Pre-schooling can have lasting benefits

Simon Marcus Gower, Contributor, Jakarta

It is a quite remarkable fact -- and it can be a constant wonder to see -- that small children are natural learners. It is in our very human nature that, as children, we learn.

In a sense we must: Small children experience both an internal and an external world, of which they need to make sense. In some respects, this "making sense of the world" can be seen as a survival instinct.

Pre-school aged children are effectively experiencing a time when it is in their nature to learn about what is around them. This, inevitably, means they are experiencing times that are potentially highly influential and formative for their future behavior and habits.

Small children are not, as yet, weighed down by the "baggage" of formal schooling. They have not yet reached an age at which they may encounter feelings of boredom, antipathy and even cynicism, which are liable to be encountered in later years when schooling is mundane and uninspiring. For them, the whole world is a school, everywhere a classroom and endless learning opportunities are to be had.

But perhaps this highlights that, during those pre-school years, great caution needs to be taken because such children can be seen as highly impressionable and they could effectively gather up and store the wrong impressions.

Two simple and modest observations of children learning together may illustrate this point.

In the first instance, a child is patiently attempting to trace letters in a book. For her age, this behavior is really quite advanced. Another child who had been quite boisterously running around eventually found his attention drawn to this child, patiently and carefully trying to manipulate a colored pencil across the page of the book.

Here, his natural learning instinct took hold, and a natural curiosity created a question in his mind: "What is she doing?" This question led to the further decision to go over and take a look. Within moments, he was looking for his own colored pencil to duplicate the little girl's actions. He was effectively and positively learning from her.

In a second instance, though, we can see that the potential of small children to learn from each other and from whatever situation can have a potentially negative impact.

In this instance, a boy was maliciously chasing after a cat that had strolled into his domain. The cat seemed to be toying with the little boy, in that it did not immediately run away but stayed around, as it were, to play with the boy.

Another boy was watching these antics when the first boy picked up a stick with which he intended to hit the cat. The second boy soon joined in, and within moments, the two of them were violently lashing away at the cat. It should be noted that the cat was too quick and soon made his escape.

In this instance, it would seem that violent behavior was being observed and learned.

This emphasizes to the need for small children to be given the right kind of guidance, routines and examples from which they may be able to learn and so incorporate into their own being. The manner in which little children are able to mimic and duplicate behaviors they see can be something of a warning to parents, and highlight the need for the right kind of early childhood learning experiences.

Another example illustrates how parents may have a rude awakening about the way small children pick up what they see and hear. One mother had a habit of using a particular four-letter expletive when something went wrong or was not to her liking. It was, then, with some dismay and embarrassment that she heard her little daughter using the very same bad language one day.

Small children will naturally pick up and often repeat what they hear and see without the self-censorship that distinguishes between right and wrong, the acceptable and unacceptable.

This, then, highlights the critical value of having a pre- school environment that assists the child in seeing, hearing and interacting with settings that are developmentally appropriate and beneficial to their impressionable minds.

In this sense, the benefits of pre-schooling is immediately obvious, as a child may learn and incorporate socially acceptable norms in their behavior. Simple behavioral values such as sharing and taking turns in a pre-school setting are an excellent early learning experience that has lasting influence over how the child develops and behaves toward their peers and elders.

The lasting influence that pre-schooling can have over a child's development and future is an area that should be recognized and appreciated. Indeed, research results have consistently highlighted how children who have attended pre- school have reaped benefits later in life.

Published figures show that a child who has received some pre- schooling is more likely to score higher on IQ tests later in life, is less likely to drop out of school and is more likely to progress to higher education, thus possess higher employability. Such results are indicative of the plus factor likely to emerge when a child encounters good and positive pre-school learning experiences.

But these learning experiences are not positive simply because the child happens to be attending pre-school. Any and all pre- schools need an appropriately and well designed program that provides a sense of structure and routine for small children. Merely having children coming to a class or group and interacting with each other without some reasonable degree of structure and patterning to the day could prove counterproductive.

The example above shows how easily a small child can gather and replicate the wrong kinds of behavior, and this could and does happen also in a pre-school setting. It is thus important that pre-schools have certain quality-related features, including -- but not be limited to -- staff trained in early childhood education, a low teacher/caregiver-child ratio so each child may receive their full attention, a solid curriculum and room for parent involvement in their children's school day.

Clearly, realistic expectations must be applied, as there is only so much that a small child can do, but with the right planning and implementation, the benefits of pre-schooling can be deep and lasting. -- The writer is a Jakarta-based education consultant.