Education: Too Young for School?

Each autumn the nation's most indignant parents are those with children barely too young to enter school. The cutoff age may be as high as 6½ (in Des Moines) or as low as 5 years 3 months (in Norwich, N.Y.), but thousands of children are bound to miss out by a few days or weeks. In 77% of U.S. public schools, the rules are inflexible; the child simply has to wait another year.

Many educators would like to see the cutoff point raised from the current U.S. average of 5 years 9 months to about 5 years 11 months. They explain that the younger the child the less his chances of adjusting to first-grade work; early failure at the blackboard can induce a defeatist attitude that endures for years. Physically as well as mentally, say the educators, waiting is wise. Studies have shown that four out of five children are still normally farsighted at the age of six, are handicapped in reading until about six months later. But these arguments do not carry far with an irate parent, who is apt to feel, as his strapping son of almost seven stumbles into a first-grade class, that he has fathered a "slow child."

To meet the requirements of both sound practice and parental desire, more and more schools are adding one loophole to the hard-and-fast age rule: examination of borderline cases by a competent child psychologist. A survey last year by the National Education Association disclosed widespread sentiment for the idea, already in use in about 15% of U.S. school systems. "Testing the child and counseling the parent," predicted one school principal, "will some day replace age as the criteria." Last week in Cherry Creek, a well-to-do suburb of Denver, Superintendent Robert Higday Shreve countered the general acceptance of definite cutoff dates in the Denver area by admitting to the first grade a girl just 5 years 3 months old. "I decided my philosophy of education required a more flexible rule," says Shreve. "The psychologist reported the girl is ready for the first grade in every way. She would just be bored by kindergarten. Since she is ready for us, we are ready for her."

Ideally, the testing standards for early admittance should include not only mental ability but physical build, health, and social and emotional maturity. Schools are not generally equipped to handle such exhaustive testing, but proud parents would probably be happy to foot the bill for a private psychologist. Over the country, many youngsters who miss the cutoff point attend private schools for a year and then go public in the second grade. In Houston, where the whole matter has been put on a cash basis, eager mothers gladly shell out a special head tax of $90 to break the cutoff rule.