The Washington Post reports that rigorous instruction is being done earlier and earlier these days:
A group of students at Woodside Community School in Queens peered up at their teacher one morning this month, as she used an overhead projector to display a shape. It looked like a basic geometry lesson one might find in any grade school, except for the audience: They were preschoolers, seated cross-legged on a comfy rug.
“What attributes would tell me this is a square?” asked the teacher, Ashley Rzonca.
A boy named Mohammed raised his hand, having remembered these concepts from a previous lesson. “A square has four angles and four equal sides,” he said.
Oh please. When I was in preschool we had to solve a differential equation in our heads before we got our chocolate milk.1 This is nothing. Kids these days need to toughen up.
1Apologies. I’m exaggerating. I didn’t even go to preschool. Differential equations didn’t come until first grade.
