How to prepare your child for college

Children Today, Jan-Feb, 1991 by Marianne Modica

Recently I attended a mother's "class coffee" given by my son's nursery school. There we sat around the table, mothers of the future leaders of the world, anxiously wondering if our children were being adequately prepared for the arduous tasks that lay ahead of them. We eyed each other suspiciously--who among the group could boast that her child was most advanced? Which little Johnny or Susie was learning the alphabet the quickest? Who was most proficient in the completion of worksheets, and who excelled above the rest in coloring within the lines? Although unspoken, these questions loomed over us like a cloud as we politely sipped our coffee and munched daintily on our biscuits.

Yes, these mothers agreed, it is important for our children to have the best possible preparation for the giant step they will take next year--kindergarten. We all know that socialization is important, but soon our children will enter the world of academics for keeps, and no concerned parent could want their child to fall behind his or her peers at the beginning of this juncture. After all, we reasoned, our little Einsteins will be applying to college some day, and will later enter the career market with its strenuous competition for the best positions in their chosen fields. It is our responsibility to make sure they have every possible advantage when this day comes. The group consensus was that we wanted (and were paying good money for) a nursery school experience in which our children did more than "just play."

Sound familiar? These are common concerns and I have often heard them shared by parents before. Still, I was amazed at the intensity manifested by those mothers that day. What an enormous amount of pressure to put on ourselves and our children!

Perhaps it is time for us as parents and educators to take a careful look at how we can best prepare our children for future academic success. The "Back to Basis" movement of a few years ago may have created some confusion regarding what "basics" are really important in giving our children a good educational foundation during the preschool years. There has been a disturbing trend toward demanding more and more of our children academically, and at a younger age than ever before. Many early childhood specialists believe that the question is not if academic subjects should be taught in early childhood, but how they should be taught. What early experiences can best provide our little ones with the all-important foundation they will need to reach their academic potential in later years?

Noted child development expert Jean Piaget theorized that children between the ages of two and five are in what he called the "pre-operational" stage of development. During this stage children are not yet able to think in abstract terms, but learn through concrete experiences involving the world around them. It is important that children be given all kinds of hands-on activities with a variety of materials in order for them to develop the foundational skills they will need for later abstract thinking. The use of worksheets and rote memorization may give the illusion that children are making great academic strides, but they must experience the process of discovery first hand in order for real learning to take place.

For example, the business of reading requires more than simple decoding of symbols, or phonics. The reader must be able to distinguish between figure (the written symbols) and ground (the background). She must know that reading (in English) progresses from left to right, and of course must have a basic understanding that written symbols can be translated into meaningful words and stories. So when you or a preschool teacher reads to your child, it is not only a pleasant way of sharing time together. Your child is absorbing the fact that these marks on the page mean something, and something fun and important, too. When your child draws or paints, he is not only making pretty pictures, but developing the ability to differentiate between figure/ground. When your child looks at a picture book or story strip, she is learning to view written material in a left to right progression. And you thought children were just having fun!

The same principle applies in other subject areas, as well. Many concrete experiences are needed before a child can begin to deal with the abstract complexities of math, for instance. While the concept of "twoness," for example, may seem innate to most adults, it is not. Number readiness must be developed through actual practice in counting objects, and through other mathematical experiences within the environment. As the child has the opportunity to give out napkins during snack time, for example, he works out the idea of one-to-one correspondence.

Through the activities of classifying and grouping objects into sets, children build a foundation for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. They begin to form concepts of size, quantity and measurement through informal play with shapes, puzzles, blocks and other manipulatives. The knowledge gained through many interactions with these materials will later be needed not only for basic mathematical functions, but also for geometry, algebra, and the like. Concepts that are formulated through these hands-on experiences are prerequisites to later entry into the abstract world of numbers.