Social Promotions

Regarding your article on school social promotion, June 29:

As a kindergarten teacher for more that 26 years, after reading your article, we all need to visualize my class in September. Let us begin with 32 4- and 5-year-olds, perhaps two or three have been to Head Start. Now add four or five different languages (in many areas you will find a much greater number). If I am lucky, eight might know the names of the eight basic colors. Seven or eight may be able to count to 10 (in any language).

One-third do not know how to hold a pencil or use scissors. Most do not know the difference between letters and numbers. Their ability to answer simple questions or describe a picture is limited to a few short words.

I love my job and feel I am very good at it. Education is dealing with a long list of social conditions too numerous to list that contribute to the problem of social promotion. All the children in my class will show tremendous growth throughout the school year. I will spend the entire year trying to do my best to help the parents of my children to have a better understanding of what they need to be doing at home to prepare their children for school. It is ongoing, there is no simple answer. It is a constant effort to catch these children up to other children their age.

They begin school so far behind from day one, that yes, we are often guilty of social promotion. But I ask, where do we put the 10 or 12 students every year who for whatever reason do not achieve the goals set up for entering first grade? Since they entered kindergarten with the skills of a 3-year-old (academic and social) what do we as educators do? Send them home until they are ready for school? In some of the homes we deal with, that may never happen.

ANTOINETTE SMITH

Arcadia