Research Articles

Early Childhood Education

ECE is watering seeds to become trees

In the last few years Early Childhood Education has become talk of the town. Seminars and conventions all over the world highlight its importance. Ever since mankind has realized that over 80 percent of human personality, including its aptitude and attitude shapes before the age of 6, lots of resources are going into this field of education.

Curriculum being one of the most important issues in any education is hotly debated. What a good ECE curriculum should achieve, what should its targets, are some of the questions now being asked.

Curriculum is a program of study that can be used for many different purposes. It can be used for indoctrination. It can be used to further a certain ideology. It can also be used to prepare for further studies. These are some, and I am sure there are many other purposes of a good curriculum.

This thus becomes a touch matter. I would like to present a holistic view of a good curriculum. It should be a tool of personality development curriculum, thus is a means to prepare a young child for the challenges of tomorrow.

This means equipping children with skills that are essential for a good and prosperous life. in a minute I will explore this issue of skills further, but first a few words about the emotional development. A good curriculum must address the emotional development of young children. Let me highlight its importance.

21 st century has presented humankind with new challenges. There are new media to use, new ventures to explore, and new technologies. There is a lot of NEW in the world, which needs emotionally stable personalities to manage them.

Consumerism and onslaught of pull marketing, capitalizing on human emotions, have also highlighted the importance of emotional stability.

Psychological disorders like anxiety and depression are common now. One out of every 8 person in Karachi now suffers from either one of the two.

The impact of emotions on human performance has led to the creation of a new terminology…. Emotional Intelligence.

And within few years of the coinage of this terminology, we have come to a point where Emotional intelligence, is considered more important than cognitive intelligence.

Coming back to the issue of skills, there are two types of skills that take up most of the time in primary classes. First the creativity skills. Second the language skills.

First allow me to discuses the broad outline of the two ends then I will take en opportunity to go into the finer details of the two.

Creativity leads to better problem solving end imaginative abilities. it allows a person to come up with new ideas, suggestions , solutions, and products.

In this age of commerce when trade balance definite the strength of a nation, the ability of a nation to nature innovated products mixed with the skills of solving problems for its customers results in a better trade balance sheet.

With the financial reserve in hand a nation can pursue other interest, occupying other people’s resources in far off lands, for example.

Interestingly, early childhood is the most suitable time to develop this skill in a person. A good primary curriculum there for should focus on the development of creativity among children.

Over the years , I have identified a set of 33 skills that should be developed in children, various combinations of which are then used to enhance creativity in children. Mastering these 33 skills and then knowing the use of them in various combinations have led to the development creativity in children.

Now I would like to turn towards language development in ECE curriculums. There are some issues that we need to discuses here. First the issue of Urdu and English and the amount of time that should be assigned to each. Second the teaching and learning strategy use for English.

In most private schools of Pakistan, teaching of English probably gains preference in a curriculum. The harsh economical realty of our poor country has led to this situation since the medium of communication in government department and the exams used for the hiring, commonly known as CSS are both in English, no person can deny the importance of the language. Add to it that in the 21st centaury the great majority of service jobs are created by multinationals, English has become, in some of the schools I have surveyed, the only aim of education at preprimary level.

Unfortunately the teaching/learning strategies used to teach English have not been improved for the last 50 years. As a result more and more time is cut from the teaching of creativity or Urdu language. Given to the development of English.

Then there is the issue of English as a foreign, second or first language. Most of the strategies and books adopted in Pakistan for teaching English are for the children with English as their first language.

Whereas for almost all Pakistani children English is either a foreign or second language, but it surely is not a first language.

Now let me come to the teaching strategies. the curriculum followed in Pakistan, is not designed keeping in mind the natural process of language development should start from listening then going to speaking, then leading to reading and ultimately writing. Our schools usually emphasize on only one language skill and that is writing.

This non-scientific approach leads towards rote memorization of the content, sometimes consisting of hundreds of words.

Now let me discuss some solution. I have pursued the development of a balance curriculum, with many associates and in collaboration with some acclaimed departments of education all over the world. We have been able to evolve a more effective and organized curriculum for Pakistani children.

We call it 18 point Modern Montessori Curriculum. Considering that Dr. Maria Montessori was the pioneer in the field of early childhood education we have named this curriculum after her. The scope and methodology of studies of this curriculum, however, is modern incorporating latest research in this field. Today hundreds of schools have successfully adopted this curriculum.

Now briefly, let me highlight some of solutions and approaches we have offered in this curriculum.

First of all we have made creatively a part of language development. Children are taught language through act invitees. Children are taught carefully selected skills very early in their life. This puts them on the road to creatively .Teacher then uses the activities performed by the children to enhance their vocabulary of English language that make up almost 50 percent of everyday language. Teacher repeat these words and phrases during the activates. Providing children an opportunity to talk using the e same word and phrases

This preprimary curriculum is arranged in a hierarchy for the three year of early childhood education. for each one eighteen points if curriculum 24 bench marks have been identified this mean that the hold curriculum consists of 432 bench marks . These 432 bench marks spread our three year offering multiple benefits

First these benchmarks break teaching in to small segments .giving more cohesion and control.

Second , due to them , teacher are now able to perform more informal assessments and are able to identify teaching learning gaps at shorter intervals then before . This means less Frustration and early identification of a problem.

Third these benchmarks on monthly basis .parents are then in a better position to guide their children at home.

There are, however, two problems with this 18–point modern Montessori curriculum:

The teachers can master this curriculum only after training of 8 months. The training required to use this document cannot be reduced to anything less than 8 months. And since this training is limited only to Karachi this means that teachers in other parts of the country are not able to benefit from it completely .unfortunately, all of my previous efforts to bring it into a manual that teachers can read independently have failed.

The second problem, Alhamdulilah, I have been able to resolve that had to do with parent’s expectation s or lack of information. Most parent demanded quick result especially in the writing area of the curriculum. Now we have started conducting workshops for the parents where we brief them on this curriculum .I am glad to information you that parents are understanding and cooperating

Early childhood is now considered the most important part of a person‘s education .that makes the ECE curriculum a precious document, effective of which means the effectiveness of ECE.