THERE are many things that are happening in early childhood education institutions, in ECD classes, that are not correct, that are not assistive to the development of our children.
You find that in ECD classes, children are already quarantined in formal instruction which is what ECD is not about.
It is not about reading and writing, neither is it about counting.
In early childhood education, children should not be taught as if they are being prepared for exams.
But this is what is happening in our ECD classes.
They are given homework every day, it is most disturbing. The little ones come home after three and as soon as they have eaten they start worrying about the homework.
I have seen four-year-olds collapsing with fatigue, falling asleep on their homework books and woken up early the next day to finish their homework.
These three-year-olds, four-year-olds, are not meant to be railroaded into formal classroom instruction.
Early childhood education is about helping these budding youngsters, these blossoming flowers, to open up, to bloom in the best incandescent light and colours latent in them.
And you do not achieve this by asking them to go to blank page 26, titled ‘Transport and Communication’.
What is the child supposed to do with the page; to begin with she is not literate in terms of ABC, so she can’t read ‘Transport and Communication’.
I had no heart to start defining ‘transport and communication’ to this four-year-old, so I said you can draw a bus or a car or a phone.
In fact I was quite disturbed.
She immediately said but I want to draw the sun and some flowers …which was quite correct.
At ECD, we follow the child’s inclinations, follow and encourage the path the child intuitively charts as he/she tunes into his/her inner potencies.
We should help them to open up and bloom instead of what we are doing; which is shutting them down and insisting we want dry hard facts.
I told her to go right ahead and she drew the sun, a bright red sun and she was finished in no time. Later she drew a bus and added the details, the passengers, the back lights.
She did not get to the phone for she fell asleep on her workbook, I could not be at peace.
I wondered what this was all about, what was it all about! ‘Transport and Communication’ I know is a topic straight from the family and heritage syllabus.
So this is what they do in ECD A; of what use is this to the child except to blunt the child’s unfolding special capacities.
Early Childhood Education is not about such, it is about telling children they are correct as they are: I am interested in you as you are, I am interested in what makes you smile, what makes you warm inside, what makes your eyes shine with excitement, what make you want to jump, laugh and sing and dance and what makes you feel at peace … show me the colours that make you feel so special and creative and I will follow your rainbow.
This is what ECD is about; it is not about the classroom, the books … homework is anathema.
When you do not reassure the children, the who that is bubbling inside them dies. They lose total interest in what you do and say; they will continue to pay attention to the inner drives in them which are just simmering below the surface, the petals that are waiting to open and bless the world with their various shapes, sizes and colours.
We blindfold the children into formal instruction; we rob them and the world of something very precious which would sooner transform their own world and the greater world… it is a travesty.
This was not all; on another day, the note from the teacher referred us to a page which was titled: ‘Various Forms of Abuse’.
Various forms of abuse!
For ECD A!
There was a picture of a boy in tattered clothes carrying a bundle of firewood.
The child had to colour the picture and there was to be a discussion.
I knew what was behind the whole charade so I simply asked the child what she was seeing.
She said a boy carrying firewood.
I said: ‘Helping his mum?’ and she nodded.
And so it is, so for that day, that child escaped the NGO agenda which says, chores at home are forms of abuse.
This insidious poisoning of our children is being smuggled into the curriculum, and this NGO agenda is not waiting until they are older — it is catching them young, at ECD.
We are culpable if we do not open our eyes.
And why a child in tattered clothes, an African child, we all know why!
The next page had the picture of a policewoman and the child was to colour the picture.
The page was titled: ‘Those who protect us from abuse’.
This is ECD A.
At this age and level, the first respondent in any trouble is the mother and father and family caregivers, so why jump to the policewoman?
The NGO agenda is hardly masked; that indictment of the family, the home, the whole Zimbabwean society as abuse-infested and therefore not qualified to take care of the Zimbabwean child rears its ugly head.
It fervently argues that, therefore, it is only the police and the courts who can call this Zimbabwe society to order, a society so moribund only the most harsh measures can save its ill-placed child.
A direct attack on our culture, on our hunhu/ubuntu, on our right to self-determination, insidiously telling us and our children: ‘You might have won independence but you have no capacity to run your society. You cannot even raise children, so we should come back and take over.’
So they are preparing our children through our own institutions to be taken over by them; so they plan, so they hope, so they dream.
But Zimbabwe yakauya neropa; it is not for sale, it is not on sale!
Contrarily, in the same workbook, the Zimbabwean flag is only coloured in, no discussion, nothing!
No-one is confused as to why the meanings of the design and colours of the flag are not discussed.
It is ECD curriculum with an ideological axis skewed to the West; this is not an ECD curriculum, this is an adulterated Family and Heritage syllabus which is not about ECD.
At ECD, we should, therefore, not be restricted to any set of topics; the world, the whole wide world is the topic and we should open the whole wide world through an exploration, stimulation, of their intelligencies (MI Theory).
All of them, the intelligencies, the Musical Intelligence, which incidentally is the earliest to manifest in children, their linguistic, Bodily Kinaesthetic, Spatial Temporal, Logico-mathematical, Naturalistic, Existential, Intra and Inter-personal intelligencies, are inborn and are the means by which the children ensconce with the world and we should open up all the vistas and let the children guide us into their inner world which is their window to the outside world. Without this, we are doing the children the gravest of injustices. Children should not be confused by being given so many irrelevant things and being tormented by homework.
Next week we explore ways of interfacing with the children’ intelligencies so they blossom and develop instead of forcing pre-set syllabus topics on them.
