A poem by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. I previously posted a video with a song she wrote.
Time
They have no time for show and tell.
They have no time for play.
They have no time for read aloud
for they must work all day.
They have no time for puppet shows.
They have no time to rest.
They have no time to draw or paint
for they must take a test.
They know their reading levels.
They all have Google Drive.
They are making PowerPoints.
They are four and five.
They’re busy on those iPads
where they can’t make a mess.
They must achieve to please us.
We won’t take any less.
Soon they will be teenagers.
More quickly than we know.
Will they one day forgive us?
Where did their childhoods go?
© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So true. So on point. As the parent of a kindergarten student in a public school, I think the children spend way too much time on a rug starting at fancy power point lessons that the teacher, bless her, has done a good job of putting together, but that focus on and emphasize aspects of learning these young minds are not ready for.
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We’ve told our son’s teacher that he won’t be doing all his homework because it would require cutting back on after-school activities or sleep, both of which are more important.
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Good for you! I think we need an opt-out movement for homework.
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Presumably you aren’t talking about high school? or college ; )
I like the PS 166 (I think) principal’s “no homework” policy. Seems as if all public elementary schools should follow that.
I think there is a question whether middle school homework is necessary or not. Or how much. Presumably there is a “choice” system and parents can opt into a more academic (i.e. more homework) or less academic school. A parent whose kid went to Lab Middle School wrote a very funny piece for The Atlantic a few years back about trying to do his kid’s homework for a week.
The real problem is that different kids spend more or less time on the same homework. A daydreamer can take an hour to finish what an efficient kid can do in 10 minutes. One hour of homework for one kid can be 3 hours for another. And it isn’t even about one being more “academically prepared” for the school than another. Unless having very strong executive function skills and being very efficient in completing homework is now the primary skill for selection. Come to think of it, if the specialized high schools selected students for those skills, instead of based on the results of one SHSAT, I suspect they would be just as strong academically.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Yes, where did their childhoods go?
Children learn through play, through exploring their surroundings, and yes, through making messes, too.
They are not little automata to be regimented into test-taking machines.
They are children, and shame on the educational “reformers” who have been trying to take their childhood away from them in the interests of the educational-industrial complex.
Apparently, not one of them has studied normal childhood development.
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When Elkind wrote “The Hurried Child” years ago, he hoped people would listen and engage children’s natural curiosity. For a time, they did. In the post NCLB world, we have the hurried child on steroids!
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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So good! Thank you. Now, how do I tame these 3 kindergarteners I have so I can do the PALs test with the 2nd graders?
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