Maximus - could I suggest you check out the signature lines on my previous post. If you do you'll possibly find two IDs.

Meantime, Petal, sorry to have gotten distracted from the main point of the original article, which is that there is now a documented boom in pre-K intellectual stuff in both the US and Australia, but more in the US, and that this is being provided for to a great extent by entrepreneurs in the private sector, presumably because the public schools are still slow to respond either to academic research or parents' wishes. No doubt because the Early Reading Play School has from the beginning run parent-led classes, I did propose that parents realise that as well as appreciating the value of an early start, that they also take into account that parents are the best mediators of early learning for their own children. It is important that children learn to read with fluency and comprehension. The best way for parents to ensure that this occurs is to start early, use phonics, and do the teaching themselves to the greatest extent possible (a strategy which is not as time-consuming as it sounds, because parent teaching can be quite informal.) My article was also by way of a warning to beware of massive institutionalisation of early learning for little children, because the research on brain development is now so conclusive that many will regard it as an opportunity to put the pre-K little ones into class settings for too many hours per day and per week. While their brains are growing exponentially, young children still need great slabs of one-on-one time with their primary carer, usually the mother.

Meanwhile, It does seem highly desirable to throw in a plea for re-introducing "clear thinking" as a curriculum component in Year 12, using the discussion here as clear evidence of the need for such a move.

Glynne, I'm not sure exactly what you are doing by linking Kozol to the discredited idea of "Whole Word Learning". In fact, I haven't come across whole word learning in ages (after doing a lot of teaching in different schools), and I can't understand why you, Kevin Donnelly, and others, insist on linking this stupid idea to all of "The Left". Kozol quotes people who say "are you sure that these people can be helped just by THROWING MONEY at them?", and he quotes them because THAT is exactly the issue: money taken away from where it is most needed. His article in the Atlantic Monthly last year said it all - I would recommend that you read it.

And for the issue of private enterprise filling the gap: people will only spend money on their kids (for the most part) if they think it's going to get their child ahead of everyone else's. This is why people buy huge 4WDs and drive them at incredible speeds which endanger everyone except themselves and their children. People who don't have money can't afford the luxury of the pre-K tuition industry that is booming in the US for all the wrong reasons. Such progress is SHAMEFUL because it only fuels inequity, which ultimately comes back at all of us in society.

"...normal employment aspirations of the generality of Anglo and Irish background Aussie kids in a globalised economy already means competing with Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jewish, Italian and Greek graduates in all areas of professional employment. The observed over-representation of Asian-Australian students in the annual Year 12 credit list is a clear sign of things to come..."

What the hell? What is going on that even an article purporting to be about the value of early education needs to bring in a racial aspect which implicitly suggests that "real" Aussie kids are being disadvantaged?! By Kindergarten?! The mind boggles. What a waste of editorial space.

Early education can be a great thing, and can do a great deal to help disadvantaged kids get a leg-up on school. But we should not be making it yet another ethnic battleground.

And we really shouldn't be pressuring kids to learn certain things too early - as my aunt, who used to teach first-year-primary school kids once said "when they get to school, kids should know how to tie their shoe laces, use the school toilets, find their lunchbox, and identify which is their school bag. Don't worry about the rest, the school can teach them to read and write, thats our job!"

Laurie – your aunt isn’t really a very good guide to bringing up children. I think you need a bigger data base, a lot more information across several disciplines, better theoretical perspectives and wiser counsel.

Furthermore, your “We’re alright, mate” certainty that the way things are currently done in the Great South Land is for the best in the best of all possible worlds is so crazily provincial that one can only clasp one’s head in despair.

It is a simple truth that Anglo and Irish background kids are statistically already on the back foot in terms of Year 12 results. Instead of implying I am some kind of racist right-wing populist demagogue, how about going with the spirit of my comments, and realize that there is a degree of humility in my suggestion that we should LEARN FROM other cultures how to achieve superior outcomes in the rearing of functional, literate, educated adults.

When average Anglo and Irish Aussie kids have lost even their current levels of access to professional careers and careers choice, who will you hold responsible, Laurie?

Petal – Maybe if you were to read a few of Diane Ravitch’s essays, articles and books it might be a quid pro quo for my taking up your challenge to read Kozol’s latest (which I have done).

Kozol’s link to whole language is a link that runs via John Dewey and the progressivist, child-centred educational paradigm that has been regarded as gospel in Schools of Education for over half a century. It is this paradigm which has proven so inadequate to the needs of public education systems across the English-speaking world. While not entirely without virtue, it is of minimal use in teaching reading. But Kozol’s main thrust is to castigate white America for not funding black education adequately. Why doesn’t he also castigate the black middle class that the Civil Rights movement created – a demographic that in moving up and out of the ghettoes in fact also deprived the black population of its activist leaders, and helped create an underclass of those left behind