Many people, now awake to the important role of child education in shaping up a person’s feature, are expressing a strong desire in seeing that their kids go through decent ECD programs. Therefore many are known to proceed to the early childhood education centers, and pose questions on how the different childhood education systems work. But the answers given to those questions don’t help them much, because a description of each early childhood program makes it seem alluring. That is especially the case, given the fact that the developers are always keen on putting very reasonable explanations for pretty much each and every aspect of their program.
At the end of the day, we know that some early child education programs are better than others. ECD programs whose graduates go on to become educational achievers can be termed as being amongst the best. ECD programs whose graduates, in addition to becoming educational achievers, also tend to become socially competent and physically active adults would also definitely qualify for a spot amongst the very best childhood education programs. There are therefore two main criteria through which we can judge the quality of an early child education program; criteria via which we can identify the best ECD programs over the rest.
As it turns out, the best ECD programs are those that are structured in a way that creates a genuine love for learning in their students. Kids are by nature curious, and the best ECD programs are created to arouse, rather than dull, that curiosity. Curiosity awakened, the best childhood education programs tend to go on to make the learning process (which is supposed to feed the curiosity) fun. This is as opposed to the archaic ECD programs that are known to make learning a chore for the kids. Now human nature inclines us to do things that are ‘fun’ to us, while disinclining us from doing things that are ‘chore-some’ to us. And attitudes we acquire early in our lives tend to be attitudes we hold and act on all our lives.
The best early child education programs are also those that are structured in such a way that the students who go through them develop a sense of balance throughout their lives. This is as opposed to some archaic childhood education that tended to insist on utmost concentration on academic matters, whilst discouraging social contact and physical activity. That could turn out to be counterproductive, and could breed truancy in the learners (as they tried to act on their natural human tendencies towards social contact and physical activity). It could also give, in the learners who chose to follow the dictates of the system keenly, a problem of lack of balance. That is where we end up with ‘nerds’ who are so focused on their work, intellectual or otherwise, to the detriment of the other aspects of their lives. But the best early child education programs, whilst encouraging keenness in educational pursuit, also strongly encourage balance.