This article focuses on the academic and intellectual aspects of preschool, but the more important aspect is socialization.

I once volunteered at a preschol and quickly saw that much of its benefit was not academic, but rather it taught kids to play kindly with and respect other kids, wait their turn, interact with a wide variety of people outside their immediate family, and be more comfortable in social settings.

This sounds like the most important thing you can teach your kids early on. Parents seem to be (in general) bad at this, at least some random preschool teacher might be more "willing" to scold the kid/praise them reasonably.

This sounds like a strong argument against preschool: if you need to learn to respect other kids, wait your turn, and be kind, a bunch of five-year-olds is probably the worst possible place to turn to for help.

In practice, the results have been the opposite for us. When we threw in our two-year-old together with a bunch of others in the kindergarten, it took just a week or two to see big progress in understanding concepts such as sharing, ownership, anger management, empathy - both for pain of others and emotions of others, and a skill that I can't name - "understanding what will be the obvious reaction of others to your action X".

If our home had a bunch of kids with 1-1.5-2 year gaps, as is "classical" for homo sapiens development, then that wouldn't be an issue; but since he currently is our only child, then he needs a place to learn appropriate socialization norms with his peers, as opposed to adults, in whose company many socal details are very different.

You might be surprised at what some five-year-olds are capable of. Besides, it's not like the kids are left to fend for themselves. Preschools have teachers whose job it is to help children learn this.

Even if there is no difference to the kid from preschool and he doesn't 'need' it, then still I need it myself.

Both me and my wife are working; so lack of preschool would mean one of us dropping out of our careers and self-actualization for many years.

A generation earlier (when I and my wife were raised) the solution was to use retired grandparents; but frankly the nannies at our preschool are doing a far better job than my mother, grandmother or mother-in-law does when we leave kids at them.

//I can't imagine never involving my child in a school-like setting and then dropping them off for the first day of kindergarten having not experienced a similar setting.//

For those of us over 40ish, that is exactly what happened. 2 income families didn't become the norm until the 80s. Prior to that most of us stayed home with mom until she dropped us off for the first day of kindergarten.

We don't seem to have suffered due to it.

The final sentence sums up the quality of that article. My observations are :

1. Children love preschool. 2. Parents need a break so they have the energy to engage with their children. 3. Children benefit in the long run from the exposure to germs. 4. Children benefit from early socializing.

And so forth....

I hated preschool. I don't really remember why, but I was terrified that I went from my comfortable home with stay-at-home mother to dropped in the "wild." I found socialization difficult. Who knows if it was valuable or not; I just know that the experience is strongly associated with negative emotions.

Yes, it must be the case that not every child loves preschool. And I would expect parents to deal with it at the individual level, so if a particular child found it traumatic then the parents should trust their instincts and withdraw the child if they thought it might have long term negative effects.

I wonder if the usage of the term preschool is important. In Australia this refers to the child care that happens immediately prior to going to school. It typically goes Kindergarten -> Preschool -> School. Wikipedia seems to imply in the US that it goes Preschool -> Kindergarten -> School.

This author is clearly just starting his/her journey with kiddos. I'm constantly amazed by the growth of my kids when they spend just one weekend at grandmas. Moving them out of 'comfortable' situations forces them to use different patterns of existence and forces learning. Our kids schools do this at a professional level.

There is also the added benefit of my wife's sanity from the few hours a week that she gets to be 'off the clock.' Her sanity leads directly to my sanity. I'm not so sure that pre-school is even for the kids.

No kidding. Children from low-income families benefit more from an educational stand point if they attend preschool. That doesn't mean a child from a middle- or upper-class family does not need preschool. It means more should be done to ensure preschool is more accessible for low-income families.

I can't imagine never involving my child in a school-like setting and then dropping them off for the first day of kindergarten having not experienced a similar setting.

as an interesting related note, both Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to Montessori pre-school and have attributed that to be a factor in their outcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_DQxpX-Kw&feature=youtu...

edit: looks like Jeff Bezos went to Montessori too. Obviously children of motivated parents are likely to go to private school, etc...

"—and if you’ve read this far, you probably are—"

Mmmyes, clearly only we upper echelon of society is capable of reading articles on the internet magazine Slate.

Obviously anyone can read Slate if they want to. The question is, do they want to? Do you think it's likely that the lower-income people they're talking about are choosing to read Slate?

>Do you think it's likely that the lower-income people they're talking about are choosing to read Slate?

I suppose Slate would know their own demographics better than anyone, so I guess not. I just found the reasoning behind the assertion pretentious. I think some low income people with children probably read Slate, and some of that group will read this article. The idea that since they read to the end of the article, they're somehow better or different than non Slate readers, is funny to me.

Highly interesting article.

Also might explain part of early criminal behavior in children with single parents.

Those children probably get less attention, and when they do, tend to be negative.

Then they do something interesting (be it legal, or not), and get praised, they will stick to repeat this behaviour and expand upon it.

So what if what they did was steal a radio from a car? They probably will do more of that, even if they don't need it financially or for the thrill, because doing that make other people praise them (ie: other criminals, of course)