Flowers in the garden

My kids’ school celebrated the opening of the school year last week with its traditional Flower Ceremony. It’s a unique rite of passage for the kindergarteners who are moving up to the first grade. As the violins of two older students filled the air with the engaging melody of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, each incoming grade one student walked hand-in-hand with a graduating high school senior through a flower-laden arch leading to a pathway that ended near the grade one’s classroom door. Their class teacher stood in waiting. With reverence and grace, the teacher offered each a flower and welcomed each with a gentle handshake. Before leading them inside the classroom for the first time, she told them a simple pedagogical story about the beginning of their exciting and wonderful journey into the world of academics. It was truly a magical way for the little ones and the entire school community to start the school year!

This year also marks an important milestone for Philippine education as the government launches its Universal Kindergarten program across the country. Starting this June, five-year-old children will be required to enter kindergarten before they could enroll in grade one. This is the first step of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) broader goal of moving the country to a “K-12” program or Kindergarten + 12 years of basic education. At present, the Philippines is the only country in the world with a 10-year program. This is being blamed by some quarters as the key reason for the Filipino students’ insufficient mastery of basic competencies and why they significantly lag against their peers from other countries on standardized tests. I wholeheartedly agree with the need to put more emphasis on Kindergarten and with adding two more years to basic education. This is one reason why I enrolled my kids in a Waldorf school which has its own K-12 program. There are, however, several ways in which to implement a K-12 program and as much as I love the approach of my children’s school, I realize that it may not be for everyone. I also do not claim to know in detail how the DepEd plans to structure the new educational program. Nevertheless, I would like to offer the following unsolicited suggestions as a licensed (though non-practicing) teacher and as a Waldorf parent.

First of all, I do hope that the DepEd does not simply make kindergarten, which in its original German meaning literally means “children’s garden,” an extension of the elementary school system. Unfortunately, this seems to be the trend in the US where kindergarten classrooms are now increasingly looking more like traditional grade one or even grade two classrooms with standardized tests and homework galore. According to David Elkind, a prominent child psychologist and professor emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, this kind of overly academic approach goes against all the principles of the great progenitors of early childhood education such as Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, and Steiner. And while the child may indeed display some short-term advances, new studies show that there are no long-term advantages to “starting early.” It may, in fact, even unduly stress the child, thereby making it ultimately counterproductive from both a health and academic standpoint. According to Elkind, the most appropriate approach for preschoolers as supported by an overwhelming amount of contemporary research and classroom experience is a play-based curriculum that emphasizes experiential learning under a caring and supportive teacher. 

In a similar vein, I also hope that we do not use the additional two years of basic education as an excuse to add even more content to an already overcrowded curriculum. Instead, I hope that we use the longer 12-year period to improve the quality of instruction and to re-structure the curriculum to reflect more the developmental nature of the learner. Education is not all about the intellect. It is also about nurturing the child’s emotional and spiritual dimensions. In fact, I now believe that a child’s full intellectual development should come later in high school and that the focus of grade school should be the student’s emotional and creative growth. Many of the world’s great philosophers in education theorized that we learn in specific development stages. Our goal should not be how to make our kids skip these stages as if education was some sort of a race that we could win via shortcuts. Rather, it should be how we can find ways and means that will enable them to more fully experience each and every natural progression.

Going back to the Flower Ceremony at my children’s school, it all comes into a full circle 10 months later. At the high school graduation ceremony at the end of the year, it will be the turn of the grade one students to hand the seniors flowers and to walk them through a pathway. It is a bittersweet moment for while it symbolizes the start of adulthood, it also signals childhood’s end. Our children’s K-12 years are precious times that we need to let our children savor and enjoy — that we parents need to savor and enjoy. These are times that should not be rushed or skipped on the mistaken notion that it is better for our children to grow up “faster” or for the sake of economics. Just like Nature’s flowers in the garden, there is no need to genetically modify them or to drown them in harsh fertilizers. With enough sun and water, sprinkled with common sense and genuine concern, they will bloom on their own into the dazzling display of color and beauty that they all are.

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Please e-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.