I watched "Where to Invade Next" last night.

[JDPriestly]

30. My children started school in Austria. They were home before 1 p.m.

And they had homework starting in the first grade.

Caveat: It is easier to learn to read German than it is to read English. German is a phonetic language.

But the math education my children received was excellent. It was just old-fashioned repeat, recycle, remember and think. But it seemed to work well. Maybe my children just had that ability, but they were way ahead of the American children in math when they started school here.

At the time I was there, the Austrian (and German) schools emphasized that a child should not read before the age of 6. Children were supposed to play and learn about life that way rather than pushing themselves to read and focus on the printed page. That was a tough concept for me because I read early. But my children learned a lot of pre-reading skills like telling stories, listening to a lot of stories, singing a lot, putting pictures in order, moving the eyes from left to right, relating to reality and not just a printed page. That, I think, was wiser than our emphasis on the alphabet, but then again, German is easier to learn to read than is English. It is possible to learn to read German with the phonetic method. That gets complicated in English.

I think there was less recess time there. Also, I do not know what working mothers do now in Europe. I was a stay-at-home mother most of the time when we lived there because my husband did not have to worry about a work permit, but I did. I was not a citizen. I am only an American citizen.