The Learning Network: Are Adults Hurting Young Children by Pushing Them to Achieve?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

An article this weekend described a program in New York City in which parents pay $200 to $300 a month for children as young as two and three years old to spend up to an hour twice weekly being tutored in math and reading skills to get ahead. What do you think of programs like this? Why do you think more and more parents seem to be interested in them?

In “Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?” Kate Zernike writes:

Eze is 3. She is neither problem child nor prodigy. And her mother, Gina Goldman, who watches through a glass window from the waiting room, says drilling numbers and letters into the head of a 3-year-old defies all the warmth and coziness of her parenting philosophy — as well as the ethos of Eze’s progressive preschool. But she began bringing Eze and her older brother to these tutoring sessions nearly a year ago on the advice of a friend, and has since become the kind of believer who is fueling a rapid expansion of Junior Kumon preschool enrichment programs like this one, a block from the toddler-swollen playgrounds of Battery Park City.

As competition in education has spread down, the tutoring industry has followed.

Research suggests that there is little benefit from this kind of tutoring; that young children learn just as much about math, if not more, fitting mixing bowls together on the kitchen floor. But programs like Kumon are gaining from, and generating, parents’ anxiety about what kind of preparation their children will need — and whether parents themselves have what it takes to provide it. For those whose idea of enrichment is introducing “Buenas Noches, Luna” into their toddlers’ bedtime reading ritual, this is yet another reminder that no matter how much you do, there is always some other program that — who knows? — just might mean a difference.

Students: Tell us what you think of programs like the one described in this article. Did you experience anything like this as a young child yourself? If so, how did it affect you? In general, do you tend to agree with those in the article who feel it is a good way to set young children on a path to future academic and professional success, or with those who feel that children this age learn what they need to know through play? Why?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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