Happy Children's Day

Happiness is the enduring theme of Children's Day, which falls on Friday. But how happy can they be when the mantra of success as far as their parents are concerned is: "Don't let your kid lose the race on the starting line".

As parents keep moving the starting line to an earlier and earlier age - for some it's even become prenatal - it spells doom for any hopes that kids might be able to enjoy their childhoods.

In a bid to reverse this trend the Ministry of Education has stressed preschool learning should avoid excessive tuition and intensive training.

It is currently soliciting public opinions on a guide to preschool learning it released on May 30, which says children aged between 5 and 6 should be able to do simple addition and subtraction with numbers up to 10.

But with examinations the means of selection for the best schools, the competition to secure a place is fierce, which means that kids need to be able to do math at a level that is well beyond this.

For example, a few days ago, nearly 10,000 students in Jinan city, Shandong province, competed for 800 places at Jinan Foreign Language School, a key junior middle school in the city.

Many parents force their children to spend a considerable amount of spare time and energy trying to learn math of an evermore advanced level to give their kids an edge in these selection tests.

However, learning math in advance and in their spare time not only robs children of their enthusiasm for the subject, it also robs them of their childhoods and the chance to play and learn social skills mixing with other kids.

If the ministry really wants children to have happy childhoods, it must relieve the pressure on kids and distribute quality education resources more equally among schools. It also needs to devise more diversified evaluation systems to encourage children to explore their interests and curiosity, which is the best guide to life-long learning.

Childhood is not a race, it's a game.

(China Daily 06/01/2012 page8)