While college students tend to be demanding more innovation and creativity from their schools, preschoolers are more restrained to their tiny desks than ever. While kindergarten used to serve as an introduction to school, today’s kindergarteners often are expected to know how to read and write before they get to first grade, if not before. That means preschool has taken on a more rigorous, task-heavy sheen to prepare kids for the academic rigors to come. Preschoolers play less and learn more—but some experts believe this sort of focus on academics so young may be paradoxically hurting their progress.

The state of Tennessee recently conducted an examination of its state-funded preschool system, and experts found that while preschooled kids outperformed their peers in kindergarten, those same kids started regressing by first grade. In second grade, those same preschooled kids were performing worse on standardized tests than their unpreschooled friends. The researchers say that too much rote work essentially snuffs out children’s enthusiasm for learning.

“Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their work before they can go play,” writes education expert Erika Christakis “Yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.” (The Atlantic)