The education minister wants to remove numbers and letters from kindergarten.

The smallest grades in public schools are often marked by noise, chaos, and restlessness. Danish Minister of Children and Education Mattias Tesfaye (Social Democrats) aims to address this by shifting the focus away from numbers and letters in kindergarten.

Human skills are more important for school readiness than knowledge of numbers and letters. Therefore, changes will be made to the ministry’s recommendations for early childhood institutions.

“It’s far more important that children are socially ready to start school—that they can raise their hand, wait their turn, and accept collective instructions,” the minister tells Ritzau.

The minister is not concerned that removing this focus will negatively impact the academic level of public school students.

-------------------------------------

He believes community will raise standards

-------------------------------------

On the contrary, he argues that fostering a sense of community will help improve students’ performance.

“The stronger children’s ability to engage in group activities, the easier it will be for them to learn Danish and mathematics.”

“That’s why our focus on kindergarten age should not be about introducing letters,” he says.

The mentioned recommendations on numbers and letters in kindergarten come from the knowledge note *“Language Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education,”* where the minister intends to remove an entire section and replace it with what he calls *“good old-fashioned pedagogy.”*

The relevant section deals with systematic letter and sound introduction.

The minister particularly highlights one point: introducing a new letter and its sound each week.

According to him, kindergarten is not a place where children should be systematically taught letters and sounds on a weekly basis.

And when an entire section is removed from the ministry’s recommendations, it will automatically free up time—which, in the minister’s view, can be used for motor skills, teaching children how to dress themselves, and how to behave at the lunch table.

Mattias Tesfaye (Social Democrats) announced in a Facebook post on Thursday that he will revise the ministry’s recommendations once he returns to his office next week.

Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.