My son will not be attending public school as of May 8. I will be home-schooling him for the rest of the year. What follows are my reasons for pulling him out.

My son has enjoyed much of his time in his kindergarten class; especially the precious though limited time spent on art, music and playtime. After observing “stations” however, and my son's (and other students’) demeanor during that period, I am gravely concerned about the continued academic emphasis that is still being wrought upon these young children.

As an experienced, credentialed teacher myself with a background in child and language development, I am sad to see that the irresponsible pattern of shoving academics onto young children has gotten worse than it was even a few years ago.

Not only is it developmentally inappropriate to expect 5- and 6-year-olds to sit still daily for three, 30-minute periods doing worksheets and copying sentences off the chalkboard, it is educationally unsound. When my son was sick last weekend he told me he hoped he wouldn’t get well by Monday because he didn’t want to go to school. What adult alive today remembers hating kindergarten?

I know I’m not the only one who sees the danger here. Remediation rates are starting to increase in the fourth grades when students have to start actually reading to learn – not just sound out words to please the teacher. Public schools are sacrificing the development of the right brain to make their immediate test scores look good, but hobbling students’ overall brain and academic development by focusing so exclusively on the left brain.

Very young students are also “misbehaving” in class at alarming rates – not surprising since it’s not natural for them to do the things they are being expected to do. Why are we surprised when children act like children? Do we also argue with water because it’s wet or criticize a dog because it can’t meow nicely like a cat does?

My son resents having to miss recess if he can’t finish his “work” and has learned to copy from the children sitting next to him because he’s afraid the classroom aide will get mad if he circles the wrong answer. He dreads this endless “circling and crossing out” that pervades his school day and follows him home as homework.

I know that finger-painting, Play-Doh, blocks and dress-ups are not tested in the later grades, but real academics are; academics that now have no foundation to build on since they are taught in isolation, through endless drill, mindless copying, and parroting back answers that the Education Testing Service has decided students need to know to make their schools look good for the newspapers and local Realtors.

I feel for the excellent teachers, my son's included, who are caught up in a system that determines the direction of education by the current whim of the public and government officials. These days it shouldn’t even be necessary to go to college and study brain development, child development or developmentally appropriate educational programming. Teachers are reduced to classroom managers who can photocopy nice workbook pages and hand out glue and scissors for the exciting cut and paste activities.

Gale Tompkins lives in Kelseyville.

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