Why Do Kids Need to Go to School?

It is common knowledge how starting school can be a fearsome experience with most kids. There is, for example, separation anxiety where little kids feel bewildered in being left alone among people they’ve seen for the very first time. The rawness of the experience itself can make the little ones feel helplessly exposed to a new world of ‘dangers’.

Yes, starting school is never a very comfortable experience, to say the least. It is, in fact, horrifying to most kids. Loving and protective parents themselves suffer too – they agonize over what their kids are going through.

But starting school – as well as the whole shebang of going to school – is a necessary discomfort. School is something that kids have to go through for their education, which is necessary for their full development as individuals. Education equips them knowledge and skills in order to become useful members of society, ready to face the complexities of living in an ever changing world.

Going to school, therefore, shall be made interesting to kids. The kids need to be explained that at school not only will they learn many things but they will also learn new skills, including the skills to make new friends. To children, “friends” is a very interesting word.

Parents and teachers shall work together in showing kids that school can be fun, now. That schooling will not only help them later in life – that it opens up many interesting activities for them, now. And that the things they learn in school are fun, more so because they learn these in the fun company of other young learners like them.

Many school kids ask why they have to go through the many long years of attending school. School is fun, they say, but too much school is just too much. Kids need to understand that it’s because they can’t take all the knowledge in one or a few shots. They need to take it just enough at a time, in order to effectively imbibe it.

This is also the reason why school is divided into manageable “chunks” – Kindergarten, Elementary, High School, College. The readiness of the learners’ mind is considered. They’re given just enough that they can ‘chew’ and ‘digest’ at any given stage of life. The structure of the educational system there is today is the product of long years of scientific study of what works at different stages of human development.

The years at school also help individual learners to at least more realistically decide on their particular contribution to the world. Based on their school experience, learners get a sense of what line of profession they’re good at and with which to make a better impact on society. Teachers continually ask children what career they would like to pursue when they grow older; they answers vary every time, from Kindergarten to High School.

By College, students will now have a clearer picture of what they want to be. They will now have a whiff of their professional “calling.” They will have narrowed down their options.

By going to school, kids and grownups alike have the advantage of tapping into the accumulated human knowledge. One does not have to start all over again and learn from scratch on his own. At school, he can learn from all the learning of the great learners before him, all the way back to centuries and centuries before.

In democratic societies, like the Philippines, education earned at school can be a leveraging factor for changing positions in life. The children of the poor may have a chance for progress with education. On the other hand, the children of the rich may lose their privileged life if they miss out on education.