I realized recently that, exactly 50 years ago, I was in kindergarten. It was at a time when kindergarten was a radical idea in most of the USA – most kids were NOT in kindergarten, because there weren’t that many and it wasn’t required. I also attended preschool there. And for that, my mother got some pushback from her in-laws, my paternal grandparents, who felt strongly that she should stay at home with her children all day. And this radical idea of pre school and kindergarten was embraced by a Baptist church in my hometown in Kentucky. Yes, a Baptist church, one that my family didn’t even attend. I miss those days when Baptist churches were radical in the right ways…
I loved kindergarten. My teacher was “Miss Pat.” We sang, we had naps, we had snacks and we learned our letters via the Letter People (Mister T had Tall Teech, Mister M had a munching mouth, Miss A was sneezing “Achoo”, etc. I remember one class where we each got to be a country. I wanted desperately to be Mexico, but wasn’t – and I don’t remember what I ended up being.
This experience, plus Sesame Street, plus my grandmother reading to me regularly, is where why my vocabulary grew so much. It’s where I learned to ask fully developed questions and to be able to explain more, being able to talk about my cat or a movie I saw or something I wanted to be someday. I was a sponge, and at last, I was getting to drink in knowledge – something I was oh-so-thirsty for. I liked being on my own, learning to manage my own things, my own “work space.” And I loved playing with other kids – the kids in kindergarten were so much nicer to me than the kids in my neighborhood. They didn’t bully. We all just seemed to want to have fun, and we wanted everyone else to have fun too.
I remember only three students though: Demetrius, my mother’s favorite, who I met again in junior high as DD, the most popular guy in school; a young girl with red hair who didn’t seem to understand the concept of ownership and thought everything was hers for the taking; and a guy whose name I never forgot, I don’t know why, but in his 30s, he was involved in either the murder of a woman of the disposal of her body, and killed himself as police were closing in.
I remember the Fall of that year, when I started first grade, and watching some of the kids who had not gone to kindergarten: they were screaming, wrapped around their mother’s ankles, begging to be taken away. They struggled in the classroom. In each grade, every time I would watch them talk back to a teacher, try to cheat on a test, or struggle with reading aloud, I’d wonder if it was because they didn’t go to kindergarten.
I’m so grateful that my usually very conservative mother put me in pre school and kindergarten. It should be an experience every child has.
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