6:46pm July 13, 2013

➸ Janna's weird crap: Making the point about therapy more sharply

youneedacat:

realsocialskills:

Three year old children in preschool are some of the least socially powerful people in our culture. But, they are routinely given a lot of choices about what they do and how they do it.

They’re not usually required to do painful and boring things over and over with no…

I’m really lucky I went to this weird little Catholic Montessori preschool, the only school I ever enjoyed. They just left educational materials everywhere, divided us into indoor and outdoor groups, and let us do whatever we wanted.

They noticed I didn’t understand I was supposed to stay either indoors or outdoors, so they let me do either one. They noticed I played alone and screamed when approached by kids, and maybe also when approached by nuns? And called my parents. But they didn’t force me to interact.

I think my parents also made sure they didn’t mind I want toilet trained.

And it was the only school i ever enjoyed. I think I went for two years.

Modern preschools scare me. The way rich parents use them to try to make sure their kid is prepared for college or something when they’re only four years old. WTF. Seems like lots of kids never get to be kids anymore, their entire life is so institution like it’s scary.

Montessori preschools aren’t like that anymore, so far as I can tell. They’re really prescriptive about what kids are allowed to do at the different stations (like you can go play in the kitchen, but you aren’t allowed to do certain things and you have to play in a particular way and at that point is it even really playing anymore). I wouldn’t want my kids in one. Then again, I’m dubious on the value of preschool anyway. Based on the fact that I never went and on my experiences working with kids who were in preschool.