Precocity, Academic Kindergarten, School Stress, and Boys

There's been a lot going on in the last few weeks.  This is more in the way of jottings in a notebook, rather than a studied response.

• Bewailing the state of handwriting  (for another view, see Tom Kunz, "Why handwriting is History"
• Concocting A Cure for Kids with Issues (on "vision therapy" -- pro and con article by Judith Warner. Also see Laura Novak's 2007 article, Seeing Double
• Pressure Cooker Kindergarten,  Patti Hartigan's August 30 2009 article for the Boston Globe
• Why Our Kids Won't Go To Kindergarten, the third in a series on homeschooling at Salon, by Andrew O'Hehir
• New Data on Why Boys are Falling Behind, by Richard Whitmire (more Whitmire at Why Boys Fail)
• East Palo Alto Academy Elementary School (a project of the Stanford University School of Education) is failing.  More commentary at Joanne Jacobs.

Comments

[Adelaide]

There was another handwriting article I really enjoyed.

It talked about how the skills needed to hold a pen or a pencil are like the ones you need for silverware, and gave some developmental steps.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5335227_teach-handwriting-using-silverware.html

(Karbyn also says, "Smart kids play with playdough").