Happy New-Year folks!
At the beginning of each year, each one of us nurses high hopes that life will be good this time around. It is thus customary to share good will messages wishing one another good health and prosperity. This is also a time for many children to commence the torturing educational. Many are enrolled for standard one for their primary education while some enrol for pre-schooling. Yet many other children of pre-school age find themselves marooned at their dull homes whereupon they take to loitering like neglected pets or free range chicken. Their parents and/or guardians are often unable to enrol them in pre-schools due to lower incomes and other circumstances. To lay persons, the failure to enrol kids in pre-schools could be considered a non-issue because not all is lost since they still have a great opportunity for primary schooling.
However, research on development in the early childhood years suggests a compelling need to invest wisely in children. This is so because the future of any society depends on its ability and willingness to stimulate and advance the wellbeing of the future generation. Put differently, today’s young children are tomorrow’s parents, leaders and most significantly workers and when families and the government invest wisely in their development at a tender age, these children will pay back through many years of productivity, diligence, undivided loyalty to the nation and responsible citizenship. On the other hand, when the government fails or neglects or simply shows lack of interest in providing young children with opportunities needed to build a strong foundation for healthy, productive and responsible lives, the future prosperity of the nation is severely compromised and irrevocably undermined.
Botswana’s developmental challenges are becoming ever complex and increasingly daunting pointing to the need for a highly skilled workforce as well as a patriotic and responsible citizenry with the capacity and wherewithal to confidently confront these challenges in order to make Botswana a better place for all. This will require the government and people of Botswana to reconsider their conception about development of the individual in their formative years in order to recommit adequate national resources towards interventions that would leave an enduring mark in the lives of ALL children, including children from under-privileged families.
Such interventions should include among others provision of financial support or assistance to lower income families to enable them to enrol their children in pre-schools as a deliberate measure to foster their early development. This argument essentially call upon the Government of Botswana to consider establishing a childcare subsidy program intended to help lower income families with the cost of pre-schooling which is globally considered a feasible and expedient step ladder to national prosperity.
Decades of research about early childhood development has accumulated credible literature that supports interventions aimed at enriching the lives of children at a tender age. Many developed countries and some developing countries are implementing policies and programs aimed at stimulating the early development of the child. The Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University noted that creating the right conditions for early childhood development is likely to be more effective and less costly than addressing problems at the later stage. It further noted that policy initiatives that promotes rich learning opportunities for young children creates a strong foundation for higher school achievement followed by greater productivity in the workplace and solid citizenship in the community ( The Science of early Childhood Development, 2007).
The 1993 Report of the National Commission on Education popularly known as the Kedikilwe Commission supports the premise that early childhood educational programs do indeed help in the social, physical, cognitive and emotional development of the child, noting that early learning is the foundation on which future learning is built (page 71). The Report states that ‘some studies show that in poor countries the children of the poor are less likely to do well in school than their wealthier counter parts because brains may have been permanently damaged by lack of adequate nutrition and absence of stimulation in the earliest years’.
Pre-school activities are very much stimulating which means that when those who are enrolled develop skills for learning those who stay at home due to circumstances of poverty are wasted having to expend their time in skinning lizards and frying butterflies in imaginary restaurants. Such pathetic activities are brain damaging and hardly prepare them for a productive life.
The Kedikilwe Commission Report gives the example of the Government of Peru that provides nurseries for infants up to three years old and pre-schools for three to five-year-olds in an effort to break the cycle of poverty and educational failure. In Africa Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and a few others have been lauded for investing in programs for early childhood development which explains their erstwhile higher levels of educational achievements, positive attitudes and good work ethics.
While the Commission recommended the immediate establishment of pre-primary education and the subsequent acceptance of the recommendation by the Government of Botswana, implementation has lagged behind. Nonetheless, there are many high quality pre-school facilities all over the country that offers a variety of early childhood learning opportunities. Many families have since taken a keen interest in pre-primary education and are committing a significant proportion of the family income towards this level of their children’s education.
Unfortunately, while willing to enrol their children in quality pre-schools, lower income families are unable to do so due to their meagre incomes. Essentially, this means that a huge percentage of the future generation of the Botswana nation is missing out on a life time of opportunities for a solid foundation for a productive workforce and a patriotic and responsible people.
Since early childhood development is a sine qua non for national development, when many children miss out on opportunities for their early development and preparation into responsible adults, national prosperity can never be realized. In fact, instead of developing responsible citizens and a future productive and dependable workforce, Botswana is actively helping its children develop into loafers of repute, slackers, thugs and persons who take pride in their destitution.
In the essay titled ‘Stray dogs, stray cattle and free range chicken menace: It is nobody’s business’, the Badge of Courage lamented the traumatic experiences of loitering children and called upon authorities to give some thoughts to this problem before it reaches crisis levels. The cumulative reasoning of the above cited essay and the current discussion is essentially that there is a dire need for investing in services for young children as moral and human right issue. Specifically, the Badge of Courage sincerely issues an impassioned clarion call for government to provide full or partial financial assistance (depending on circumstances) to eligible lower income families to enable them to enrol their children in accredited pre-schools as a matter of urgency.
Please don’t start that mundane talk of no money which, in a sense, is nonsense.
