Primary Education

Monday, October 13th, 2008

I am a dad although my kids are now grown up. I am also a retired businessman.

This term or so I understand refers to the education of 5 to 11 year olds. As a father I had a direct interest in this phase of education and I am happy to say that my children were served well. As a businessman, I was obviously more interested in what kids achieved in the later phases of their education - we had no room for exceptional 'finger painters' in our business, we wanted people who knew the difference between a transistor and a hot-air balloon.

But it seems to me that the primary phase is critical to all that follows thereafter. It is not a matter of the knowledge imparted in this phase, although it is a time at least to learn the basics. However, I do think this is your last oppotunity to teach them how to learn, to fill them with the desire to know, to instill curiosity and also show them that learning can be pleasurable and fun. If you do not achieve this by the age of 11, ideally earlier, then I fail to see how you can do it afterwards as kids enter that adolescent phase where the simplistic rejection of adult values becomes the standard way of defining themselves as individuals.

I have long suspected that primary education has been the 'Cinderella' of education - not enough money, not a great deal of interest, not a great deal of kudos. When you see newspaper reports, they are generally about secondary or tertiary level achievements . But get this 1st phase right and the 2nd and 3rd will be so much easier and probably more successful. All the little kids I have met are simply yearning to learn, to know and to understand, not just here but all over the world. Let's exploit that desire.

So let's take primary education more seriously and give them the chance that they deserve.