Shaping hopes of Sri Lanka’s Future

By Renton de Alwis

Today is Christmas day and many will be enjoying themselves in various ways. My mind is taken back to the year end events of the year 2010 in the village where I live, of which I wrote this column. Since some false moves has forced the closure of the preschool, I speak of. It is now split in two, located in two different corners of the village, reflecting the sad realities of selfish, commercially driven society. The two teachers, I talked of in my column, continue their dedicated and caring service at one of the schools amidst various hardship. 

 

On this day of peace, my call is for our thoughts to focus on the future of our children and nature of the world we must leave behind for them. Away from the many other diversions for which we spend our valuable time … 

 

Sunday last was special for the Kiula village where we live. It was the year-end concert of the village Preschool and its hall was decorated like it was carnival time. It indeed was. The little ones were dressed for the various performances. Fifty little butterflies, flowers, stars, sun and moon, monkeys, rabbits, Veddahs, Kandyan dancers, drummers and osari clad little ladies, they were. Dressed in varied colours and costumes, they were eagerly awaiting their turn to make merry on the little stage. Bundles of pure innocence and joy they made.

No show-biz

Parents, mostly mothers with rest of their kids around them, were all there.

Having prepared them for the performances; elaborate dresses and in-situ makeup and even little sprinklings of shinny gold and silver dust to make them glitter a bit more, they were on the edges of their bench-seats till the concert began. I have been to many concerts before and seen the best of the best perform. But here, last Sunday morning the atmosphere, ambience and the vibes were different. Without pretences, big sponsor’s messages and the usual show-biz glitter, this was special and elegant. They danced, sang, jumped up and down, fell, got-up and made merry. It was not only a concert I saw, but a culmination of joy, fun, hope and aspirations of our future.

I am sure that there are many similar events held all around our land at this time of year, where our children in their preschool formative years come together and there is similar joy and hope of a better future generated.   

Moulders of future

I also saw through the concert, a window of opportunity to reflect on an aspect which we as adults, seem not to focus on with adequate seriousness. It is the movement of preschool education and the excellent work done by another group of true heroes of our land. Not often heard or thought about, they are our preschool teachers and administrators of early childhood development work programmes. They are indeed the silent, yet effective moulders of Sri Lanka’s hopes of our future.

I must confess that I do not have any specialised knowledge or skills in this area of education and must also confess that I myself am guilty, not having done enough by my own children, in their early formative years. Now that one of my children has acquired for herself a postgraduate qualification in early childhood behavioural analysis and is a specialist Autism practitioner, she herself had taught me a few lessons on the special significance of this sphere of activity.

In making up for lost time and effort, I began to understand why the preschool or the early childhood years are cited as the most important years of a child’s development.

As was shared with us by specialist Shiromi Masakorala, at a recent interaction held with mothers of the village preschool, most of what makes a wholesome adult would occur, during that person’s early childhood years. She explained to mothers how beginning from the period of pregnancy over to formal schooling, the to-be born, the new-born and in early childhood, love, affection and kindness among parents and their collective projection of that caring to the child, supports the child’s well-being and effective growth. She also emphasised the need to facilitate adequate periods and types of play for children to help form their brain-body coordination. Proper nutrition, huge doses of loving care, a sound home environment, independent and team game-play, were the key ingredients she prescribed, to mothers in attendance.

Play skills

A significant observation made on the day was that only one father attended the session to which both parents were invited. There were around sixty mothers in attendance. The need for fathers to also become partners of the process of their children’s early childhood development was highlighted, with a special mention of alcoholic and other substance abuse by parents, as a significant negative contributory factor.    

They were briefed on the popular myth held by many parents that their children should be taught to read, count and write at preschool. It was said that some parents even complained that the preschool teachers of their children were not adequately qualified for they do not teach them these skills. It was emphasised that facilitation of free play was the most important learning need and aid at this stage of a child’s development and that parents should do their utmost to allow the child to develop various play-skills instead of yearning for formal learning skills that must be in later schooling.

Valuable Lessons

Watching the kids at the concert perform, I realised that what we were witnessing, was the result of the marvels of work done by the two preschool teachers. Popularly known as Loku-Teacher (Deepani) and Podi-Teacher (Anoja), they had steered fifty kids of diverse home backgrounds, interests, levels of imagination, access to nutrition and stages of physical growth to be able to grow to their potential.

At this school there is also a down-syndrome child who is accommodated in the regular programme. Much to the credit of the teachers and the mother of the child, it is not only the child who had benefited from the ‘learning’, but also all other children in the programme. It was evident from the different acts they performed together, the remarkable level of understanding they had developed working with each other. I observed that in some instances it even surpassed expectations we would have of rational adult behaviour in dealing with persons with special needs. The children were indeed teaching us valuable lessons on group and team work.

True beneficiaries

 

With a whole generation of our children having grown amidst an insecure and terror ridden environment, these little children will be our hope of the new generation we would want to see emerge, as true beneficiaries of a fresh era of Sri Lanka’s developmental landscape. Though, simple and basic it may seem, the attention we as a nation pay on the development of our children in the South, North, East, West and the Centre in their formative years, will be as important a parameter as the roads, the bridges, the harbours, airports, energy and other infrastructure schemes. 

The success of that effort will be dependent on our having so many more persons the likes of Loku-teacher and Podi-teacher and the effective implementation of programmes such as Mathta-thita (end alcohol abuse) , Nasthiyata-thita (end Wastefulness), Allasata/Dushanayata-thita (end Bribery and corruption) and Bhayata he Avidyavata-thita (end Fear and Ignorance).

 

Let there not be any gaps between our cups and our lips !