We’re ruining kindergarten—and no one is talking about it.

Early educators aren’t just undervalued—they should be our example! Instead of molding kids to fit school, schools should mold to fit kids.

But we do the opposite.

We rush kids into reading, writing, and math drills before they’re ready. We take the most natural stage of learning—exploration, curiosity, and play—and turn it into prep work for primary school.

But what if we have it backward?

What if kindergarten isn’t meant to prepare kids for school—but school is meant to take its lead from kindergarten?

Think about it: We don’t train athletes based on age instead of ability. Imagine telling an 8-year-old Michael Phelps, “Sorry, kid, you can’t swim with the 10-year-olds—even if you’re better than them.”

Or worse—imagine you were in Michael’s class. You’re 5. You’ve never swum before. But sorry, you’re in Michael Phelps’ group, so you have to keep up. Sink or swim.

That’s exactly what we do when we force kids into reading and math before they’re ready—because we’re afraid they’ll fall behind. And what happens?

They do fall behind. They start believing they’re bad at math or reading. They get failure anxiety. Eventually, they give up, and we start calling them lazy—when in reality, we turned them off.

Early childhood education isn’t broken. It’s the part we got right.

So why aren’t we learning from it?

What do you think? Should schools learn from kindergarten—or keep cranking kids through the system?

This is one of many things we talked about during my visit at Green School last week.