A Good ECD centre (Part 2)
QUICK recap of last week’s column: A good ECD Centre is a knowledge centre, an all-round development centre, is new curriculum- compliant, conscious of a nursery STEM, but above all a language development centre. Why is English Language fundamentally critical? Because it is the tool of learning.
While the good pre-school offers French, Portuguese or Chinese, and must be congratulated, it does not play down the English-language key. Why? Because it is key! I will not go back to the detailed content of last week’s story. Those who missed the edition, it was on your page, The Education Page, of the The Manica Post : January 13-19, 2017.
Th is week I want to continue with what constitutes a good ECD centre.
Some pre- schools continue with doing exactly what Adam and Eve’s children were taught and learnt at pre- school in the Garden of Eden. Except for the fear of God and obedience to HIM, which was then and must be today, tomorrow and forever, everything else has changed. The world has dramatically changed and demands of education to fit purpose.
First, a good ECD is a centre of continuous learning. This means those who are running the ECD must expand horizons by continuing to learn from those who are ahead or more advanced.
In other words the directors or owners of a good ECD always ask themselves this question, “What is it we can do differently and better?” Then you copy or ask those who know. And let me tell you.
Asking is better than copying because in asking you talk and talking involves learning. You get to understand why something is being done and how best to do it. Continuous learning is not only an ECD demand. Th is applies to other higher levels of learning, including primary and secondary or higher schools. In fact, the quality of education that goes on at every particular school can be measured by how much the school continues to learn.
Second, a good ECD centre is run by directors who know that the mind is not a vessel to be fi lled, but a fi re to be ignited.
Th is simply means all those who are charged with the responsibility of developing these small minds and bodies is aware that children are not born with an empty mind to be fi lled.
Their minds are not tabula- rasa (empty).
They are endowed with special gift s. And it is these gift s and abilities that must be withdrawn and guided, directed and developed for purpose.
Th ird, a good ECD is run by directors and teachers who are aware that children need care; careful care? You can pay people to teach, but you can’t pay them to care, can you? Th is is Marvin Collins’ philosophy of education.
A good ECD knows that the best teachers teach from the heart; not from books.
Teach children as if they were what they ought to be and help them to become what they are capable of becoming. Th is is critical. You cannot teach a musically gifted child to grow into a doctor or engineer.
If you do you will have an education sector with examination candidates who wasted time and money in schools and failed them en masse. Why? Because the examinations asked them to answer questions to which they had no knowledge, interest and purpose. It is that simple.
A good ECD centre is run by teachers and directors who are fully aware that education at this stage, and any other even, is one, a necessity of life; two, it is Growth; three, it is Preparation; four, it is Unfolding and fi ve, education is Formal Discipline.
A good ECD centre builds a child’s personality and character. Once it fails to this it is either inadequate or harmful.
And the greatest builder of personality and character is God. Lest we forget!
God must have everything to do with these children: their preparation, their unfolding, their growth and their discipline.
A good ECD centre gives children a chance at physical activities which bring their natural impulses into play and going to school becomes a joy, management of self is less of a burden and learning is not only easier and appropriate, but fun.
Finally, in compliance with the new Zimbabwean curriculum, education is no more just about focusing on making children know things, but indeed DOING things with that knowledge.
A good ECD centre, and please never forget this, creates an environment in which play and work are conducted to achieve desirable mental and moral growth.
We cannot wait until the children are hard and matured. If we try to bend them late, we may break them.
Parents, it would not be a foolish idea to consult us fi rst before you dump your child or chizukuru at a pre-school gate. We know the best of ECDs around Mutare. Don’t say we did not warn you!