Thursday, May 8, 2008

Paleofuturist Education

Paleo-Future has a great piece for all my home/un-schooling readers, quoting the San Antonio Light of July 8, 1937:
A Columbia university educator, addressing students at the University of California at Los Angeles, predicted that "by the year 2000, we won't send children to school until they are 10 years old." He said that "while they are young, we will keep them busy building healthy bodies in the fresh air". Evidently, he doesn't know the mammas. They want to get their children into school as early as possible. One of the reasons for the development of the kindergarten is to hasten the time when even devoted mothers can get a little freedom from the demands of their children. But the year 2000 is a long way in the future.
The "mammas" have prevailed in public education, even beyond the year 2000, with government daycare school starting earlier and earlier with 4-year-old kindergarten and Head Start and the like. Telling how well the writer predicted that, actually. Wish the piece gave the name of the Columbia educator, because the whole "building healthy bodies in the fresh air" sounds like a great educational philosophy to me.

1 comment:

Elephantschild said...

I actually saw someone on a random blog once use the term "two-year old preschool."


Rationalization is the strongest human drive; Mark Belling is right.