Cramming for kindergarten

Wed, 06 Sep 2000 19:27:00 +0000

When I look through photographs of me when I was 5, I see a blissful kid running through sprinklers, going for wheelbarrow rides and playing red light, green light with the neighbors. Kindergarten was somewhere in the scheme of things, but it was just a more organized form of play, with milk and cookies included.

I'm sure that anyone over the age of 30 has similar memories of his or her youth. But many of my fellow baby boomers, especially ones in places like Beverly Hills, Calif., and the Upper East Side of New York, choose not to offer the same carefree life to their own children. Instead, they pre-program their babies to become committed, serious, hypereducated individuals. By the age of 5, these kids have to say goodbye to Barney. For them, playtime is over.

I know this -- intimately -- because I am a personal home tutor in the Los Angeles area, serving clients in Brentwood and Beverly Hills. I work with children of all ages, but primarily 3-to-5-year-olds whose parents want them prepared to test into prestigious private schools. At an age when the word "competition" should not even be in their vocabulary, these children are forced to go in front of a panel of school officials and perform tasks such as putting blocks into the correct holes and writing the alphabet and numbers.

Salon.com > Theresa Heim

Cramming for kindergarten