Education or learning starts from the time of birth. Initial learning may be up to nature. A time comes when parents and society have to take responsibility for a child’s learning process through education.
Parents, relatives, and friends begin to admire the physical and mental features of a child. That is good. But, as children grow, their physical and mental faculties grow based on the environment in which they were brought up. A child’s interests, attitudes, and behaviors are molded by the environment.
Rich people and middle class people decorate the room in which a child is brought up with the hope that it influences the child’s character as he/she grows. They buy toys, games, and musical instruments that engage, calm, and educate the child. The middle class in the West leave the children in front of the Sesame Street program. There was a time when American children started their day with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. All that is fine, perhaps! But, a time comes when the real education starts. The nursery schools and Kindergartens in the West take care of it. They are supplemented by the Sunday schools. They are OK for the West – at least so for the upper and middle cast children.
India needs its own system owing to its unique characteristics. I am making an attempt to suggest a framework to develop a system suitable for India with its diversity in many areas.
What do we mean when we say that a baby or a child is growing? It is the growth of the physical body as well as the mental faculties and attitudes. Those muscles in the body that are exercised most are the ones that grow best. This is evident when we see one child is able to run fast while another child can digest a lot. Yet another child can begin to sing or read small books. Some children pick up slang fast and pick up fights frequently for no cause. This should tell us that we should get the child to exercise her physical and mental muscles gently, regularly, and progressively in the proper direction.
A child’s natural urge to explore self and surroundings would suggest what she likes to learn and how she likes to progress. These trends should guide us in how we structure the teaching and learning system at Level 1- the early childhood.
Figure 1 shows the natural progression of the space (geographical entities) that a child and a person should explore over time. A child is naturally interested in self. It is not my intention to say that a child tries to learn about herself. A child responds to impacts on herself. She cries when cold air or hot air impinges on her. She gets startled when a sudden loud sound hits her ears. She likes to eat certain items and dislikes certain others. She laughs when tickled. In a short while, she may even respond to her name. She starts to develop tastes for certain toys and even becomes used to them (addiction comes later on!). At a young age, a child learns ownership as she likes her own bed or own utensils. At a certain age, she knows if one out of a certain number of familiar toys is removed from her sight. That is the beginning of her talents in mathematics, economics (ownership), and defense of property.
Figure 1: Space (Geographical) progression natural for a growing child.
As the child grows, she starts to recognize mother, father, and the family, in general. As the child goes about her surroundings, she begins to recognize her home, street, and village. This learning process should instruct us to enable the child to move progressively with age to learn about expanded spaces as shown in Figure 1. Thus, teaching them about global things before local things is unnatural. It is meaningless to sing the nursery rhyme, “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been, I have been to London to look at the Queen.”
Figure 2 shows a list of subjects (not in any ranking order) that a child will find it natural to learn as she grows. The first time a child cries, it is conveying to the parents and the delivering nurse that the child is live and ready to enter this world. Later on, when she is all cleaned up and wrapped up warmly, she smiles and conveys her contentment and happiness. The child starts with those binary means of communication (crying and smiling). Gradually, she starts her own language which parents and siblings try to make sense out of but the child starts to adapt herself to the language of the family, called the mother tongue. Society has to learn that it is best to provide an environment where the child learns about the environment in her mother tongue. The child follows certain routines dictated by the parents and other caregivers. Initially, she may express (remember she has a language and ability to communicate) some disinterest, distaste, and rejection, but soon follows the rules and regulations imposed by parents. She sleeps on time, has meals at regular intervals, has playtime, and so on. She learns the laws of the self (body) and the family. It is noteworthy that on many an occasion, it is the parents and nurses that may relax their rules and give conflicting signals to the child. Of course, the child shows some definite creativity to do her own things while behaving within the rules laid out most of the time.
Figure 2: Subjects Appropriate for a Growing Child to Learn.
The child starts to learn about the parents, aunts, grandparents, baby care givers, family, and friends as the first lessons in history. She likes her family dog but cringes when the neighbor’s Pitbull barks loudly. While she is willing to pat her family dog, she is careful about the cat as her expression of personal security.
We know that those muscles which we exercise most are the ones that grow strong. As stated before, the child exercises her vocal muscles the most. Of course, she has been kicking her legs and waving her hands even while she was in the mother’s womb, those limbs grow fast to make her mobile (to topple, tumble, crawl, walk, and run). Such exercises are important for a child to be ready to grow into an amateur or professional sportsperson, or athlete at school and college. A child should be exposed to reading, watching, listening, and speaking so that the important organ called the brain also grows. It is not uncommon to observe leaders in every field who, in their childhoods, have been avid readers of books, listeners of stories from their mothers and teachers, speakers at debates and elocutions, and writers at every level of the school. Parents and guardians do well to support and encourage children to exercise their brains so that they grow their memory capacity and long term retention of what was learned, culled, and stored. It is very difficult to seek the brain to do much if it did not build itself during child’s growth stage. Since the brain does both keeping memory as well as processing, both kinds of exercises are important for children of every age.
A child outgrows her clothes as well as her toys and books. She explores new geographies, and new tricks showing her curiosity and creativity. It is again instructive to parents and teachers that putting children in a box does no good for their growth. The child should be exposed to the local culture albeit some screens and filters may be placed (like training wheels on a bike) so that she is exposed to what is considered good and classic culture but not to indecent and immoral behaviors and attitudes. Participation in activities in arts and fine arts are likely to direct the child into good culture, discipline, and team work.
While the child would learn that following certain rules set by the parents would be beneficial to her as they reduce time-outs and yield an occasional ice cream and frequent pats on the back from dad. Exposure to religion and stories from the epics could instruct a child that there is more than the home and immediate surroundings but a wider cosmos to be aware of and to follow its moral tidings.
We will discuss how the subjects and horizon fit together as a child passes through adolescence and youth and gets graduate diplomas from various levels of schools. This is shown in Figure 3.
In my childhood, I learnt about goldmines in Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie in Australia, prairies in America, Merino wool in New Zealand, and cricket in England, among a few other strange factoids in our history, geography, and other classes in our schools. Of course, we memorized the facts to pass the tests and escape caning from the teachers and mockery by older cousins and rebukes from uncles. But, we had no clue about the gold, the games, or the places. The saddest point was that we had no inkling about what was available in our village and district, games played locally, the origin of our village, how people lived in the village, and so on. It did not occur to us that our family had a history until our children started asking us questions about our ancestry to write their essays in their schools in Australia and America. What a pity that our (Indian) school curriculum removed our history, geography, economy, culture, and religion from our conscience!
I wish that they had a curriculum of the following type when we were children. Perhaps, Indians should launch such a curriculum.
Figure 3: Study of subjects and the extent over time.
Subjects and Descriptions:
Language:
Parents should be communicating with children in their mother tongue such that the baby develops good expression in that language. For good communication, a child has to have good command of the language in terms of its structure, vocabulary, and meaning with respect to context. Then, the child should know the domain of the conversation. Then, there is the body language. Finally, there is a script for the language. As the child grows, she should know that there are other languages used by other people. The child should be curious to learn those languages in order to converse with the other people, and to appreciate the richness and beauty of those languages also.
Society should introduce to the child various other subjects via voice, text, pictures, and action, i.e. via listening, and watching modes.
Language is for communication among people, among generations, and between people and animals, and machines. It is to express data, information, knowledge, commands, and wishes. It is to entertain, excite, motivate, and guide people.
Communication:
A child should be encouraged to communicate. Parents love it when their baby begins to say some words. That is good but the child is not a parrot just to regurgitate what she listens to. As she grows, she should begin to understand the meaning and intent of words, commands, and speech. Likewise, she should be able to translate her wishes and thoughts via her speech. The more the muscles involved in the speech process are exercised, the stronger they get. Since communication involves the thinking brain, it also gets exercised. But, there must be a balance between the content in the brain and the conversation. This aspect requires that the child should be a quiet listener (for a part of the time) so that the hearing, listening, and filling the brain with content can occur. As we now know, it is not just data that a child’s brain should hold. It is data, information, methods to process the content, indexing, computation, generating new constructs from the basic information (imagination and creativity), developing links, and finally using the generated forms to convey as speech or writing or art.
Communication is not an isolated action. It is in the context of other factors in life. Thus, as part of culture, law, and discipline, a child should learn the occasions that are right for her to speak and when she should not.
A child should be introduced to information via speech and texts gradually covering various subjects to gain understanding the local to global scenes such that the child can connect the physical objects and actions to language.
Use of extremely foreign names and concepts in stories will not provide context and association whereas local names will allow a greater understanding for the child. Perhaps, this may be the reason why our elders used animals in children’s stories as the children were also exposed to animals in real life. Of course, currently, children see only plastic replicas of animals and trees as we have been exterminating the real live animals and trees or keeping them in zoos, aquariums, and nurseries. Again, the behaviors of the captive animals do not fit the prior descriptions of animals. There is no predator and prey in a zoo as they are all fed on welfare.
Law:
A child is expected to obey the laws that the body imposes on her in terms of her food, sleep, sanitation, and activity or playtime. Essentially, these are the rules imposed by nature. Those rules are followed by the family’s rules. Rules are generally for the welfare, safety, and well-being of the child and family.
As the child gains more autonomous mobility, she will come in contact with other children and adults in other environments, such as play pens, parks, sandlots, swimming pools, grounds, nurseries, kindergartens, and schools. At that stage, the rules laid out by the controllers of those environments will come into play. It is important if the child can learn that the rule is not arbitrary but it is in the interest of her own safety and wellbeing (i.e. not getting hurt, not feeling pain, or not falling sick). If a child learns during her childhood that rules have been laid for good reason, she is highly likely to understand the rationale for rules as an adult and respects and follows them sincerely throughout her life.
New rules apply with time as the child grows and moves in the village, the town, the district and so on into the larger geographies. For example, the rules at mealtime are likely to be different at home versus the school, versus the picnic grounds. Every game has its own rules of play and conduct. She will also realize that there are specific rules for organizations and for people in their various roles. Of course, she will expect them to follow the rules laid down for them. Through proper understanding of the systems, she will realize why the others cannot do certain things the way she would wish that they do certain things.
Hence, schools have a responsibility to teach children about the laws within each theater and ultimately in the nation and the globe. Together with the rules are the people responsible to enforce them (conductors, directors, and police) and those (judges) who dispense justice (punishment or compensation) when the rules are broken. If children understand these principles about law and gain respect for the laws in an orderly society, there will be fewer law breakers in later stages. They may also become good rule makers as adults.
History
Learning history starts at home when a child learns who her parents, grandparents, relatives, and various service providers are. A local grocer may provide the ingredients for the food in her home in her childhood, while Amazon or Flipkart may provide most goods for her in her adult life. She may realize that her classmates are constantly competing to gain the teacher’s attention, while she may realize later on that competing companies are arguing to sell their raw materials to a big buyer.
A child would see history as a sequence of events in the lives of people in villages, towns, states, and countries. Neither all events are recorded, nor everything recorded are necessarily objective. It is akin to children’s reports to their parents about happenings in the school and at playgrounds. Of course, the aim is to record events of significance and in a concise manner. The objective is to learn to characterize people and groups such that the lessons of history can guide people in their manner of conduct in the future.
Once the purpose of history is thus understood, children can learn progressively the history of their own family, the village, the country, and ultimately, the globe. They would develop a logically connected idea of what events have shaped the world as it exists today and how they might conduct in the future to make the world and the planet a better one for tomorrow.
Health
Parents take care of a baby’s health and make sure that she gets nutritious food and lives in a sanitary environment. They take care of the inoculations and vaccinations. As they let the child venture outside, they keep cautioning her about the precautions and consequences of violations. Various parties, such as parents, child minders, healthcare providers, teachers, and coaches, who watch the activities of the child, should be noticing any deviations in health and providing feedback to parents for timely action.
We know from the nature of the human body, those organs that are exercised most in childhood grow best. Besides taking care of the child’s health, she should be provided knowledge about healthcare. Through various means, a child should be given information about the components of the human body and the need and means to keep them healthy. Once such knowledge is in a child’s mind, she is highly likely to be conscious of health throughout her life.
Simply imposing rules like, ‘do this and do not eat that’ will be tolerated, or resisted, and forgotten over time. But, if the rules are presented as methods to prevent something bad happening to the body and improving the abilities and capabilities, such knowledge is likely to have a lasting and positive impact on a child.
From a personal health, a child might be able to project the knowledge to the health of the society and the environment as she grows.
Geography
Once a child begins to understand her room, her home, and so on, it is time to introduce to her, which is her street, her village, and progressively larger geographies. The geography contains resources that benefit her in several ways. These features should be used to help her learn what the geography is about. The local hills, streams, fields with crops, streets with homes, and farms with animals should be part of her geography lessons. Each feature has a unique characteristic and the child should be able to extrapolate them to other features prevailing in other locations. Thus, she will be able to learn the geographies of larger units, such as the country, the globe, and the universe.
Security
A child starts to develop attachment to certain objects, usually her bed, stroller, and toys. She likes not to be separated from them, which is the beginning of the security response. At appropriate times, she should be informed about possession and dispossession of items without scaring her. By instructing her about how much effort is required to get possession of items, she should be enabled to understand their value. Thus, security may be understood in terms of protecting value. Thereafter, the value of various items that are physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual can be introduced. In parallel, she should learn the means of protection and her individual responsibility for protection versus when it is the responsibility of others.
Sport
Sports, games, and workouts are essential for the wellbeing and growth of the child. An infant might start playing with her physical and virtual toys. But soon, she will start playing with other children. These activities offer great opportunities to learn about the roles in each game, the level of participation, expectations of outcomes, thought and decision making processes, and the meanings of results. Games allow children to understand the meaning of work in a team. They will get an opportunity to learn their own limitations, interests, and aptitudes. As they progress in sports, they will learn about competitiveness as well as cooperation. They will understand goals and the means to accomplish them progressively. It is important for parents to realize that winning the medals is not the end but understanding the process helps the child to learn valuable lessons for her future life. Sports will improve health and increase a child’s physical as well as mental capabilities when she is properly trained.
Mathematics
It is said that when one of the toys out of a set of toys is taken away from a child, she recognizes and it is considered the beginning of mathematical capability in a child. A mother may plead with the child to eat one more spoon of the vegetable pudding. A father may agree to give the child one more cookie if she sleeps early. These are subtle introductions to mathematics and its early utility. A child’s knowledge of arithmetic is the important foundation to her later life. She may be encouraged to count the number of books on the mother’s bookshelf, number of houses on their street, and such interesting exercises. When she goes to ice cream store, she may start learning about tables displaying menus and prices. She can learn comparison and concepts like equal, greater than, and less than. As she moves around town, she can learn shapes as unannounced introduction to geometry. When she goes to a store with items that she may not be familiar with, that can be the beginning of X, Y, Z in Algebra. Parents should encourage children to join them in their accounting and bookkeeping chores (assuming that they do these chores). It will give the child introduction to accounting, budgeting, and responsible spending. Games like Monopoly are good to teach about money and transactions but parents have to be cautious that children may not consider real money as a game and that they can always do better the next time.
Creativity
It is very important for parents to encourage their children to engage in activities where they come up with new ideas. It starts with thinking about a situation and a way something is currently done and evolving a new way of doing the same. It is critical to present common items that have many different designs. If children realize that they were the results of creativity of some people before those items existed, children will realize that creativity is always possible. It is just a new way of doing something or a new arrangement.
A child can be encouraged to identify different ways of going from home to school. They may come up with new ways. Of course, they can be helped to evaluate the merits and demerits of the different ways they came up with. Results of such evaluations may help them why we generally see only some solutions and how occasionally, new solutions overtake old ones.
New ways of expressing a statement will help them in language and communication. Games have to be played according to the rules laid out for a particular game. But, not all people have the same capabilities and abilities and different standards are created. Children should be allowed and encouraged to evolve new rules in a given game, and new variations of games; it is only a game. They should realize that the goal is fun for all and none should feel cheated. As children develop such skills, they may become better administrators, managers, and leaders who recognize the ultimate goal(s) and not be bound by the method laid by predecessors.
The key in childhood is to let them be open to thinking of newer ways of doing any activity. This will allow them to become creative in later life.
Culture
Children follow their parents in terms of how they live in a society. The way parents behave and interact between themselves and with other relatives, friends, and visitors would influence the children. Children pick up their language, reaction to situations, and mannerisms from parents. As children interact with other children at school, play grounds, and social meeting places, they tend to follow the group. As learners, children may be attracted to what is new and discard the old methods they have learned. Thus, parents determine the exposure that children get. Therefore, it is important for parents to expose children to groups that focus on good behavior, courteous and pleasant interactions, and high values. Arts, music, dance, literary activities, plays, and social service are some of the activities that would encourage children to expose their minds to pleasant experiences while imposing discipline. These activities would teach them the idea of group performance in addition to individual accomplishment. Children would learn and gain the ability to appreciate people and societies with culture. At the end of the day, it is culture that relaxes and soothes the mind. Early exposure to cultural activities is likely to improve their talents. Of course, one has to realize that certain innate talent is necessary to excel in culture.
Religion
As the world becomes intensive in science and technology, people tend to think that we are and we can be the masters of the universe and the cosmos. In reality, every time, we face a disaster, we think of our faith and get back to our beliefs. We seek relief that physical and psychological structures cannot yet offer. Faith comes to rescue and we recover and life continues. Hence, children should be involved in their religion that discusses nurturing and love rather than hurt and hatred. Religion may offer to them an alternative explanation for some intriguing situations that other disciplines are not able to answer.
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