Last week was the period for school closing, which, as usual, came with a fair share of excitement and consternation.
But to the playgroup pupils, it may might have been a more remarkable transition period — at least going by now seemingly fashion show-like graduations into lower primary grades for most of private academies.
A lot of pomp and colour for this type of schools went down last week as the pupils were ushered into the lower primary level — specifically, Standard One.
The question of graduation as a preserve event of higher levels of academic attainment and specialisation is long debatable.
If you contrast the ideal with the level of these playgroup children, one may be dismayed as most of these “academies” strain to the highest cost in a bid to make the occasion to bear a striking semblance with those of universities.
This modern-day tendency and turn of events may invite one to reassess the motive for such graduations, which can be looked at through the lenses of school or the gain of the pupil.
If one were to look at it in the school perspective, much is left to be desired as, mostly, it turns out to be a marketing gimmick, a showbiz affair, a way to outshine one another, and a mechanism to hoodwink parents and guardians.
A fact that has little compass to the quality of learning offered.
Now that the practice has become a calendar-scheduled event and is embraced by many, it is therefore essential to shift the spin and point and dedicate focus on where it ought to be.
Critical to it is to implant on the little ones, during the graduation, a sense of responsibility and expectation.
It is at this point in time when they should be taught how to do basic home-based chores for themselves.
Also is the phase, academic responsibility should be impressed upon.
The question of interpersonal relations — especially cementing values such as that of sharing and protecting one another, demonstrable care for the environment, concern for the needy and the underprivileged, patriotic deeds, and many more can lastingly be cemented at this critical stage of growth and development of the child.
Cardinal also in such occasions is that parents and guardians should be deliberate and appreciate, in the best way they find feasible, the great deeds of caregivers and teachers of the early learning group.
Indeed, it to the teachers’ credit that the toddlers have been shaped and formed to enable one single out academic – and non-academic – inherent potentialities.
Mutethia wa Mberia, Nairobi
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