With only a few months to go, we figured it was about time to check out the child development options around here. Montessori is well known though the implementations can be inconsistent and there isn’t one really close by. So we checked out a local place that is supposedly part of an international conglomerate with 600 or so centres.
I was a little disappointed. Turns out they’re charging ¥240 ($42) per 45 minute class… and you still have to be there. The walls are pretty colours and the leaders are very animated, though the children didn’t seem at all engaged. And I can’t quite call the staff ‘teachers’ since they’re mostly just English majors who did a 2-month in-house course.
Yet what are the options?
The sales guy suggested that Shanghainese parents don’t know how to play with their kids so they bring them there instead. Ouch!
Maybe I had an enlightened childhood but it just looked like the kids were on the set of a second-rate version of the television show, Play School.
Maybe we’ll be looking elsewhere for a place that has a stronger pedagogical foundation than “let the kids play and they’ll learn something”.
Still, what is important in child development?
This morning, while watching a TED clip on a visit to North Korea, I happened to read the mostly derisory comments below, one of which referred to The Little Prince. While I had heard of that book before, it occurred to me that I had never read it. A quick search revealed that this book, translated into 180 languages and dialects and having sold 80 million copies really needed to be on my reading list…
But in the meantime, I wanted to share a few quotes that seemed poignant:
- One cannot see well except with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eyes.
- You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
- It is the time you have spent with your rose that makes your rose so important.
All this after awaking this morning with a dream of figuring out how I would educate a child… especially on this occasion reminding me that we teach most when we teach through stories.
For some time, I have noticed how the songs that dominate my playlist tend to be reflected in my life. When I was listening to Lips of an Angel, I found myself surrounded by romantic distractions; in the past I have listened to Lose Yourself or Life or Cats in the Cradle, each time with noticable shifts in my thinking. More recently, I have tended more towards Everything, Thank You, Hey Beautiful and Eyes Wide Open… with totally different results. My lesson comes down to a simple question:
What is the soundtrack for your life?
Choose your soundtrack carefully…