Appropriate Curriculum for Pre-Primary Education

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Op-ed

Tuesday, 07 September 2010

Author / Source : Sardar M Anwaruddin

Nobody can deny the importance of pre-primary education in Bangladesh. The government’s decision to introduce pre-primary education is a timely response to a pressing national need. From the news media, we have known that the government is going to attach a one-year pre-primary program to the existing primary education. A number of things need to be carefully considered in the curriculum of this program. Otherwise, the pre-primary education will be nothing but an addition to the existing problems of primary education. Our primary education sector is already plagued by numerous problems such as low performance, high drop-out rates, grade repetition, poor attendance, and low contact time.
Moreover, there are about 1,500 villages without primary schools. It’s needless to restate the importance of establishing schools in those villages. In addition, many primary schools are badly suffering from a lack of teachers. Now the question that concerns us is: Are the teachers ready to take this extra responsibility of pre-primary education on their shoulder?
Early childhood education, as a distinct discipline, deserves to be a separate educational sector, if we want to benefit to the fullest extent possible. However, provided that we lack resources and skills to build up separate infrastructure for early childhood education, there is no alternative to attaching it to the primary school system.
I suspect that many teachers and parents will misunderstand pre-primary education as early schooling. The government has to make it clear that the main objective of pre-primary education is a holistic development of children and their socio-psychological preparation for a formal schooling. People tend to think that the earlier their children start learning things, the better. With this notion in mind, both teachers and parents end up imposing rote-learning on young children, which results in a cognitive and psychological damage. It has to be strictly monitored that no abstract learning is emphasized in the pre-primary education. We have to ensure that the children spend time in an environment conducive to a balanced physical and cognitive development. They should be able to grow an emotional attachment to the school environment which will eventually help them stay on right track in their educational career.
Pre-primary education needs to have specific physical and pedagogic capacities.
Reserving one classroom at each primary school for pre-primary children does not seem to be enough. The overall infrastructures of our primary schools are not favorable for early childhood education. Children’s perceptions of the world and the unique ways in which they express their imaginations are quite different from those of adults.
Children are capable of transferring their physical experiences into higher order thinking such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. For this, they need many different avenues and media to express their thoughts and ideas. Their immediate experience with physical objects around them can be a bridge between their inner thoughts and the outside world.
Therefore, the physical environment of the classroom should have an integration of formats and objects including words, gestures, drawings, paintings, sculpture, construction, music, dramatic play, movement, and dance. In short, an ordinary classroom of a primary school building is not enough for pre-primary education. The room needs a different physical environment, decorations, space, and objects which make the place conducive to children’s natural growth and cognitive development.
Like infrastructure, pedagogy of pre-primary education should be different from that
of our primary education in which rote-learning is often emphasized. A demarcation between primary and pre-primary pedagogical practices will be a challenge for many teachers. They need proper training and awareness if they are to switch their roles while dealing with pre-primary children. If they do not receive proper training and instruction, then introducing pre- primary education will simply be a one-year extension of our existing primary education.
The curriculum of the proposed pre-primary education should consider three crucial points: the image and roles of the children, the roles of the teachers, and the nature of the knowledge to be learned. The curriculum should reflect children’s needs and rights. Children should be beheld as beautiful, powerful, competent, creative, curious, and full of potentials and ambitions. Therefore, the first and foremost duty of the teachers should be listening to the children.
The children should be at the centre of the curriculum. They cannot be targeted for
pre-planned instructions. They need an opportunity to actively construct knowledge. If they can be authors of their own learning, they will find the process of education meaningful—not only in the pre-primary stage but also in their future educational career. As Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist and philosopher, points out, “a student who achieves a certain knowledge through free investigation and spontaneous effort will later be able to retain it.”
The educators also need to keep in mind that the children are natural researchers.
They question what they see, hypothesize solutions, predict outcomes, and reflect on their discoveries.
Their natural curiosity and spontaneous efforts should not be turned off by adults’ imposition of rote-learning. They should be driven to a free investigation in order for them to create meanings of the world.
The curriculum must value and foster reciprocal exchanges between children and teachers throughout the course of constructing knowledge. Teachers’ roles therefore should be those of a collaborator and co-learner. They are expected to collaborate not only with the children but also with their colleagues and children’s parents. For early childhood education, both school and home are equally important.
The fact that children are autonomous learners does not mean that the teacher should sit back and observe a child construct her own knowledge. The teacher has to work as a guide and facilitator. She needs to observe how a child learns, and whenever necessary she has to provide appropriate inputs. Thus a teacher can scaffold a child’s cognitive development and help her decode meanings of the world.
Teachers’ research and reflection are also essential components of the pre-primary curriculum. They need to identify the children’s interests, questions, curiosity, and their current understanding of things and concepts. By assuming this role of a researcher, teachers can adopt effective strategies that will promote children’s free investigation and spontaneous efforts to know the world. Teachers also need to reflect on their research findings on a regular basis. Their reflection on how children construct knowledge and learn about things should be brought into a broader context of discussion and collaboration with other teachers and parents.
Another important question we must ask regarding the curriculum making is: what kind of knowledge should be cultivated for our pre-primary children? The knowledge should not be a list of skills and facts to be transmitted from adults to children. The nature of knowledge ought to be considered dynamic. Moreover, knowledge should be perceived as a socially constructed phenomenon which has to be nurtured within the context of child-child and child- adult interactions.
If we want to advance children’s thinking ability, instead of passing information and replicating thinking process, we have to appreciate multiple forms of knowing. We need to inform our children that books are not the only source of knowledge. They can acquire knowledge by being critically aware of their surroundings. When children are forced to think and construct knowledge in specific methods prescribed by adults, nobody can be a worse enemy of the children than those adults.
When children are exposed to multiple forms of knowing, they will be able to make connections with adults and outside world and to establish relationships between words, feelings, ideas, and actions. Thus the children will perceive knowledge as a whole. It is critical to children’s cognitive development because to understand the world through the lens of bits and parts of information leads to an intellectual sterilization. When children in their pre-primary education earn the freedom to exercise free thinking and construct knowledge as a whole, they are likely to find their education meaningful which will benefit them throughout their entire educational career and beyond.
I request that our government, especially the ministry of education, consider these issues and make an effective curriculum for the proposed pre-primary education. Only keeping one classroom at each school for pre-primary section and adding extra responsibility to the teachers will not bring about expected outcomes. A physical environment conducive to early childhood education, effective curriculum, and proper teacher training should be made possible before introducing the pre-primary education program.

[Sardar M Anwaruddin teaches at BRAC University Centre for Languages, Dhaka. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]