Kindergarten

* Regarding “Kindergarten: The Adventure Begins,” Oct. 9: I substituted for a friend who teaches kindergarten, toward the end of the school year. The school is in a mixed-demographic, lower-middle-class area. On this particular day, most of the children, all well-behaved, were able to count (reading on a chart) to 160 successfully (the number of days that their class had been in session) and skip-counted by 2s, 5s and 10s to 100. The teacher’s guide for MathLand, their particular math program, required that they only be able to count to 10 or 20.

This teacher had previously taught first grade and was tired and frustrated at children who had entered her class unprepared. It takes good teachers with foresight, a supportive administration and parents to make a child’s educational career a success.

BRUCE MALTER

Van Nuys