SA kids grow up faster

SOUTH African children grow up more quickly than their Norwegian counterparts, possibly due to being exposed to high levels of violence.

This was one of the observations by a group of Norwegian students – studying early childhood development at the Queen Maud University College in Trondheim – while participating in an exchange programme with Durban’s Embury College.

Kristoffer Eide, Emile Hegge, Ingrid Tvete and Isabel Nordby arrived in South Africa in September and will go home next month.

They have attended lectures at Embury and spent time at pre-primary schools in and around the city.

They said the children they had interacted with appeared to have matured more quickly. They were also in general more independent than children in Norway.

They were able to resolve conflict among themselves, by themselves, Nordby said. “In Norway, we have to help them,” she said.

They also said South African children were subjected to a much stricter school system and identified the use of uniforms and teacher-driven learning as a major difference.

Chantelle Gilbert, who studies at Embury and spent time at Queen Maud earlier this year, agreed. “In Norway, the learning is left to the learners, for them to discover themselves. There’s no set activity, they can go out and experiment and learn through playing. In South Africa, they learn through set activities,” she said.

Class sizes and the ratio of children to teachers were also major differences. The group had been taken aback to find classes of 20 children.

In Norway, they said, children aged 3 and older had one teacher to six children while children, aged 3 and under had one educator to three. Norway’s education system has consistently been praised for being one of the best in the world and Hegge felt a similar system could be implemented here, despite a lack of resources.

“You can still educate well if you have good teachers,” he said.

Gilbert also thought it was possible. “I think it could be implemented, it would take a lot from the government, teachers and parents though,” she said.

In future, Embury hopes to undertake research projects with Queen Maud University College.

The two institutions have had exchange activity since 2008. Eighteen Embury students have gone to visit Queen Maud for periods of three months.

“We share education practices, information, trends, foster good relationships and give people the opportunity to see what happens in other countries,” said Deidré Linden, Embury’s national marketing and communications manage.