As an educator and the owner and director of Building Blocks Playgroup, I find it difficult to believe the stress and strain that some parents are subjecting their children to in ‘academic preschools’. Children are being forced to sit for 30 - 40 minutes of circle time , and being advised to get the kid tested for ADHD when they fidget:
Her son’s preschool teacher demanded that she get her 3-year-old tested for ADHD when he couldn’t sit still for the half-hour stretches required by his preschool, one touted by her Blackhawk neighbors for its academic rigor and competitive edge.


The sense of competitiveness that is saturating the child raising experience for a certain class of people is becoming sickening, the preschool teachers are in turn becoming tyrants and overstepping their authority in the style of Orwell’s 1984:
Her son’s preschool teacher demanded that she get her 3-year-old tested for ADHD when he couldn’t sit still for the half-hour stretches required by his preschool.
Since when was a preschool teacher also a trained medical professional with the power to diagnose illness and prescribe treatment?

Reality check:
A 3 year old child who can sit still for 13 minutes is a miracle, forget about 30 minutes, this is like being stuck on a plane 8 hours on the tarmac with no food or booze for an adult!

Reality Check:
A 3 year old child who is turned off to learning by a shallow, pedantic, tyrannical preschool regime, and clueless status chasing materialistic parents will not be getting into Dartmouth 14 years later, but does stand a good chance of ending up in rehab (think Lindsay Lohan, River Phoenix)

Reality Check:
It is nature, not nurture. In a given population the average IQ is around 100. This means 50% are above that IQ level, and, more importantly, 50% are below. There is no Lake Wobegon, nowhere are all the children above average, deal with it. The odds of your (or any) child being sufficiently above average to succeed on his or her own merits (think Bill Gates), rather than affirmative action, quotas, or connections (think George Bush), or dumb luck (think Tony Danza) are remote. There is no preschool, grade school, high school or university that will change this.

Reality Check:
Some of the wealthiest entrepeneurs had no college at all.

Reality Check:
This is 21st century U.S.A., not 20th. 75% of all new jobs are in the service industry (burger flipping,waiter, bartender), jobs that cannot be outsourced or H1b’d (though there are lots of new arrivals to our shores willing to work those jobs cheap), and our currency is crashing on world markets, is a militaristic preschool really the best preparation for the future?

A child has a very little time to enjoy being a child before being overwhelmed by the stresses and responsibilities of the ‘real’ world, how about focusing more on letting them fly on the wings of their imaginations, rather than shackling them to a horrible ersatz corporate environment in order to hasten the transformation into a bitter, soulless, status chasing, cubicle zombie?

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