Particularly strong evidential support for less rigid and more flexible approaches to education, emanates from Sweden.
In Sweden, pupils do not commence full time ‘formal' education until the age of seven. Before full time education commences, preschool sessions commence on a half day basis at the age of six. Parents are encouraged to attend and participate. This system gradually allows a child to wean itself away from the home environment into the wider world.
The activities stressed in these preschool groups are all ‘motor skill' based. Trampolines, sand pits, climbing in adventure playgrounds, ball games and the like for ‘basic' motor skill advancement. Drawing, painting, playing with blocks, filling containers with liquid, matching objects and recognising colours to assist hand/eye coordination and the advancement of ‘fine' motor skills.
The European/Scandinavian system is superior in both social and educational terms, as almost any comparative chart detailing educational standards at virtually any age will confirm. See ‘Today's Low Educational Standards' in the opening chapter of this book.
In Sweden, kids first have to get a ‘Degree in Curiosity' and a ‘Degree in Fun' before they can participate in more formal learning programmes. Sounds good to us, as learning should not be forced upon youngsters before the brain has developed far enough to input new data. If your RAM is just 640k, you will never be able to input a multi-megabyte programme - no matter how hard you are pressured or punished.
Sweden has educated its children in this fashion for decades. Much to Sweden's credit, they fine tune their system as relevant new information emerges, and in more recent times it was decided that if parents or an educational psychologist recommend or request it, children showing advanced intellectual aptitude at an early age can commence ‘formal' education at six.
Before you can educate there must first be a collection of brain cells developed to a reasonable stage of evolution. This clearly states the obvious, but ‘Head Start' in the USA and Crammer type programmes in the UK, oppose that logical proposition. This is because the brains' of young kids have not developed enough to constitute a fully functioning computer. Might as well require a young child to compete in an adult running marathon. They could not, because their legs and lungs are not large enough. Brains are the same, and will not operate efficiently until fully developed.
In complete opposition to the rest of Europe, many children in the UK commence school at four, and in some schools are required to do homework on a regular basis even at that young age. A more cretinous policy calculated to inhibit creativity and put kids off learning for life, would not be possible to conceive. Learning should be fun, whereas homework turns it into a daily chore. That is particularly disheartening for the very young. If learning is fun, it will be sought out. If it is a boring, compulsory task, it becomes a grind and a misery to be avoided at all costs. British politicians appear to be in need of some lessons themselves.
It is no coincidence that the two countries which initiate early formal education in the West - the UK and USA - have generally lower levels of academic achievement at all ages, and far higher levels of disruptive children and crime than the nations of Europe and South East Asia. All of the European and Scandinavian nations oppose the implementation of early ‘formal' education, as do many of the South East Asian nation states.
Formal schooling at four or five is too early, and no study thus far has suggested that formal preschool education achieves anything other than stress and emotional problems, with no long term academic gain. In fact the reverse is true, as considerable data exists to confirm that early formal education inhibits the development of creativity and decision making skills. These attributes lead to whole-brain growth and practical use of the intellect, which the modern world rewards most in terms of job satisfaction and cash.
Read much more about starting school later, in the Prodigy books.