school until at least age 6. Before that, the findings contend, children are not socially, emotionally, or developmentally ready to contend with the rigors of a curriculum.
It won't come as any surprise to you that my favorite recommendation is that children under age 6 engage in a year of play-based learning before they start school.
Cambridge Primary Review co-author and chairwoman Gillian Pugh said forcing subject-based learning onto four-year-olds could affect their confidence.
"They are not going to learn to read, write and add up if you have alienated children by the age of four and five,'' she said. "If
they are already failing by age four-and-a-half or five, then it's
going to be quite difficult to get them back into the system again.''
And it will be darn hard, if not impossible, to reignite the love of learning they were born with.
Most European children don't start school until they turn six and in Sweden, Poland and Finland, the country that's number-one in the world in literacy and numeracy, they begin at age seven.
'Nuff said?