Children turning up at school without basic skills

Some children do not have ideal conditions at home, it's true.

What is even scarier is that some kids get all the way through school without ever learning to read, write and do basic math.

As far as the tying shoes, I can understand why a child has not learned at a young age. So many shoes and sneakers now come with velcro; especially for young children. They had no reason to learn to tie as their sneakers where just laced. It is funny you mention this, because I am on a crusade to buy my daughter sneakers with laces so she can learn how to tie.

It would be nice if there were at least potty trained. Some aren't....

Shoelaces were a problem for me quite a few years into public school. I was reading Time Magazine and Macleans when I started kindergarten, but shoelaces weren't for me.

Same here, bethie. I could read and write, but couldn't tie my shoes, tell left from right, or tell time for that matter.

The potty training thing makes me uneasy. I have friends (a couple of sets) whose children are not fully trained when they are 7 or 8. They don't want to 'force the issue'. What?

Part of the reason we pulled our son out of public school and into home schooling was because one kid in his third grade class pooped his pants every day. Our liberal educators have taken Bush's "leave no child behind" policy too far, and are now teaching to the lowest common denominator.

I thought it was bad when my daughter wasn't potty trained at 3 and a half. I have never heard of 7 or 8! If a child is pooping his pants every day in school, I think there is some problem besides "leave no child behind." I wonder if s/he had some emotional problems. In this case, the child should have been referred to a counselor. I imagine it must have been very difficult for the child considering how the other students must have treated him/her.

As far as tying shoes and clothes, all children develop motor skills/social skills differently. As long as you are not talking about a child say in the 3rd grade vs. kindergarten, I would not be so concerned. There are also ways teachers can positively push parents to help their children develop these skills. For example, my daughter's teacher. One of the first few days of school, the teacher handed out a paper. On the paper were several pictures that showed skills that you would a kindergartner to either be able to perform or to learn to perform. The title was I am big now that I am kindergarten or something like that. The child was to color those pictures that they could do. When seeing the paper, the child and parent get the hint that these are skills they should be working on.

Okay. Little Tommy enters kindergarten without being able to tie his shoes because no one has ever taught him to tie his shoes.

Either the teacher or teacher's aid can show Tommy the mysteries of shoe tying or a note can go home to the parent suggesting either shoe-tying lessons or velcro fasteners.

The solution is not leaving Tommy in ignorance but in teaching him.

Let's hear a few cheers for Head Start, Planned Parenthood and concerned citizens who volunteer to help out in the elementary schools. If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

We worked in the public schools for years in a parent participation program, until the principal and school board gutted it because they got tired of having to deal with increasingly frustrated parents.

I read in the Reader's Digest(I think!) yesterday that children were turning up at this teachers school who obviously haven't washed and were not wearing clean clothes to school.

hey I got a neat idea. We will make sure ALL parents are financially secure, and that no one can be a parent until they have proven the can handle the responsibility. Barrring that: deal with the kids that you meet. ALL children can learn. they just learn at different levels and in different ways. And i could tell time, read, tie my shoes and set a table the proper way when i went into school. You mean not every one can do that??????

You mean at the age of 6 you knew that the salad fork went on the left outside the dinner fork, the desert spoon went above the plate and the pistol grip on a pistol grip knife faced the plate?

You were a child prodigy. I bet you could fold napkins into little animals too. :wink: Wait, I take that back. Proper table setting is a sign of financially secure. Napkin animals are done by the help.

When i was a child, we had students at age 12 who all too obviously had not bathed regularly, nor changed their clothing for laundered clothing. There were students who were seemingly unaware of the salutory consequences of tying one's shoes.

I was taught to read in the summer before my fourth birthday. We were taught to print the alphabet, and to sign our names "in long hand" before arriving at school. This was an expression of the values of our grandparents, who were raising us. Introducing partisan political rhetoric, social or racial rhetoric into this discussion is in poor taste, and a non-sequitur. Some people are good parents, some are indifferent at the task, and some are abyssmal. I suggest to you all that this had not changed over the millenia, and likely will not change, no matter how we exhaust our fingers on these poor, battered keyboards.

My sargeant use to tie all the shoelaces. They teach that kind of stuff in the NCO academy.

I was raised by a single parent in the 60's and 70's. that worked as a wiatress and I had two siblings. Mom just believed in proper table maners. I have no idea where they disappeared to:( The table maners not my siblings