Children are not computers

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638573/site/newsweek/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14657885/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14678069/

Kids as young as 6 are tested, and tested again, to ensure they're making sufficient progress. Then there's homework, more workbooks and tutoring.

Some scholars and policymakers see clear downsides to all this pressure. Around third grade, Hultgren says, some of the most highly pressured learners sometimes "burn out. They began to resist. They didn't want to go along with the program anymore." In Britain, which adopted high-stakes testing about six years before the United States did, parents and school boards are trying to dial back the pressure. In Wales, standardized testing of young children has been banned. Andrew Hargreaves, an expert on international education reform and professor at Boston College, says middle-class parents there saw that "too much testing too early was sucking the soul and spirit out of their children's early school experiences."

This is truly misguided. Reading and math skills are important, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Eg., many children are not getting sufficient sleep. Lack of sufficient sleep damages children's (and adults) health, and decreases learning. Recess is being eliminated in many places. Lack of sleep and lack of exercise both increase a person's chances of being overweight, which is an increasing problem for children - our children are likely to show a decrease in life expectancy because of diseases caused by overweight. During recess, children have a chance to interact with each other, and learn social skills, which are important to success in life, at both the material and personal level. Many people with high IQs do poorly in the real world, because of social deficits.
It seems that some parents and school systems are doing their best to turn children into autistic savants or little computers.

I feel safe in predicting that many of these children are learning a sure way to rebel against their parents, and will end up becoming failures, usually w/o themselves realizing why they are so self-destructive.