END OF SCHOOL YEAR

Let children grow at own pace

The end of a school year is, symbolically, the end of an era for every child and every family.

While a school year is somewhat artificially determined, unlike a birthday or New Year's, the end of a grade of schooling is often seen as a huge step forward into a new phase. That is even more exaggerated for the child graduating from pre-school and going to kindergarten, or graduating from elementary school and heading to high school or graduating from high school and heading to college.
I often think of a doorway in the home in which I grew up, against which my mother would make me stand once a year and use a pencil balanced on the “point of my head,” as she liked to say, to chart my growth. I would often look at the previous mark in disbelief. Could I ever have been so short? A Grade 1 child looks at a Kindergarten child and says, “Could I ever have been so small, and not able to read?”

Although each day seems to crawl for children, whose only perspective on long-term planning usually encompasses the next two hours, a year produces changes in them that surprises them. As a teacher, I used to keep a portfolio of each student's written work and in the last week of school I would spend some time with each student comparing a piece of writing from September to a piece of writing from June. They would laugh, embarrassingly, about their earlier effort and take considerable pride in their growth during the year. Even though they hadn't noticed it on a daily basis, they had been growing dramatically during the year.
I wonder sometimes if we don't, as educators and parents, lose some perspective by looking forward in too long a term. Are we really worried that our kindergarten child might not get into college? Do we really expect that our young children will be able to balance time demands with school, homework, music lessons, soccer team and whatever else we think we can cram into their day?

I'm not suggesting some kids can't take on great demands, even thrive under such conditions. But I am getting the feeling they are the few and our parenting and educating may think they are the many. We are expecting more and more of children at a younger and younger age, and I think we need to be careful to be sure that we are acting in the best interests of children's growth, not adults' expectations.
I suppose I could have been stood on a box in the doorway and the pencil mark would have shown enormous growth, but it would have been artificial. The reality is that children pass through phases at their own speed, recorded for posterity in pencil scratches and school-year endings, but marked internally by the growth brought about by the many experiences of life. All the pressure and tricks in the book cannot necessarily speed it up nor make it more enjoyable for them.
I take the unpopular position that school should be in session for much more of the year than it currently is, not because I would want to push students further but because I would like to enjoy the learning trip a little more and have students get to the “pencil mark” of learning for the year without having to rush.
Kids grow, that's for sure, but they don't grow on demand. Perhaps we'd be better to encourage more enjoyment of the learning process and let serious growth take care of itself.

Graham Hookey is the author of Parenting Is a Team Sport

Graham Hookey
11 June 2005

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