To the Editor:
I read “Kindergartens Ringing the Bell for Play Inside the Classroom” (news article, June 10) with relief and frustration. Any seasoned kindergarten teacher knew the essential value of play all along. How many hours have been wasted, how many children have been turned off to school by the misguided idea that introducing letter and number symbols, and reading and writing, earlier in school and preschool would help America “catch up” in the education race?
If you start teaching “reading” at age 3, it will take years for most children to learn. If you wait for neurological readiness at age 6, it will be a much smoother and meaningful process.
What fun those kids could have been having! What a solid foundation for learning could have been built. Unfortunately, politicians have been sacrificing children to their own purposes.
ANA SILBERT
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
The writer is a clinical and school psychologist.
