A father got down of his silver Toyota with the here-we-go-again face cloaked in a vibrant smile coaxing his wailing daughter to enter the gates of the kindergarten. The teachers came out, knew the drill of these kind of children. Patiently, the father half pulled, half dragged the daughter into the kindergarten with the aid of the other teachers as the daughter struggled valiantly against an overwhelming force of the adults.
“DADDII!” the daughter miraculously slipped away from the teachers as they reached the main door, sprinted across the pavement just to grab hold of the father’s right leg. “I… don… wan… go schol!” she rubbed her face with mucus all over his slacks. The father knelt down and soothed the little girl.
Several minutes passed, the teachers were staring at the situation helplessly as the father and the daughter managed to come to an agreement.
Why does this happen? I was at the little girl’s standpoint when I was at her age, reluctant to attend school, oblivious about the attributes about this common phenomenon.
Enclosed Area
A school compound, classrooms, canteen are usually enclosed areas. Children are akin to new-born birds wanting to reach out to the skies beyond the steel bars. Imagine, if you try to force yourself doing something in an ‘enclosed’ area, you will feel the intangible pressure formed around you, as if trying to strangle you from being free.
In these dreadful environments, not only the children might not learn, they also will have the propensity to develop unwarranted disciplinary issues or stunted creativity. Therefore, ‘locking up’ children together in a small compound might not be the wisest choice for their early development.
Boring Routine
The banal routine of attending school is also one of the major contributions to this phenomenon.
It is bona fide that children get bored easily, curiousity breeds inside children the fastest, and thus they thirst to try out something new from time to time. School is a place to train children academically where tedious tasks like copying words, reciting texts, spelling are carried out consistently.
These tasks will negatively impact the children’s development, hampering the children’s curiosity to venture the uncharted seas of their surroundings that could indirectly enhance the children’s capability to be more creative and innovative with what they encounter.
Separated
Being separated from your loved ones is indubitably one of the worst feelings to ever have, especially when you are a child.
Every morning, the children are sent to school, clockwork, without fail, except when they fell ill. From being almost zero distance from the children’s parents to being couple miles away from them, the children might have a preconception of their parents not wanting them anymore, probably also perceiving that they will not get the love that they needed for this period.
Instinctively, the children will react repulsively against the foreign environment that they were forced into by their parents. Not only making their parents the villains, and also leaving an indelible impression to the children that ‘the world is like this, conform.’
Nonetheless,
Education is one of the basic necessities in this contemporary.
Education should start from home at the early ages, cultivating the budding child with the right attitudes for life, adaptability to various situations, and the inquisitiveness to learn.
Containing children at early ages below 7 in an institution which emphasizes on academia jeopardizes the chances of a well-grown holistic learner for life.
Weaved by: zeckrombryan