Saturday, March 24, 2012

Teaching Preschoolers Is Not A Sin

I am so fed up by people who say that if you teach a toddler or preschooler anything academic, you are abusing them. This is complete bunk. All of my children loved being empowered to learn to read. I spent five minutes a day on it, and they were never upset; they always loved it.

The same with any other academic skill. They gobble it up. They love it, if it is done when they are well-rested and want to do something new. I'm not talking about workbooks. I'm talking about teaching something for five or ten minutes, maybe about an animal, maybe about numbers. Counting some frogs in a picture book takes a few seconds. It is interesting to the child. To call this abuse is ridiculous.

Studies have been done (What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child by Glenn Doman) where babies with half their brain missing were given infant stimulation exercises and taught to read. By age two these babies were reading. They were not vegetables like the doctors said they would be. I'm sure their parents were so grateful, they had tears streaming down their faces. Because the babies' minds were stimulated, they thrived.

One reason toddlers cry all day and pitch fits is because they're so bored. Their parents think that they can't learn anything. The young children are just blobs that need to be fed and clothed. I wonder what they do all day. Watch TV while they're waiting for their kid to grow up?

Friday, March 23, 2012

Is Education Interesting

Thinking is a powerful faculty of human mind. Education is a powerful tool to progress. We are living in an era in which education has become a stressful area of life for both children and parents. The need to excel and emerge victorious is every parent's goal as much as it is for the child. The competition spirit is far exceeding the limits of endurance and reasonableness as more and more children feel stressed out and like a failure if they don't get "high" grades while the benchmark for "high" grades only keeps increasing.

Even the best CBSE school or a top international school is primarily measured with the yardstick of its academic performance, or in other words, through ranks and such systems. There is no wrong in it, in fact this the mark of how good the educational institution is as a choice. But the method in which education in imparted and the systems being implemented differs within each group of the so-called acclaimed institutions. What sets apart the healthy mode of learning is the factors stressed upon during education.

Preschool education is often ignored or treated merely as a play school learning. But it is the basic and building block of the student's interaction with learning, and is therefore of immense importance. If you look at the best matriculation school in Chennai or a top higher secondary school in Mumbai or any other competent school within the city, the learning curriculum may be similar or same. Developing a humane attitude and instilling in the child's mind about education as a need and an interesting means to personal development is the point of true success for a school.

While most schools do not succeed, even if they do at the obvious & surface levels, there are sadly only a few which actually make an impact in encouraging children towards stress-free education and making education interesting for them. Only the best of faculty can really "train the minds to think". All of us have both good and bad things to say about the educational system. But we do not take steps to make the good things better and converting the bad things into good. The lion's share of economic progress may be attributed to education. The awareness created by education makes for analysis and utilization of better opportunities. Good investments too are the results of wise learning. It is therefore the oil for the wheel of progress.

To curb the trend of increasing numbers of students' suicides and to make education interesting to children, they need to be first taught to appreciate knowledge and learning as an activity. Children should be treated with respect as growing individuals and not as high-score brewing machines. Their unique talents or inclinations to a healthy and creative aspect of one's personality has to be appreciated and allowed to be developed. Only a well-experienced teacher can bring out the best resources of a student and help him or her identify strengths and lacking nodes. Atleast 90% of us would agree to the fact that we never found education interesting during our schooldays, irrespective of whether 10 years or 50 years back. It was always either a role-model teacher or a teacher friend who made us realize the value of education and helped us understand the seemingly insurmountable subjects. To some of us it could have been mathematics, to a few others it could have been science and so on.

Teaching is one of the noblest professions in the world. Making it nobler is the power of teaching fraternity. Systems, practices and attitude of imparting education can make a significant change and influence students' lives. This change can emerge to be a sea change in shaping the tomorrow of the child and the society in which he or she lives in and will continue to be a part of. Thus it becomes a social responsibility rather a collective one to make education interesting to children so that they do not stop with asking questions but also arrive at the answers themselves, with proper guidance in the right direction.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Importance of Right Preschool Education for Christians

The necessity of preschool education is important for all children. The early years of schooling acts as a foundation for Christians to value the importance of Jesus in its real way. Therefore, the curriculum has to be appropriate to enhance the intellectual, emotional and physical development of the child.

There are various Christian schools in Orlando that takes care of small to big needs of the child by understanding them personally to make them ready to accept the challenges of the life. The best part is that the number of students per class is less and the curriculum is very age appropriate which doesn't overburden the child with academic requirements.

The teachers who are appointed to assist the preschool Christians are well-trained to understand the changing moods of the child. Considering that every child is unique, the teachers use different ways to boost child's self esteem by encouraging them to perform various activities on their own. Everybody knows the importance of early childhood years. These are the years when child is ready to accept what is being taught to them. So, it is the best time to send them to preschool to make them responsible Christians.