Harry L. Gracey Summary

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Harry L. Gracey’s article about his perspective of kindergarten as a “academic boot camp” for children really challenged my previous thoughts regarding the structure of school and education. I enjoyed his in-depth look into the physical and social structures of an actual kindergarten classroom and his critical approach in analyzing their daily routine. Before reading the article, I didn’t realize the extent in which education, especially kindergarten, is constructed with systematic activities and programs so that children can be socialized and shaped into good students. Being so young, I obviously don’t remember kindergarten being so structured but I now understand the need for this as the transition from kindergarten into higher levels of learning is important. It’s shocking to know that what I learnt in kindergarten is a large portion of why I am …show more content…

The student role is the collection of behaviours and attitudes that the children achieve, that are deemed appropriate by the educators. Introducing these behaviours stems from specific routines, activities, and programs designed by the educators; which then forces children to learn the student role. Gracey points out the different types of students in a classroom: the good students, the adequate students and the bad students. Whichever category a child falls under depends on how they follow the rules of the classroom. Children are drilled so hard with this daily cycle of routines etc., that by the end of the year they are unknowingly performing the student role perfectly as per the standards of the educators. This explains the title of Gracey’s article as the teachers/ educators are the strict authoritative enforcers who are training the children to be good students by forcing them to participate in a rigidly structured

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