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Physical literacy paramount in early childhood education
As certain private schools ramp up children's exposure to digital technology in early childhood education with minimal objection from parents, the pedagogical focus should home in on quality and age-appropriate engagement as a complement to developing the necessary foundational skills during their formative years.
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Engrossed: Boys use a mobile phone to surf the internet on Dec. 26, 2018, in front of a landmark dedicated to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Banda Aceh, Aceh. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
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recent initial evaluation indicates that math skills among first-grade students at some private Muhammadiyah elementary schools might have improved after they joined a two-year digitalization project.
Viewed somewhat as an achievement, a group of teachers are eager to trial this with much younger students in early childhood education (ECE), knowing that their parents will be very pleased and proud to see the “intellectual advancement” of their young children.
This is a lucrative opportunity for private schools. Many have taken advantage of this, capitalizing on the pride of young students’ parents by equipping them with digital gadgets to make them look like technology wizzes, while feeding their brains with slightly heavy teaching material to make them look like geniuses.
They even slapped parents with a high school fee to almost no objections from parents, most of who hail from the middle class.
However, no matter how rewarding this might appear, education activists have expressed deep concern about the phenomenon.
One member of Muhammadiyah’s women’s empowerment group Aisyiyah, which operates around 20,000 ECE institutions, suggested it might be an indicator of educators’ inability to have a proper, pedagogical understanding of what students really need during these formative years, both mentally and intellectually.
Is her concern worthy of consideration?
