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| Little Einstein...lol!! |
Hiya, how are you guys?
Well, me I'm fine, except the weather is a bit annoying.
Anyways, I'm so glad to be back here writing.
I remember when I was creating my own 11 questions when I took part in the Elevens tag and one of my questions was "At what age did you start school?" I was curious to know because I started school kinda early (just about two weeks before I turned two) and I'm always thinking what was the fuss sef..ahn ahn. It's not as if I've finished up till now sef!!.
I Was gisting with my family and just for laughs my dad mentioned that he spoke to one of my cousins who has two children, one of which just turned 3 and started school a while back. My dad asked after the little 3-year old and said casually "he should be back from school now", since it was a weekday and the time was about 3:00pm. But his mother answered "No, he's at lesson. They close by 4:00pm". OMG!! My dad said he burst into laughter and joked about the 3-year preparing for GCE and being a child prodigy.
When he shared it with us, I was so cracked up though it wasn't the first time I was hearing something like that. I know the 3-year old is very playful and stubborn, but seriously I'd rather he sat down in front of the TV watching Tweenies, BEN 10 or Phineas and Ferb, than learn A, B, C... from 8:00am to 2:00pm and then have another round from like 2:30pm to 4:00pm. I mean he's just a baby!!!
I now started remembering the little things I could about when I started school. I remember painting leaf patterns, singing nursery rhymes and also missing home. I don't really think I loved school like that like that (not as much as I do now anyways). As far as I was concerned then, when I was in school, I felt my parents just wanted to find a way to keep me away from them so they could have themselves to whatever they wanted to do. My dad can even attest to that, because he always likes to re-tell stories of him coming to pick me up from my Grandma's place and how I would kick and fuss and refuse to go home with them.
And then I got thinking. What's the reason for putting these children through all this stress sef. They probably wake up as early as 6:00am. Their parents force them to eat while they try to sneak back into their bed, then they get sent off to school amidst traffic and all the organic fumes in the atmosphere. They finally get to school, have to endure 8-2 and 2-4, for what? Is it a way of getting rid of them. Now, I don't like to judge and apparently, by God's grace I'll be a parent someday and will probably be a culprit, but I've ascertained that the reasons for this are either of the following possibilities;
-parents really have got to be at work and keeping the child away for as long as possible is very sensible
-the schools just want to make extra money and coerce parents to send their wards for 'lesson' no matter how young
-parents are really conscious of the fact that they want to raise a child prodigy, hence the earlier the child starts school the better.
It's somehow sha..Childhood should be a time of fun. I know it's hard especially with modern life. But children I think should ideally start school at 4 or 5 and at that age they don't need extra lessons yet too. I remember one of my other cousins who started school at 2 years old. I can tell you she was a very unhappy child. She cried a lot and was always at the bottom of the class..as in, in a class of 49 she always took the 49th position (I wonder what kind of exams they were doing sef). Anyways her father, my uncle finally, fully migrated to the UK and took her along when she was 3 and a half years old. When she got there they (her parents), thought they'll enroll her in a proper school immediately, so she'll continue with her 'studies'. But to her parents' surprise she wasn't allowed to enroll in school because they said she wasn't old enough!! She finally started school at 5 years old sha. And let me add that she started to do really better at school and I'm quite proud of her. Wow!..now that makes me wonder if the whole starting school early thingy is just a Nigerian thing and is maybe just another one of the problems we have, because if I remember clearly my parents told me stories (and I've read stories) about how they didn't start school until age 6. If your right hand didn't reach your left ear, you were not eligible for school. And quite honestly we know that back then education was education in Nigeria not what it is now even with children starting school as babies.
So what's the fuss?..
There are child prodigies sha, which I quite envy, so maybe it's not such a bad thing. Some children are just geniuses. I was awed to find out that Mozart started composing at age 5. Tiger woods even started playing golf at 2 years old. And also there's Akrit Jaswal, the seven-year old surgeon. And a host of others and others too
So what do you think? Are children starting school too early nowadays and at what age do you think is the ideal age for children to start school?
Thank you so much for visiting
God Bless You :)
btw, who's Sparkle2k3..the person is a new follower. Just wanted to say thank you for following my blog
image credit: http://valeriatittarelli.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/einstein.jpg
