Polokwane edu specialist advocates for good preschools

POLOKWANE – The year draws to an end and parents will soon have to make a final decision regarding their younger children’s first steps into the sphere of early childhood development.

Review gathered some insight from Dr Bruce Phillips, a local education specialist who believes that one of the most important early interventions in the life of the human child is that of attending a good preschool.

“This needs emphasising and this is where our authorities need to focus! Personal experience in various countries underlines this need. One of the challenges countries face in education is the need to understand cultural diversity. Many refuse to accept this challenge and create preschool environments consisting of a particular ‘culture’.

“It is my contention that the preservation of a ‘culture’ lies in ensuring the home environment is solid and exposing the growing child to a preschool which celebrates different cultures,” Phillips reckons.

According to Phillips, interventions later on in the development of the child are equally important.

“Read to your child, and often! This is an early intervention. Each time you read to your child you are investing in their future and opening a world of opportunity which may only become apparent in later life, but apparent they will become,” Phillips says and adds that it is both exciting and amazing how quickly a child will want take the book from your hand and read her or himself.

In a previous article Phillips suggested removing cell phones and placing a book in every child’s hands.

“I am not telling the world that the 5th industrial revolution should be negated and we should go back to using a coal stove, not at all!

“We need to develop, to grow, to understand and to have young people and older ones who never stop learning and finding new ways/better ways of doing things, but to get there we need to grasp the basics of life and artificial intelligence,” Phillips states.

He says that AI cannot replace the reality of being truly human.

“Children (and adults) scrolling through mindless reels on social media has no value at all except to waste the wonderful time that allows the mind to experience words in a book, or the smell of the flowers in the garden, the sound of the sea crashing against the shore and yes, even being stung by a bee! Interventions which some call ‘remedial actions’ have a place in our world and I believe AI will ultimately assist in this at various levels but in this instance allow me to finish by suggesting that the best intervention is to build a relationship with the malleable, growing child.”

He says he was delighted to recently hear a Gr 3 teacher frequently praising various individuals in her class during a mathematics lesson. “’Well done’, she said many times and I am confident there are going to be many confident young mathematicians emerging from her class. Kids need environmental nutrients. If they get these environmental nutrients perhaps no intervention will be necessary,” Phillips concluded.