I don’t want to write

Kermaan Satha

A relatively innocuous chat between a Swiss friend and me a year ago went as follows:

[09:57:36] chat: And, how is the little one?

[09:57:55] Kermaan: fine!  I think she is doing well although it is difficult telling what is going on in her little head.  Doing okay with studies.

[09:58:17] Kermaan: She is only 6 but is studying what amphibians are.

[09:58:32] chat: wow, they are really moving fast in school!

[09:58:45] chat: i started learning to read and write when i was 7

[09:58:57] chat: until then the sandbox was my only preoccupation.

My interlocutor’s name is Dr Roman Frigg, Professor and Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics.

I do not need to vouch for the fact that Dr Frigg is perfectly literate, despite the fact that he started “learning to read and write when …7”. The age at which Dr Frigg began his tryst with formal writing is the accepted norm in most developed countries, and they are none the worse for it.  In India, formal writing is introduced much earlier – in some preschools at two and a half years of age.  Kids are evaluated from the day they begin and routinely scolded, sometimes beaten or punished for not showing the inclination to learn.

Are Indian children really precocious or is there some obtuse reason why they need to write more, faster, earlier than their American or European counterparts? Indian school psychologists rue the fact that schools and parents are not open to a more informed perspective regarding the introduction of formal writing in schools.  Schools, even those that have got it right, cite parental pressure.  Parents cite societal pressure. I suspect that somewhere, someone mentoring the child is making a giant mental leap of 15 to 20 years into the future, catapulting his/her ward to the academic finishing line where those IIT-JEEs and PMTs will be cracked effortlessly.  In this fabulous projection, the 3-year-old is already a hugely successful engineer or doctor, whose accomplishments are due in no small measure to the head start he got in learning to read and write.  As adults, we do know what is best for the child, don’t we?

And yet, there is a universal consensus amongst educationists and psychologists, from Maria Montessori to Erikson to Piaget regarding the minimum age when children should be introduced to formal writing – which is NOT BEFORE 6 YEARS.

I cite below some sound reasons for waiting till a child is developmentally ready for a skill as elaborate as writing:

• Till the age of 6, a child lacks the physiological readiness to use finger muscles and joints in a coordinated fashion. The child is still struggling with body balance and spatial awareness and is unable to free up the brain to guide him in carrying out the fine motor reflexes required for writing.
• Visual-motor integration starts to set in only at the age of 4 when he can be trained in “writing readiness” through clay work and tactile experiences with aids such as sand slates. The concept of “before” and “after” is also not clear to the child and needs to be introduced through beadwork.
• Along with physiological readiness, the child develops a degree of abstract thinking at the age of 6, which would permit symbol formation and association of the word with the concept. Writing solicits both the left brain for mental picturing and the right brain for sight/memory reading. When children are forced to read and write before their brain is adequately developed, they tend to continue with sight reading and memorization and never really enjoy reading or writing in the absence of mental picturing.
• Drawing, scribbling, random letter strings with improper spacing, invented spellings are essential pathways to conventional writing. They represent a child’s efforts to convey a purposeful message.  Discouraging the child from any pre-writing activity would result in stilted writing in later years.
• Forcing children to write before they have reached the stage of writing readiness and then labelling them as dyslexics or ADHD kids cause stress, low self-esteem and a strong distaste for the written word.

 

When will parents and schools acknowledge that they are the ones who need to upgrade their skills and knowledge?    How long will we keep crushing tender children under undue pressures? Can’t the Ministry of Education prescribe a minimum age before which no child should be forced to write?  The arrogance and complacency are ours, as is the loss, if we do not even consider, leave alone implement, scientifically proven theories of age-appropriate education.  Let us not wait until our children are deformed and crumble under the pressure.  Many already have.