I'll give you a real life example:

My oldest son, approaching 9 in September, born when my wife and I had been (wife, up until approximately 2 months prior to giving birth) working full-time.

I continued in this employment, working from 7am until 6pm and up to 3 days per week until 9pm.

My wife, as part of her employment agreement, as a Paramedic (shift-work), returned to work when my son was 7 months old, we were both fortunate to have extended family and flexibility in our arrangements, but despite this we put our son into day-care at age 9 months.

Is he normal, is he functional, is he damaged by 'his' experience in the day-care system, probably too early to tell, but he has just sat his year 3 NAPLAN tests and by all accounts fits well in the educational 'system'. He is by our count, well adjusted, inquisitive and pretty clever compared to some of his peers.

Our other son, just turned six in April, is in my view, immature for his age, hard to work with in any rational sense of the norm and is a complete challenge for his current teacher, despite attending Kindergarten, Pre-Primary School, and now his first year of 'so-called' school.

Second child, just mentioned, did go to day-care, but started at aged 3 and for just one day per week. He was socially different to his brother and I would suggest more influenced by his brothers presence, i.e. competitive.

Our home life has changed little; our financial situation has changed little other than we both earn more, according to statistics, although I would argue otherwise given true, updated, CPI figures for Perth.

Are they different, damn right they are, I would suggest DNA and a different set of circumstances had a lot to play in their development to date.

As to aiming high, I would ask 'who is setting the bar, and why'.

We need to remember 'everyone is different', get used to this fact and the nonsensical theoretical lesson from the Academic will fade into irrelevance quite quickly.

Whenever a "Progressive" talks about la-la rates of return you can be sure it's another snout trying to get into the publics pocket. Remember the expertise that has given us a broken laptop for every child, dodgy school tin sheds (halls), deaths in refugee camps / high seas / ceilings also comes up with this begging bowl.

McCackie,

'Progressives' filter everything through gender. And from a gender perspective this is simply the continued 'professionalisation' of female dominated jobs in an attempt to push up wages.

The idea that 3 year olds need curriculum and learning objectives is just rubbish.

You need to look past the jargon. 'Curriculum' and 'learning objectives' are just edu-babble for 'what we plan to do' and 'what we hope to achieve'. In the case of pre-schoolers, it can be as simple as letting them draw, paint and play with puzzles so they develop fine motor skills (and therefore can cope with a pencil when they are learning to write), or playing outdoor games which involve throwing and catching balls, climbing and balancing, which can build gross motor skills which will make them more capable at school sport. Again, it is about setting them up to succeed at school - a child who struggles with these basic abilities is starting on the back foot. Struggle-fail-give up: a fairly common primary school scenario, and if you give up in primary school, you are at a huge disadvantage.

candide,
At pre-school age progress is very much determined by physical development. What might take 6 months to teach at 3 will come without problem at 4. There is variety in development among children but it is unnecessary to spend billions and professionalize what will come naturally.

And the idea that you need a 4 year degree to teach a 3 year old drawing is just pure lunacy. It is credentialism at its worst. It is just an attempt to get more people into the Labor voting academies we sometimes call universities and as n additional bonus with all these degrees women can then ask for 80k per year to teach a 3 year olds how to finger paint. And we wonder why we are going broke?

The emphasis on early years is just the latest fad to come out of education. Why not let kids be kids and start school at 6 like in Finland?

It's probably on indictment on something (?) that some people take it for granted that pre-school age children don't have access to crayons and paint or balls or climbing equipment outside of an institution.

Most young children's homes are overflowing with such paraphernalia. Have you seen the veritable theme parks that comprise the average family home backyard these days.

What makes you believe, Candide, that those skills can only be learned under direction in pre-school?

More likely, the earlier they catch little independent minds, the more roundly they can stymie any such notions of autonomous discovery.