What I learned in kindergarten (and it wasn’t much)

Brookline is an affluent near-suburb of Boston. If you look at it on the map, it looks more like a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by Boston. When, in in the late 1800’s, they had their chance to become part of Boston, the residents of Brookline voted overwhelmingly to remain independent. So instead of being the wealthiest section of Boston, Brookline is one of the wealthiest communities in Massachusetts. And – no surprise: they usually go hand in hand – the possessor of one of the best school systems in the state.

But these days, having one of those top performing school systems means the pressure is on. Kids coming up through the system are expected to go to college, and to a good college at that. And the pressure starts young.

Kindergarten has traditionally been a time for storybooks and building blocks. But in Brookline, teachers and parents are complaining that students spend far too much of their day at their desks like office workers — and not enough time learning through play.

Amanda Livengood said she was floored by the pressure-cooker environment her 5-year-old daughter encountered in kindergarten this past school year in Brookline, one of the state’s highest-performing school systems.

“It totally knocked her self-esteem down,” she said. “She would come home and say she hates school or she hates reading. She didn’t want to go to school. She was calling herself stupid. If I tried to quiz her on things, she would shut down.” (Boston Globe)

Okay, I’m probably not the only one thinking that Amanda Livengood regrets her choice of the word “quiz” here, but I get the point. No one should come home from kindergarten rattled by the academics. Hurt feelings. Bruised knees. Tattling on the kid who wet their pants. But anxiety about the workload? Feeling stressed out about underperforming? Not good.

For the past month, Brookline has been embroiled in an emotional debate over whether kindergarten has become too academically demanding, causing anxiety levels of 5- and 6-year-olds to climb.

And now, a couple dozen Brookline kindergarten teachers are asking the schools “to bring more joy and play back to the program.”

Good for them.

I have a pretty good memory, but I only recall a few episodes from kindergarten.

On day one, I marched boldly in, but I was immediately cowed. A December baby, I was still 4 and one of the youngest kids in the class. (My crush was on a kid named Ronnie whose birthday was the day after mine, which was enough for me to crush on him.) I remember sitting at the edge of things, watchfully. (On my first report card, Mrs. Julia B. Hackett – who was born to teach kindergarten – wrote that I was “shy and cried easily.”)

That first day, the patrol line walked out a different entry way than the one my mother and brother Tom had used to escort me on my big first day. They were going to meet me after class and walk home with me. (After that, I was going to be on my own, as free range kids were in those long-ago days.) When I realized we were going out a different doorway, I panicked that they wouldn’t find me. Fortunately, our neighbor Yvonne, who was in 8th grade, grabbed me as I tried to run back into the school, and made sure I found my mother and Tom.

After that, my memories are episodic, and none of them involve anything that even remotely resembled an academic challenge.

We colored. We drew. We counted out numbers using red, yellow and blue pegs. We clapped rhythm sticks together. We made paper chains for Christmas decorations. We made hideous pencil holders (Christmas gifts for our fathers) out of soup cans – the only color available was a mucky, ghastly blue. We drew flowers on construction paper to make Valentine’s and Mother’s Day cards. We learned how to use brass fasteners to make an open and close Easter egg that a chick popped out of.

I learned that you can draw an Eskimo on a paper plate, using the fluted rim for the fur around an Eskimo’s hood.

I learned that if you shake milk long enough, it turns into butter.

And I learned to be one of the two trusted envoys empowered to take our class’s jar of butter to the principal’s office, where we presented it to Gates Lane’s principal, Mr. Francis Hickey.

I remember the excitement of handing out (and receiving) Valentines. That it’s fun to twirl around the Maypole. And that people sometimes do stinky things. As when, on a nice spring afternoon, when our windows were wide open, some “big boys” passing by – I’m guessing they were college/young soldier age – tossed a smoldering cigar through the window, where it landed in the midst of our reading circle.

After a bit, I was no longer shy and crying easily. (Although I’m still an introvert who’s quick to tears. It’s just that I’m an extremely well-compensated one.)

But I never remembered feeling stupid.

It helped that I was naturally bright. I came from a house full of books. My parents were both readers, as was my grandmother, who lived downstairs from us. So we all became readers, too. My sister Kath – two years older – read to me all the time, and taught me some rudiments or reading. (That or I memorized the books she read to me.) We were all storytellers.

Numbers came easily to me, as well.

Perhaps there were kids who were challenged by the Worcester Public Schools kindergarten curriculum of 1954-1955, but I don’t remember thinking that there were any kids in my kindergarten class who were dumb. Who feels stupid at Maypole?

Things changed when I switched over to parochial school in first grade.

Not that I was one of the kids made to feel stupid.

But from the get-go, first grade was about separating kids out. The academic haves and the have nots. I was one of a handful of kids in Our Lady’s reading group. We were seated by academic ability. I sat in the “smart row girls”. Report cards (throughout grammar school) were read out loud by the pastor of the church. Grades 1 through 8 seemed designed to humiliate and belittle kids who didn’t learn all that easily. From Grade 5, they added on humiliating and belittling the kids who were really smart. (“Who do you think you are?” might just as well have been my school’s motto.)

But I was a bright kid, a good student.

I always had my hand up. My grades were all in the 90’s. I always knew the answer.

Except for that one time.

I rarely missed school, but I was out sick the day Sister Marie Leo – who was born to NOT teach first graders; hard to explain how cruel she was to children – taught us how to write musical notes on a staff. I’d been there for G-clef day, but missed the day when she covered notes.

There was a pop quiz: put the notes of the scale on the staff.

Why we were learning this is beyond me. Was it so we’d learn to read music? Or were the nuns anticipating some New Dark Ages, when we’d be called on to transcribe the music to “The St. Francis Xavier Hymn” or “Tis the Month of Our Mother.”

Anyway, once I got the G-clef on there, I was at a loss. I knew that notes were round, but how did they go?

I took a shot and piled them one on top of each other. It didn’t occur to me to cheat, probably due to a combination of fear-factor and pride. I was one of the smartest kids in the class. Who was I going to cheat from? The lunkhead sitting in the “average row boys” across the aisle. As if.

My paper came back marked with a big red check mark, the sign of failure.

I was red-faced, shamed, stunned. This had never happened. Sister was trying to make me feel stupid, the same way she did to plenty of other kids, all the time.

I usually brought my school papers home proudly. Not this time. I remember throwing it in the wastebasket, hoping my mother wouldn’t find it. (She probably did…)

I don’t know what they’re teaching in Brookline, but no kindergarten kid should be made to feel lacking because they’re not reading, or solving algebra equations, or whatever’s going on there.

Yes, the world is a lot more competitive and pressure cooker, and kids need to be prepared for it. And expectations run very high in Brookline.

But maybe it’s time for a little more Eskimo on the paper plate and rhythm sticks.