Early childhood education here in the Philippines start at as early as 3 years old,
children who are 3 years of age
are enrolled in a "school", left in the hands of a "teacher" while the parents work. You may wonder, "Why the use of quotation marks?". The thing is, these schools should not be teaching YET. The child''s rights as according to our laws is to be free to play and the school''s main purpose is to provide a place for them to be free to do so while "learning" to socialize with other
children and therefore slowly getting the children ready to the environment of the classroom while the parents are off to work. But in our haste to uphold the quality of education here in the Philippines we have forgotten the essentials that we have been taught in our early days in college. It would do well for us to
remember that there is a law of readiness in teaching and we should practice this. We should NOT be teaching three-year-olds to read and write, we SHOULD let them play to their heart''s content, they should socialize with children of their age, be given the food that the parents left for them, be nurtured and nourished, be made to feel as if they are in their own homes, feel secure and safe, and comfortable upon arriving and departing. We should talk to the children like adults in a constructive pattern, the reason for this is because children like being talked to like an adult and we would be able make the child feel more at home in the school by establishing rapport and interacting with them. We should also refrain from referring to the establishment as a school because it more of a day care center than a school. This is merely a glorified title for the day care center because this is again part of our inexcusable way of trying to compete with other countries that have the same principles. But it would do better for us to remember that before we copy anything from other neighboring nations, we should take note of the fundamentals of these institutions and apply them when we decide to make one of our own. It would be a shame for us to be copying without really internalizing the basics.