categorize students, but school can and should be a beautiful and healthy place to grow, not a place just to be force-fed.

Most teachers and administrators grasp that we are pushing students beyond their ability to be productive learners. They see the ramifications every day. Students burned out by fourth grade. Behavior and learning issues that might not be an issue if students were allowed grace to learn at their own pace. Students unable to problem-solve outside the box. Students so used to rote learning and hand-holding that by middle school they no longer know how to learn on their own. Students who assume learning can only happen in a structured classroom with the teacher talking at them. Curiosity and risk-taking discouraged beginning at age four, exactly the age when curiosity and risk-taking should be revered.

On the other hand, students who stay home an extra year or remain in standard childcare settings, or those who do alternative (and costly) programs in the early elementary years seem to have far fewer behavioral and learning challenges, seem far more able and willing to pursue their own learning for learning’s sake, and seem far more engaged in the classroom.

These options are now considered a gift of both time and space. Shouldn’t that gift be the norm?

American bureaucracy always feels compelled to justify its spending only with mathematically measurable outcomes. But what about happiness and excitement for school and learning? What about curiosity and risk-taking? Aren’t these qualities we also want to provide the world? Don’t these qualities also contribute to the GDP?

We must embrace early learning and free childcare options that allow working parents the ability to support their families, but not at the expense of children’s emotional and academic development. It’s important to call out this flip as privilege precisely because the original goal–equity–has had the opposite effect. We must recognize the deviation so we can correct course.

Capitalism has its place, but we must tone it down in the realm of education so that we can, paradoxically, compete later. Simply put, education is outside of immediate measurable competition. Perhaps we can find a way for American capitalism to embrace delayed gratification, if only in this arena.