You may not have meant this as it sounds, but I'm bothered by calling these parents lazy. First of all, the child is going to enter PRESCHOOL. Maybe that means the child is 4, but perhaps the child is 3.
That the child only recognizes a handful of alphabet letters, it must be that the parents are lazy? I'll say frankly that my youngest child is 4, going to kindergarten next year and doesn't recognize ONE letter of the alphabet.
He does not care. He is not interested. And I'd much rather have a 4 year old child playing with playdough and chasing the dog than sitting down with formal education.
I think parents who do greek letters with their preschooler are much more concerned with their own ego than what their child needs.
See my post #9 above. I'm a homeschooler, and my second son wasn't interested in the alphabet very much at age 4, either. But, homeschoolers really don't think the way the writer of this article thinks. I've met and spoken with other homeschoolers, most of whom seem to believe that a child shouldn't be pushed. The first homeschooling father I met specifically told me that he thinks parents push boys into reading too early. His own son didn't read until age 8 or so, and now he's a 16 year-old who reads college level textbooks. Most homeschoolers I know seem to prefer a more relaxed atmosphere in which the child isn't pushed and learns at his/her own pace. That's the main point of homeschooling.
However, there are some children who just pick up on things very quickly. We didn't push our oldest son; he just picked up on certain things so quickly. And, yet, in a few other very simple areas, he had trouble figuring things out. Every child is different. It's possible that the parents in the article weren't pushing their child, just giving the child every opportunity to excel.
Speaking of homeschooling... It's Math Day! I'd better get back to it.