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Our young kids who attend kindergarten and English medium schools are experiencing a very hard time. They seem to be overburdened with their school schedules and syllabus. An unhealthy competition has begun in the whole urban society, which has engulfed the parents and they are in a race to send their kids to English medium schools. It was assumed that children would go to school and their academic hours would be confined and limited only to the school hours. But the actual situation goes far beyond the reality.
Every student is to remain extremely busy with their studies all the while keeping their parents busy as well. The parents employ private tutors to carry on with their studies. Young kids are physically, mentally and psychologically overburdened. But who cares? Neither the teacher nor the parents nor the government seem to be bothered about it. These children don't have any playground to ventilate their feelings and play freely. And it is also an essential condition for the mental and physical growth of the children in a balanced way.
What's is the need of this kind of competition? Will these children sit for the public examination so early in their lives? What is need for this sort of pressure on their tender mind? Can't we arrange such kind of atmosphere for these kids which will keep their academic affairs limited to school compound and hours till she/he reaches class four? Can't we lessen our dependence on private teachers? For mental and physical growth of our children, we must address the situation without delay, otherwise the day is not far off when the situation will turn for the worse.
In response to the increase in the number of students, kindergarten schools have sprung up in every nook and cranny of our cities in general and Dhaka in particular. And early in the morning, guardians of various categories are seen to go to schools with their kids. These kids cannot complete their sleep, as children need to sleep pretty more than adults, which we have miserably failed to understand. As the young kids cannot enjoy full sleep they suffer from various kinds of diseases with some mental ailments. Moreover, the syllabuses of kindergarten schools do not fit the need of children. Within a limited time they are to cover the syllabus. To complete the syllabus there are examinations galore, which but burden the children further and make them mentally busy. With them, the guardians are also busy. They compete with each other. If any child obtains a little more marks than another kid his/her guardian takes it otherwise and gives more pressure on her child just to overtake the former one. It is another unhealthy situation prevailing among the guardians. These guardians take it as a prestige issue. They hardly bother about the ability of a child to take such loads.
Shouldn't we change this scenario? The Ministry of Education must immediately form a committee comprised of national and international education experts, child psychologist and social scientists to ascertain to what extent the present academic pressure given to our young kids in different kindergarten schools is reasonable. The committee must ascertain whether the examination conducted by these schools are proper. During this period of their lives, children must not sit for any examination. Examination creates a kind of fear and tension among the child students, which must be removed. It is very unreasonable that the little kids are to sit for admission test to get admission in the famous schools of the country and the little children are to receive special coaching in different coaching centres set up or organised by the teachers of renowned schools. It is causing child diseases as well as wasting national resources. In these admission tests, very tough questions are set just to baffle the children. Sometimes one may even find some questions in such tests, which are equivalent to those set in SSC examination and sometimes even in BCS examinations. It seems that there is none to look into the matter. This situation must not continue in the greater interest of the nation.
As the government and society have miserably failed to cater to the need to educate increasing number of children, private individuals have established kindergarten schools either to earn some extra money or to make an arrangement for employment. And all these schools are housed in small rented houses which hardly satisfy the criteria of a school. Most of these schools don't have the facilities necessary for even a family to live in, let alone for a school. A school cannot be established in this way. The government is also unable to establish schools for the increasing number of children. In this situation what should we do? The government can ask the owners of several schools to make a beautiful and suitable school campus merging the existing little ones where necessary facilities for the children are available. This situation will ensure better educational facilities for the children as well as lessen the unhealthy competition among the different schools.
A uniform syllabus must be introduced for all the schools according to the age of the children. No school should be allowed to follow their own syllabus. Another thing must be taken into account regarding government control. In most of the cases, government control means a way of illegal incomes for some government officials instead of improving the situation. It must not be made as a channel of earning some extra money for the officials of education ministry.
When many schools would be integrated into a single campus, necessary facilities could be made available easily to the students. Every school would be able to retain a doctor and a child psychologist. Until the schools could be made attractive to the students, it will never bring any good whatever results they may make. A very bad tradition has been established that guardians don't bother about extra and co-curricular activities of the students. They just bother about results at the cost of the children's mental, physical and psychological pressure.
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The writer is an NGO activist
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