Letting kids have their say
Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Inside a comfortable house turned preschool in an upmarket South Jakarta neighborhood, several children waited in anticipation of what would emerge from the "magic box" brought by teacher Claire Jaffray.
"Caterpillar!" shouted Audrey, a dynamic five year old, in confirmation of its contents.
With Jaffray's high spirited and exciting narration, the lesson carried on.
The first letter of the word caterpillar? "C!".
The sound derived from the letter "C"? "Kah, kah, kah, kah, kah!" the children sang in unison.
Next was a storytelling session about a very hungry caterpillar who turns into a butterfly.
The class was divided into three groups that focused on different activities related to the caterpillar theme. The first group played with paint and watercolors, the second learned about words, while the speech and drama class enacted the caterpillar story.
Parents were asked to actively participate in each activity; although they seemed awkward at first, they soon realized the fun involved.
It was the opening of the Julia Gabriel Center and Chiltern House, a branch of Singapore's private educational organization (it also has branches in New Delhi).
"These activities are aimed at increasing children's environmental awareness, as they learn, for instance, about colors and language of science," Gabriel told The Jakarta Post.
The founder of the school, she is a noted child development practitioner in Singapore. She started teaching in her native England in 1980, before opening a speech and drama center in Singapore three years later.
The aim was to instill confidence in children to enable them to acquire greater communication skills.
"It was an instant success. The children said, 'I don't wanna leave, I don't wanna leave'. And so, I started a preschool and now have four of them. I wanted it to be a home for children -- I wanted it to be like home," Gabriel said.
The schools (the Julia Gabriel Center has classes for students up to 18 years of age) focus on creating an ideal learning environment, encouraging individuality, independence, creativity and self-confidence.
Gabriel's concern is that parents around the globe, weighed down by their job and family responsibilities, have lost the feeling of "being attached" to their children.
Parenting remains an issue of "old habits die hard". There is no Parenting 101 to provide rights and wrongs of responsibilities, so new parents simply repeat the methods of their parents, who learned from their own.
Often, it involves an unwittingly patronizing view of young ones.
"There is still a great deal of treating children as an object, and less superior being, when in fact we know that they are more imaginative and more capable of learning than we are," Gabriel said.
The brain of a 2.5 year old, she added, was 17 times as creative as the brain of a college student.
Many parents are also unaware of how children learn.
"When (parents) went to school, it was a different age. Learning was handed out, children were given information that they had to memorize and write out," she said.
Children today will not retain anything presented in such a rote learning method because it is alien to them.
"The other thing is that we live in the information age. Children do not need to receive information from us. They can press a button and download it from the Internet. Education changes," Gabriel said.
What is important in education now is to enable children to cope with the world they are entering. That means they need to unlearn and relearn, including to be flexible enough to change as the world changes.
Children also need to be educated on how to research and think quickly and then evaluate, and how to communicate that knowledge to another person or an audience through a variety of different media.
Gabriel realized it through programs provided in the center and the preschool.
Comprising over 100 skilled professionals, there are teachers of voice, speech, drama, literature, early childhood educators, musicians, linguists, speech and language therapists and psychologists.
The Jakarta branch runs the signature PlayClub for children from 18 months to three years old, speech and drama programs are for children aged from three to eight years, and there is a reading and writing program for those five to eight years of age.
The preschool also offers half-day classes for children of three to six years old.
"Children create drama naturally when they play," Gabriel said about the importance of speech and drama class.
"They use imagination to play a role, create stories and solve problems together. At the same time, they're practicing language and developing confidence in expressing and explaining their ideas. It's the natural way for children to learn."
The branch here is perhaps the first preschool with a bilingual curriculum, as it provides educational fundamentals in English and Mandarin, just like in Singapore.
The Singapore school's speech and drama classes are attended by 3,000 children every week.
Gabriel claimed that prospective franchise holders were knocking on her door every day.
"We never sell it as a franchise, because as soon as you do, you focus on profit. It (preschool) has become a big business all over the world, and it's a sad thing."
Fees are about average for a preschool in Jakarta, with prices ranging from US$160 to $1,000 per one term or 10 weeks (at a fixed exchange rate of Rp 7,500).
Gabriel said she maintained the quality of her center and school by keeping tiny teacher-student ratios; it's 1:5 or 1:7 the childhood program.
Parents should not regard the facility as a convenient minder for the kids. And parents can learn as well.
"We do a great deal of parenting activity," she said. "We're asking parents to participate and be active, because children learn by watching you. You're the person the child wants to be with. They're copying and imitating you."
Julia Gabriel Center & Chiltern House, Jl. Terusan Hang Lekir II No. 39, South Jakarta, Tel. (021) 7266969/7267575, E-mail jakarta@juliagabriel.com